The conversation

This story is last part of a trilogy about school refusal.

And this is all about bringing closure to a year-long emotional journey for both father and son.

The silence was killing me, even as a new school year began and things seemed to have returned to ‘normal’. 

It was not the terrifying, stone wall of silence between me and my son of a year ago, when things seemed so dark and hopeless.  But, still, I was very much aware that we had never had that conversation.  He had never shared with me his side of the story – his tale of what it was like to be a teenager trapped in this fortress of anxiety.

Sitting on the Eurostar, travelling alone, another email arrived in my inbox.  It was exactly what I had been waiting for.  His story, finally breaking the silence between us. 

It speaks for itself.

Anyone who saw me now would believe I was just a normal kid.  A kid who has a family, has friends and goes to school.

But I used to sit in school, excluded from the crowd – alone, afraid and wondering to myself, How long until the end of the day?  Finally, the bell would ring and with it came a feeling of utter joy, happiness and relief.  I would push open the door and run, like an animal released into the wild after a period of captivity.  I would run home, open the front door, go upstairs, slam my bedroom door and cried.

I could tell people were mad at me. I could tell people wanted me back at school… and now!  But it wasn’t going to happen.  Not just like that.  I could see it in their faces.  Every time I went out of the house, I had to avoid certain places, avoiding people, because I was scared of what they might say.  In fact, I was scared of everything.

One day off school turned into two.  Two turned into a week.  Suddenly, before I knew it, it was a whole school term.  The longer I stayed at home, the harder I felt it would be to ever go back.  I could feel it inside, it was getting worse.  I was becoming more frustrated, more alone.

I felt like I would never go back to school.  Ever.

During this time, I admit my relationship with my dad was not quite as strong as it had been before.  I could sense in him that he couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t go to school.  There was a period where I even dreaded the thought of him coming to visit for the weekend.   I was too ashamed, embarrassed and scared.  I was scared of what he might ask, what he might say, what he might do.  I had no hope, and my confidence was at an all time low. 

I had no trust in anyone:  my parents, my friends, my therapist, and even myself.  I had no trust that it was going to be alright. I thought I had gone into a dark cave and that I was never going to come out!  

Then, after having probably the worst week of my life, I decided I can’t live on like this.  I realized that I was going to end up killing myself.

So I went and got the computer, sat down, and emailed my dad.  It was time to return to school.

To cut a long story short, I did get back into school.  I moved to Brussels and now I’m enjoying school more than ever!  And if I have learned one thing, it would be this: You cannot live life without belief - belief in others, belief in life and most important of all belief in yourself.

If I look back on the past eighteen months, it is clear how far we have come – as individuals and as a family.  Things have changed, that’s for sure.  We have all had to make adjustments and accept the new routines.  But if I could judge the quality of my son's life by the number of school friends he has on Facebook, his academic grades, his involvement in the school football team or simply the smile on his face when he arrives at school each day, I would dare to say he might just about be the happiest boy I know. 

And what more could a father want than that?

Missed Part One and Part Two of this trilogy?  Click the links to catch up.

A misty morning does not mean it will be a cloudy day

A wise person must have said this once. Wise people always say that kind of stuff.

If I had been wiser, I would have thought of this kind of one-liner on the appropriately-misty day, just after Easter, when another email found its way into my inbox.

If I had been wiser, I would have been less surprised by the contents of this particular 'sign':

Dad
I have decided that on June 1st I shall come to school in Brussels; this is the first time I have said this with confidence! Before I said I was going back after half-term and not feeling very sure, but now I’m sure!

Love u loads
J.

PS You’re the first person I told, since I thought it was to you that it was most relevant!

No big deal? Well, I guess not, unless you consider that the clouds had well and truly settled over our family these past seven months; unless you consider that only a week previously I had begun to resign myself to the fact that, despite all my best efforts, I was powerless to help my own son work towards a resolution of the issues that he was facing.

Like the first time I held him in my arms, moments after he was born – terrified that I would mistakenly crush his tiny limbs – I found myself almost paralyzed for fear that I would say or do something to snuff out this fragile sign of hope.

Where is that wise person, with the right words to say, when you need him?

Along this long and lonely path, I had met a lot of people who informed me that they were wise. They passed around their wise words freely and, sometimes, without listening.

Many were well-intentioned, but few understood.

“Smack the taste out of his mouth and deal with it!” was the line that hurt the most.

Sometimes we are all too quick to judge, I guess.

Or perhaps, having run out of gold, frankincense and myrrh, some ‘wise men’ have less to give these days.

