Understand Your Child’s School Phobia and Help Him Overcome It as Quickly as Possible

The children who face school phobia are either those shy, closed-minded children, the children whose parents have excessively high expectations, or the children who have poor school results.

School phobia is more than an attitude of rejection or displeasure towards the school and learning environment: it is a whole complex of intense negative emotions - fear, frustration, anxiety, stress - which sometimes manifests itself physically and concretely.

Thus, children who are shy, self-contained, partly antisocial, may face school phobia. Especially young children, in the first years of school, if they have not been taken to kindergarten and therefore have not met with the institutional environment, with its specific rules, may show an intense rejection of it.

If the child is not used to the rules and the formal environment beforehand, then he will have an intense fear of the new and the difficulty of adapting to the new situation. Even worse is when the little one has not previously had friendships with peers, has not learned the rules of relationships, and therefore can not integrate into the group of colleagues and it is difficult and afraid to make friends.

Likewise, extremely spoiled children at home will have difficulty adapting to the school environment: if their parents have complied with any request and treated him like a king, the child will feel frightened that he is no longer in the new environment.

The center of attention, he is no longer given any request, he is no longer pleased and will have difficulty following and understanding the strict rules imposed by the classroom.

But over time, young children can get over these problems once they make friends and get used to the new environment. There are, however, children who, as they grow older, develop an intense school phobia. These are those children who, when they reach adolescence, are closed in on themselves, asocial, do not have many friends or not at all, cannot integrate into groups of the elderly.

Those maladapted teenagers who are locked in their room, who have relationship problems and a negative self-image. These children (teenagers) show a real phobia towards the school environment because in this environment you have to speak in public, to be noticed, you are constantly exposed to the judgments and criticisms of others.

And considering that teenagers are ruthless, one of their favorite concerns is to laugh, "make fun of" the different ones, these maladapted children have real difficulties both in terms of social and school aspects.

However, children of different ages can also face school phobia when their parents have unrealistically high expectations of them. Parents who say, "You're my child, you have to be the best" have already challenged the child's complex!

Worse, in addition to expecting perfect school results, some parents force their children to study a certain subject more, which they practically "put on their throats"! For example, the child of a couple of literature teachers may be pushed from behind not only to have perfect results in this subject but also to work extra at home - even if the child has absolutely no interest or affinity for that subject.

The child will react emotionally with an exacerbated intensity when he thinks that he is not prepared enough or when he will obtain a grade lower than the maximum in one subject or another. And parents who punish their child for a grade of 5 do not help the situation at all! School phobia can thus start from unrealistic and inappropriate demands and the forces pushing of the child to a certain field.

The child will be afraid that he is not good enough - and logically that he is not if his parents want him to be perfect - and that he will disappoint his mother and/or father. Parents with unrealistic expectations who express their disappointment do a lot of harm: they may have good intentions, wanting to aspire to the child, but they will create an inferiority complex and real fear and anxiety towards the school environment or any other environment in which is judged and evaluated.

It is normal to want to be proud of your son/daughter, but these parents do not realize that a child should not be forced to give more than he can and should be left to choose his path, preferences, options.

This situation is manifested in some families, including in the university training: many students study a field because this is how it was imposed on them at home: "my parents are doctors, so I have to do medicine too"! But maybe that field is of no interest to the young man and he has no "fabric" of a doctor.

Many times, these parents who unknowingly contribute to the development of school phobia have high expectations from their dissatisfaction: "I could not do that, but my child will be able to." But compensating for a failure through your son or daughter is inappropriate and at least strange.

School phobia can also be caused by the mediocre or even poor results of the student. Even if the parents do not have high expectations of him, the child who will not do as well as the rest of his classmates will feel inadequate and without any purpose.

Poor results can be determined either by a cognitive inability, memory, analysis, information processing, or by inadequate teaching and pedagogical style of teachers. The student with poor school results, who feels unable to pass an exam, who can not simply memorize or understand information will want to avoid school as much as possible because he will feel the worst in the class and inappropriate.

Compared to his better classmates, he will conclude that he has a problem and will give up trying - but that problem can be easily solved, but only as long as the teachers are willing to see it, to understand it. and to help. But many teachers still adopt an authoritarian, rigid teaching style, limited to teaching-listening and focused on sanctions.

They intensify the student's school phobia - teachers who do not empathize, do not know how to communicate, provide not only the necessary information but also the interesting one, to develop the creative potential of children, to ensure their freedom of opinion, these teachers can cause disasters in the psyche of influential children, insecure, fearful, underdeveloped. There are even teachers who make their students "stupid"! What teaching style is this ?!

School phobia, when it is aggravated and determined by the combination of several causes, can have concrete behavioral and physical manifestations that are particularly unpleasant: isolation, daydreaming, self-closure, refusal to communicate, migraines, stomach pain, gastrointestinal disorders, fever, bulimia, alcohol addiction.

That is why it is so important for teachers, but especially parents, to look for these symptoms in time and to intervene, trying to help the child by any means. Intense school phobia is the first step towards dropping out of school, which in turn is the first step towards a rather bleak future for the teenager!