The Four Lenses of School Attendance Difficulties
At School Can’t Australia we have noticed that there are different lenses through which people commonly view school attendance difficulties. These are the:
1. Misbehaviour Lens,
2. Mental Health Lens,
3. Disability Lens and
4. Stress Lens.
Each of these lenses colours the way we view school attendance difficulties. These lenses shape:
1. our thoughts about what the problem is,
2. our view of the child
3. our view of the parent/carer,
4. the sense we make of the problem,
5. the interventions we use, and
6. the lived experiences of the child and the parent/carer.
These lenses are shaped by our cultural beliefs about: childhood, parenting, behaviour, discipline, education, well-being, disability, inclusion, and mental health. We are immersed in these cultural beliefs and are often not aware of them until we find ourselves questioning the role they play in the dilemmas that we face. Parents and carers from School Can’t Australia often talk about how a lens adjustment has led to new insights, which have helped us make sense of the problem and locate better supports.
Misbehavior Lens: This lens frames school attendance difficulties as a behaviour to be corrected. Students are described as wilful, defiant, lazy, manipulative and unmotivated. Parents are often framed as being poor disciplinarians, or over empathetic. Interventions recommended include use of rewards and consequences, making home less appealing, threats of legal action and parent training on how to manage behaviour using rewards and consequences. These approaches frequently damage the parent-child relationship and lead to further distress, as they do not identify or address underlying causes of school attendance difficulties which are external to the student and over which the student has little, if any, control. The student frequently becomes angry, shutdown, or depressed. The student’s concerns are ignored, and they feel like they are being told to just try harder. This approach leads students to pretend that nothing is wrong and they learn that the adults won’t help them with their distress.
Mental Health Lens: This lens frames school attendance difficulties as anxiety-based. This a more compassionate perspective, but locates the problem as being in the child, or in the parent-child relationship. This lens frames anxiety as an irrational response that gets bigger the longer the fearful situation is avoided. Interventions recommended include Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), graded exposure plans, and using incentives to encourage the child to face their fears, so that they can learn not to be fearful. Parents are often blamed or considered as complicit in their child’s difficulties, and are directed to attend courses to learn how to help their child manage anxiety. This approach does not lead clinicians to look upstream of the mental ill health, to identify and address sources of chronic stress. Subsequently the student is not provided with relief from the source of stress or a context within which recovery can be facilitated.
Disability Lens: This lens is more likely to consider stressors, but sometimes ableist beliefs lead to students being considered as having needs that are incompatible with the school’s knowledge, resources or values. Families are directed to consider segregated, or disability specific education as being more suitable (this is a form of gatekeeping). Sometimes intervention is directed at the child, in an attempt to make them less disabled and a better fit. This is not an affirming response to a student with disability. It doesn’t acknowledge the needs, or provide the supports that the student requires to experience success in school. This leads to increased experience of stress, shame and failure. Parents who are advocating for their child are seen as having unrealistic expectations of their child and of the school. Effective responses focus on creating accessible and inclusive learning experiences and environments.
Stress Lens: This is the lens through which School Can’t Australia has come to understand school can't. The child's lack of capacity to attend school is viewed as a fight/flight/shutdown response to stress. These stress states are autonomic in nature. Exposure to chronic or severe stress leads to mental health difficulties. School avoidance is seen as a sign of distress. Unmet disability needs are viewed as stressors. Intervention begins with being curious and working with the student and their family to identify stressors and barriers, with a view to reducing or removing these. In so doing, nervous system regulation is supported paving the way for restoration of capacity (which can take some time). This lens requires those supporting a student to develop an awareness of the student’s nervous system state. The focus is on creating a student experience of relational and physical safety, finding ways to regulate the nervous system, and restore capacity. When we use this lens students feel like their lived experience is validated. Students feel supported and understood. The student’s stress load is adjusted to within their window of tolerance for stress.
Written by Tiffany Westphal and Louise Rogers