A couple of days ago, I thought of writing back to this anonymous sage. I thought of explaining that I neither smacked nor ‘dealt with it’ particularly well, but that my beautiful boy was good to his promise and spent the month of June in school; that he bravely conquered his fears, moved away from his ‘home’, established himself in another school, in another country, made friends, put his head down... and got 94% in his first assessed essay.

I wanted to be the smug. But wise men don’t do smug, do they? They know all too well how easy it is to say the wrong thing and how hard it is to find the words to capture and express how life really is.

For now, at least, both the mist and cloud have gone and we are enjoying those long, summer days.

To be sure, the road we have travelled has not been easy. But, as another wise man once wrote on the back of a bus, somewhere in Arizona: "It's hard to make a comeback when you haven't been anywhere."

The pieces that simply will not fit

Playing in the park on a sunny day in early Spring, we look like a perfectly normal family.

Sure, I am a divorced dad, co-managing two sets of kids in two countries. But that’s okay. We have got used to that now. We have our routine and that gets us through.

But on this particular day, I don’t feel normal. Despite my best efforts, the jigsaw pieces of my life just don’t seem to fit together in the way that they used to. At least, not right now. They are all bent up and slightly torn at the edges.

Let me explain.

When I had first had children, I made certain basic assumptions:

1. My children will outlive me.

2. My children will sleep (eventually).

3. My children will eat their vegetables (eventually - with the exception, perhaps, of Brussels Sprouts).

4. My children will go to school.

This, for most of us, is the bottom line of parenthood. Of course, we hope for much more for our kids. In my case it was 12 hour sleep patterns from 6 weeks, leading seamlessly towards a happy, successful and ethical life, cut short only by a peaceful passing anytime after the age of 80. And not to be greedy about it, I wanted my children not only to eat but actually enjoy everything I place onto the dinner table, play a musical instrument, join a sports team, become a doctor, marry and produce 3 delightful grandchildren to keep me entertained during my own twilight years.

Am I alone here?

I guess we make these parental assumptions in order to get us through those dark and difficult periods when raising a child fills seems beyond anything we could ever manage.

Sitting on her couch, the therapist opposite confirms my naivety in almost her first sentence: ‘David, we are only just beginning this process...’

Shit.

You see, my eldest boy, has not been to school in seven months. He is a ‘school refuser’.

Seven months ago, I did not even know kids like this existed. Kids either went to school or they ‘bunked off’ because they were bad kids. (Or they were like my sister who occasionally decided to ride around Birmingham on the bus rather than go to school).

This, though, is different. This is about kind of deep anxiety or phobia, akin to people who have a fear of spiders, confined spaces or flying. This is kind of serious.

I want to tell the therapist that she is wrong. I challenge her, angrily, and express that part of me that wants to simplify this situation, blaming it on some early adolescent rebellion.

It’s complicated. Too complicated for me to understand right now.

And I don’t particularly want to go into why this happened. My ex-wife thinks that it was because she went to work when he was small. The therapist half suggests that it was because I went swimming with my boy every Friday afternoon when he was small and then I got divorced. I argue with them both. Half the world’s kids have mums who work and dads who live somewhere else. But half the world’s kids are not school refusers.

Back in the park, we kick a ball around and enjoy each other’s company. We laugh, argue, run around: the first signs of Spring do us good. But it is different to last Spring. I feel a distance between him and I that was not there a year ago. When I try to get close, he pulls away – as if it is too painful, too confusing for him to bear right now. He has become trapped in a world where he is afraid to venture out and engage – even with his own dad.

I want to tell him that I love him. I want to draw him close, like when he was small, and reassure him that it’s going to be okay. Locked in his fortress, I want to find the key, defeat the dragon, wake him up, kiss him and rescue him from his demons.

I also want to kick him up the arse, shout at him, and tell him that he should be back at school like any normal kid.

The emotions are complicated for all of us right now. The pieces of the puzzle simply don’t fit quite as well as they used to.

All I can do is get angry with the therapist. And wait.

Travelling back on the Eurostar, I play a mental game with myself and wonder whether there is any other parent on this packed train who has to deal with this stuff? Am I really the only one? And what happens to all these kids? Are they simply forgotten?

I am home and suddenly I realize the irony of it all. In a few hours, I will be back at work, telling the story of a school that literally changes kids’ lives. Like Willy Wonka himself, I will give out a few more ‘golden tickets’ that few kids can even dream about.

And on Monday morning, I will take a moment to think of my boy, sitting in him room – locked in by something I still don’t begin to understand.

And wait.

This article was published in Expatica.com in 2009.  Click here to view comments by readers on this site.