At 14, Laïa must return to 3rd grade this Tuesday. A moment all the more important as the teenager has not set foot in college for two and a half years, due to “too much anxiety which paralyzed her”. His mother, Virginie Landemaine, has just published a book* on this phenomenon, called “school phobia”, which affects more and more students. This 45-year-old resident of Saint-Hilaire-de-Chaléons (Loire-Atlantique) confided in 20 minutes.
In 2020, your daughter enters college and you plunge with her into what you call “the fog”. What happened ?
It all started a few weeks after entering 6th grade, insidiously and gradually. Laïa started having headaches, strong and regular pains which became daily. Then she had pain in her foot, then elsewhere… At first, I didn’t understand, I told her “Take a doliprane and it will pass”. I first thought of a whim but it is in fact a real suffering: when it is repeated so often, that you see your daughter so badly, you understand that it is something really unbearable for her. We went to the doctor several times to eliminate the physiological causes. I even thought of a brain tumor… Until we understood that it was psychosomatic.
We then talk about school phobia. What does this term mean, concretely?
School phobia can be likened to a burn-out, an anxiety so strong that it completely blocks the body. It is important not to confuse it with dropping out, where the young person withdraws from school and no longer wants to go. Victims of school phobia generally still want to go there, but cannot. Like an adult who doesn’t get better overnight, you have to take the time to understand the causes of this debilitating anxiety in order to move forward. Because a forced return can represent very great violence in the young person, explains a therapist whom I interviewed for my book.
How did the rest go for Laïa?
The problem with school phobia is that in general, young people do not know themselves what is happening to them. For Laïa, we couldn’t see a specific cause, no harassment… But the absences multiplied, crescendo until Christmas. At that time, there was the death of my father and she sank very low, until she could no longer get up. At first, we decided to ease the pressure, which was becoming harmful for the whole family unit. We then tried to change class, because Laïa had found herself alone when she entered college. In vain. In 5th grade, she was in the same class as her best friend but eight days later, rebelote. We have set up distance learning courses with the Cned. In 4th, too, because she was accepted in a specialized college but did not manage to go there on the day of the start of the school year. Throughout this period, she benefited from psychological support, where she learned to know herself better, to know where her limits are. Until recently express the idea that she felt ready to return there, to find a social bond.
Do you understand better, today, the reasons for this phobia?
The causes of school phobia are often multifactorial. Laïa who came from a small rural school had lost her bearings, she has difficulty with writing which is expressed by a slowness, there is also her hypersensitivity… We think that after a while, it was too much for her. But there is no case that resembles another as the testimonies that I collected in my book show. Even if the common thread is anxiety. Lockdown in 2020 generated a significant increase of cases. Young people who went to school as best they could but whose symptoms disappeared during this period, and for whom the recovery was really hard, leaving a destitute National Education. My book also aims to ask why in France there are so many young people with school phobia. The school can no longer hide its face and should once again become a place of life, friendly, where they enjoy coming.
What advice would you give to parents who are wondering?
If, on Sunday evening, the children don’t really want to go to school but on Monday it’s off again, don’t dramatize! On the other hand, you have to be vigilant if it is more recurrent, if the anxiety is accompanied by symptoms, that the young person is really not well. It is better to go see your general practitioner without delay to prevent the phobia from setting in, and find the right therapist. Parents must also take care of them because the accompaniment of the child can be long. Me, I learned to take distance. I hope that this new school year will be good for Laïa, but if not, we will have to keep this distance and continue to support her as best we can.