Product Description

Many children are challenged by anxiety at some time in their school career. Bringing together knowledge from her years of teaching and parenting, Marianna Csoti shows how parents and professionals can help children aged five to sixteen move away from the negative thoughts and behaviour that contribute to school phobia. As well as tackling specific problems of bullying, separation anxiety, social phobia and panic attacks, the author provides information on current therapies and medication for the severely affected and on what to do if the child regresses. The advice can also be used to help guard against another sibling developing school phobia. This positive and practical book is packed with information and guidance for parents, carers, teachers and other child-support professionals, on dealing effectively with the difficulties of children whose lives are being adversely affected by this distressing and very real condition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #265379 in Books
• Published on: 2003-07-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Review
'Bringing together knowledge from her years of teaching and parenting, Marianna Csoti shows how parents and professionals can help children aged five to sixteen move away from the negative thoughts and behaviour that contribute to school phobia...This positive and practical book is packed with information and guidance for parents, carers, teachers and other child-support professionals, on dealing effectively with the difficulties of children whose lives are being adversely affected by school phobia and related anxieties. Photocopiable pages are provided for parents and professionals to give to the child's teacher to aid understanding of this distressing and very real condition.' Don't Panic 'As the incidence of school phobia increases, this book provides a helpful exploration of issues causing anxiety in schoolchildren...An excellent source of guidance on dealing with school phobic children, this book will be useful to parents, carers, teachers and other professionals working with children.' -childRIGHT

From the Author
School phobic children who have frequent absences from school are not truants because children that truant experience no anxiety about attending school and, when they ‘bunk’, don’t tend to stay at home, but are out all day. School phobic children, when not in school, are relieved to be in the safety of their home with their main carers.

School phobic children can suffer anxiety symptoms including:

· crying
· diarrhoea
· feeling faint
· a frequent need to urinate
· headaches
· hyperventilation
· insomnia
· nausea and vomiting
· a rapid heart beat
· stomach aches
· shaking
· sweating.
Spending many hours each day feeling anxious, and not getting sufficient refreshing sleep, can take its toll on the school phobic child. She will probably feel very tired all the time. She may also feel low or depressed because of feeling so horrible. It can therefore not be stressed enough that she needs to be handled with great care and gentleness: it may have a great bearing on her future.

A child suffering from school phobia is not attention seeking, or spoilt or encouraged to stay at home by her main carers. A child that has school phobia cannot ‘snap out of it’ or ‘pull herself together’. No previously cooperative and well behaved child would willingly deny herself the pleasure of becoming fully involved in the school environment and friends. The child does not gain from being school phobic but loses.

There can be many triggers of separation anxiety such as starting school for the first time, being absent for a long time from ill health or a holiday, having a new baby in the family that makes the child feel threatened, suffering bereavement or having troubles at home or being bullied. For some, there may be no obvious cause.

Older children, from age 8 upward and particularly adolescents, can suffer from social phobia but may also have separation anxiety. Social phobia is a fear of being judged and evaluated by others and children that suffer from it may seem aloof; awkward; backward; disinterested; inhibited; nervous; quiet; shy; unfriendly and withdrawn. Despite wanting to make friends and become involved they are hampered by their anxiety. In school they will fear being the centre of attention; having to answer or read aloud in class; being involved in assemblies, performances, games lessons and sports day; being picked last for teams, and for others laughing at their mistakes or ineptitude.

The best way for teachers to deal with a child suffering from anxiety is to deal with her very sensitively (she is very vulnerable at this time) and show her that they care about her and are on her side.

It is often hard to understand why a child is so scared when teachers see the school environment as a safe, friendly place. So to empathise with the child, teachers should try to imagine their greatest fears and how they would feel if they had to face them day after day: with many people being unhelpful because they do not understand. It may make them feel powerless; out of control; angry; hurt; terribly stressed and vulnerable.

The child probably lives those fears every minute, even when she gets home as she knows there will be school the following day or the following Monday. Her dreams will be taken up with her fears. She may have trouble getting to sleep, be frightened of the dark and relive her greatest nightmare again the moment she wakes up.

Unless her teachers have been so frightened or stressed that they have vomited, had diarrhoea and felt a constant urge to urinate, they may not be able to appreciate what the child has to face in coming to school. She needs comfort, reassurance and some sort of acknowledgement for the desperate struggle within her, for being so brave just for turning up to school, let alone staying there all day.

If the child’s teachers can make the child’s time in class non-threatening, rewarding and reassuring, the child may relax enough to take in some of the lesson. Schools that are highly evaluative and authoritarian can provide increased stress for the child and make her feel more helpless than ever and demoralised. It is well known that children under stress cannot learn effectively.

This book will help parents and professionals help a child distressed in this way. It is packed with tried practical advice. It also gives details of relaxation cassettes for children, available from the author herself.

From the Inside Flap
Many children at some time in their school career are challenged by anxiety. School phobia, a complex and extreme form of anxiety about going to school, can have many causes and can include related anxiety disorders such as agoraphobia and selective mutism. Children with Asperger Syndrome are particularly prone to school phobia and sometimes need to be treated differently to anxious children without the condition.

Bringing together knowledge from her years of teaching and parenting, Márianna Csóti shows how parents and professionals can help children aged five to sixteen move away from the negative thoughts and behaviour that contribute to school phobia. Particular emphasis has been given to bullying, separation anxiety, social phobia and panic attacks.

Information on current therapies and medication is included for the severely affected and on what to do if the child regresses: once a child has shown a tendency to the type of anxieties mentioned in the book, there is greater risk of recurrence later in the child’s life. The advice can also be used to help guard against another sibling becoming affected with school phobia.
This positive and practical book is packed with information and guidance for parents, carers, teachers and other child-support professionals, on dealing effectively with the difficulties of children whose lives are being adversely affected by school phobia and related anxieties. Photocopiable pages are provided for parents and professionals to give to the child’s teacher to aid understanding of this distressing and very real condition.

Customer Reviews

Excellent Book for Parents and Proffessionals.
I am an Education Social Work student as well as a mother of two, and I myself was shy and afraid of school as a child. Whilst researching the topic of school phobia for my course I came across a variety of material relating to the subject, but found that the book "school phobia, panic attacks and anxiety in children - by Marianna Csoti" was the most useful resource in terms of giving parents real and practical advice on how best to deal with the problem.

This book is layed out in an easy to read format and outlines all the main topics relating to school phobia. It provides a very real and very human approach to treating school anxiety and phobia and certainly increased my understanding of the subject immensely. Not only does it empower parents to take an active role in their child's recovery it also gives social workers, teachers, and other proffessionals, a very real insight into some of the hurdles that parents and children must overcome.

I highly recommend this book to anyone working with young people in schools and especially to parents who want to really understand all aspects of school phobia and how to make their children's journey through school a little easier.

Good for parents, maybe not so much for students
I acquired this book while writing my thesis on School Refusal, and feel that the title would benefit from a subheading to the effect of "A practical guide for parents". The informal tone and lack of academic references (notable exception being the section on bullying) result in a paucity of information that can be applied effectively to academic writing, etc. That said, for parents dealing with this serious problem, I am sure it would be extremely useful. I think students would be better off with something like "Understanding School Refusal" by Thambirajah et al., which is also published by Jessica Kingsley.