Our Story ....
My Son started to show there was something wrong in 2009 when his Granddad reported problems taking him to school. My son got so far into the school and then gripped his granddad tightly saying he was too scared. He cried and was genuinely terrified. The next episode was about a week later when I witnessed something similar for myself. I had seen my son off to school and then took my daughter to her part of the school. When I returned back up to Andrew's yard to exit the grounds, Andrew ran out of school towards me and flung his arms around my waste, gripping me so tightly. He was terrified and sobbing inconsolably with distress and fear.
My first impression was that he was being bullied and I went straight to the head teacher?s office with him clinging on. Unfortunately, my son displayed a visible resistance to school due to the severe fear, so in most people's eyes, he appeared to simply be 'playing the wag' as it's called in my area - doing what he could for a day off from 'boring' school, so it was never seen by his mainstream school as a genuine condition when this all began to unravel. The only thing I kept telling everyone is my son never found school a problem and never struggled with his work and in addition to this; he always got ready in his school uniform pretty early. My feelings were that a child who wanted time off school would present themselves to you, still in their night clothes looking pretty worse for wear with a somewhat pretend cough or spluttering, which was never the case !!! With the school being unconvinced of what was truly happening, the pressure built against us as we ourselves were trying to understand 'school phobia', where it had came from and why it chose Andrew. And so, the battle commenced!
The fear in him grew worse with the days that followed and I began to notice Andrew was developing physical symptoms associated with the fear and anxiety. He stopped going to bed and was forcing himself to stay awake to prevent the next day coming; the next morning he would wake with a start really early and then would suffer chronic episodes of diarrhea and begin to shake and tremble with the extremity of nerves. It lead to me having to escort him to his classroom where he would stand in the corridor, sobbing and shaking for almost 40 minutes, begging me not to leave him, saying he was too scared. I would try to reason with him and talk him through different things, but as I later found out from Marianna Csoti?s book, this is a failed avenue before you even start. Reasoning just is out of the question as the fear is so intense, the child refuses to listen. Fear is a powerful thing.
After a number of days I went to see a GP who prescribed Andrew a antihistamine which resulted in my son being unbelievably drowsy which in turn resulted in a heightened emotional state ( I since found out that GPs cannot prescribe the drugs that Psychiatrists can ).
We tried again to enter the school in a 'sedative' state and the disruption in the corridor became very distressing for both me and my son and in addition to this, the lack of understanding from his mainstream school added pressure to both him and me. We re-visited the Drs.