I have a very vivid memory of standing at the school gate, overcome by anxiety, and desperately not wanting to go in. My heart was pounding, I could already feel the onset of a panic attack, and my legs felt like jelly. I did eventually make it onto the school grounds, but I spent most of the day, as I did for two years, hiding in the library or with the pastoral support team, refusing to go to lessons.
I was struggling with school anxiety. I was 13 by the time it became a noticeable problem for me, a lot later than for many autistic children. Nevertheless, it did hit me, and when it did, it was debilitating.
School anxiety can present in many different ways. My school anxiety began with a meticulous sense of perfectionism, worrying about getting anything wrong, and a fear of getting in trouble at school. This later developed into frequent panic attacks, running away from school, meltdowns, and low mood. For some autistic children, they may be so adept at masking that they appear to get through the school day with little problem, only to get home and suffer meltdowns or panic attacks subsequently. For some, this anxiety leads to ‘school refusal’, however I feel that this term places too much blame on the child, rather than the environment itself in which they feel it’s impossible to cope.
When you think about school anxiety, it’s no surprise that it occurs so widely amongst autistic children. Putting an autistic child into an often unpredictable, loud, social environment, and expecting them to fit in or face being mocked by their peers, it’s no wonder that it causes a great deal of anxiety. The sensory environment may be overwhelming, they may struggle navigating social expectations, and they may have to cope with change with little notice. On top of managing all this, which inevitably leaves their nervous system over-stimulated before it’s even 10 o’clock, they’re also expected to process large amounts of new information and to be able to focus on their schoolwork.
I spent a few years at school existing in fight-or-flight mode. I was constantly on edge. Sometimes I’d walk into a lesson to find the teacher was off, and there was a cover teacher instead. Sometimes there’d be nowhere quiet to sit to recover from the noise and the chaos. Sometimes the tasks I was given to complete had instructions I couldn’t follow. It felt like I was walking into an environment every day that I had no hope of thriving in, like I was almost being set up to fail.
Some people advocate for exposure therapy in these circumstances. They say that if a child is put into an environment enough times, their anxiety will lessen. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Forcing autistic children into those environments day after day will not make it easier, it will only force them to mask their feelings and negatively impact their mental health. What really struck me as I got older and began to reflect on my own school anxiety, was that I just simply didn’t feel safe at school. I felt like some teachers didn’t understand my needs, I felt like I could be told off at any moment for something I didn’t mean to do, and I felt l was constantly fighting just to get through the school day. This didn’t change until I built trusting relationships with my teachers, had a support plan in place which helped to meet my needs, and I wasn’t forced into situations I couldn’t deal with. When those things happened, the change in my relationship with school was enormous.
Autistic children need to feel safe at school. That doesn’t happen through coercion. It happens through co-produced, reasonable adjustments, through looking at things from the child’s perspective, and through educating those around the child of their needs. It comes from listening to what the child’s behaviour is saying, offering space and time to re-energise, and not forcing them to do things that push them over the edge.
School anxiety can be overwhelming, debilitating, and difficult to navigate for both the child and their parents or carers. Reframing it as a child’s response to an environment they are struggling to cope with is key, as is taking a collaborative, compassionate approach to finding a way forward with the child’s needs and preferences at the heart of it.
