After a big weekend full of festivals and fun, you might have had a bit of trouble trying to roust the kids out of bed and out the door for school. And you might have even found that your kids started giving certain excuses for not wanting to go, including feeling sick. My Mom might have called it "Playing Hookey" if I had said those things. She would have been right...but now there is a more serious issue at hand.
About 5% of U.S. school children have something called "school refusal behavior," a malady that may sound like an old-fashioned desire to skip school, but is actually "a serious anxiety disorder" in the eyes of health care professionals.
For kids who have it, "the mere thought of entering a classroom is so distressing that they will do almost anything to escape."
But as a Mom, how to tell the difference between the disorder and just laziness or a preference for staying home to play video games?
The American Academy of Family Physicians put together a checklist and published it here. However, there is one key difference between a plain old want to skip and a child with the disorder: The one who wants to skip usually tries to hide his/her actions. The child with the disorder doesn't.
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