Full text of Chapter 1 of 'School Refusal is a "Message" from Your Child: Habits to Break Free from School Refusal and Bring Smiles Back to Your Family' available for free
From the book 'School Refusal is a "Message" from Your Child: Habits to Break Free from School Refusal and Bring Smiles Back to Your Family', we are releasing the full text of Chapter 1, "The Problem You See on the Surface is Not the Essence of the Problem," for free before the official launch!
The link below is the product page on the Amazon store. You can also view the book's overview and table of contents here.
What your child is carrying in their heart
It was one morning in July 2015. My third daughter, who was in her third year of junior high school at the time, said this to me while half-asleep, with her eyes only partially open, as I shook her awake again and again.
"Mom, I can't get up... My body feels so heavy... I can't get up... My body is so heavy... It feels as heavy as lead..."
It was a sight of my daughter in pain that I had never seen before. I panicked and asked,
"Lead... do you mean it feels like lead is attached to your body? You can't get up?"
When I asked that, she said,
"No, that's not it... It's like I've become lead myself... like I'm sinking into the ocean..."
After saying that, she couldn't open her eyes and slept soundly all day long. To suppress the worry about what had happened to my daughter, whom I had never seen in such a state, I desperately tried to convince myself that it would be okay, it would be okay, and that she would surely be able to go back to school after resting a little. Although she was fine during summer vacation, she couldn't go to school once the new term started. She would get ready, but stand frozen at the entrance for minutes at a time, and after finally managing to go for three days, she became unable to even wake up in the morning. For months, she lived a life where her days and nights were reversed, sleeping in bed all day, and even when she woke up in the evening, she would watch videos on her smartphone in bed until dawn. Seeing my daughter like that, I was filled with despair. Every day, I blamed myself, wondering why this had happened and what I had done wrong in raising her. It was painful, agonizing, and tears would overflow; a dark and heavy atmosphere always hung in our house. At that time, I was only thinking about how to
fix
my daughter and get her back to school. But the more I tried, the more she seemed to close her heart. I didn't know what was what, and I always wanted someone to give me the answer. Why couldn't she go to school? Even though she said, "I want to go to school" and "I have things I want to do in the future," I couldn't understand at all why she couldn't get up, and my mind was going in circles. When a child refuses to go to school, most parents look for the "reason." But in many cases, that reason is unknown. Of course, if the cause is malicious bullying or power harassment by a teacher, it can sometimes be solved by transferring schools, so it is not the case that the reason is completely unknown in all cases.school refusal
that appears on the surface is not the essence of the problem. Therefore, even if you focus on the
school refusalpart that is visible on the surface and try to get them back to school, the child will not become healthy. This can be said for otherproblemsas well, such as social withdrawal or eating disorders. To use an analogy, it's like desperately giving fever reducers to a child with a fever, trying only to lower the temperature. Whether the cause of the fever is just a cold, from the gastrointestinal tract, inflammation from an injury, or an infectious disease. Unless you find the root cause and approach it, even if the fever goes down for a moment, the root has not been cured. If school refusal is a fever appearing on the surface, what are its causes? It is the many feelings of self-denial at the bottom of the child's heart.the belief that I have no value, I am a useless person, I am not accepted by anyone, I am not loved, I should not existetc., which was born from some trigger, many X marks are placed in their heart due to this
preconception
, and they become heavy, painful, and unable to move. Mental distress appears in the body, and physical distress appears in the mind. Saying that the body is as heavy as lead means that the heart is just as heavy. Children who refuse to go to school or withdraw from society are carrying countless weights in their hearts. In September 2020, UNICEF announced a ranking of children's happiness in developed countries. Japan ranked 20th out of 38 countries overall. This is the result of a comprehensive judgment of the following three items: mental well-being (percentage of children with high life satisfaction, suicide rate) 37th, physical health (child mortality rate, percentage of overweight and obese children) 1st, and skills (reading ability, academic ability in mathematics, social skills) 27th. What is noteworthy is that although Japan is 1st in physical health, its mental well-being is the second lowest, which is quite low. This is one of the reasons why the suicide rate among young people in Japan is high even by global standards. The low self-esteem of Japanese children is also prominent, and it can be said that it is significantly related to school refusal and social withdrawal. Seeing it clearly expressed in statistical figures, I truly feel that we cannot just leave the mental problems that Japanese people are facing as they are. As a parent, we think that going or not going to school is a major problem, but it is time to realize that there is something even more important.
Breaking the intergenerational chain
The many X marks in the heart that become the source of the self-denial that has formed within the child. How did this come to be? Most of the mothers I consult with mention their child's low self-esteem. "When they were little, they were more cheerful and energetic, and they were children who did everything proactively..." "They were quiet, but they were good children who followed instructions properly..." There are many parents who say they cannot think of anything that would lead to self-denial. In the first place, a newborn baby shouldn't have feelings of self-denial, right? The period from 0 to 6 or 7 years old is called the
imprinting period
, and they take in everything said by parents and adults around them without judging it as good or bad. After that, what they have seen, heard, and experienced is taken into that person and recorded in the
subconscious, or theunconscious realm, an area that is not usually consciously aware. By being recorded in the subconscious, it creates that person's unique habits, thought patterns, and rules. Many of the parents' own habits and thought patterns are inherited from their parents and are also inherited by their children. Haven't you ever heard a child speaking in a tone exactly like their mother's? Also, the language they speak itself is Japanese if they are born and raised in Japan and raised by caregivers who speak Japanese, but even if they are born to Japanese parents, if they are raised by caregivers who only speak another country's language, they will not speak Japanese. That means they are constantly downloading various information from their parents from the time they are babies. Infants and toddlers take in everything from the adults around them into their subconscious. Among them, there are many things that are very useful to inherit, such as traditional culture and basic behavior necessary for life, and that also becomes wisdom for living. However, there are many things that do not suit that child's values or the Reiwa era. For example,patience is a virtueor
the aesthetics of humility
orthe spirit of self-sacrificeora culture of shame, or academic credentialism that ignores the child's values. Normative thinking represented by "should" and "must" is also stifling if that tendency is too strong. There are things that I think are absolutely necessary in terms of social norms, but discipline and habits that were necessary for family members to get along well in a large family are often felt to be uncomfortable if they are imprinted with the same feeling as in the past, now that the nuclear family has progressed. When an imprinted child does not follow the rules or thought patterns taught by their parents, they feel a sense of denial about themselves for not being able to do so. I want to be clear that I am not saying that the cause of school refusal or a child's self-denial is the parent's fault. We have also raised our children believing that the old habits and thought patterns inherited from our parents' generation were correct. When we were children, the world hadn't changed as drastically as it has now, so I think we inherited them as they were without feeling much discomfort. However, with the same thought patterns as in the past, even if you talk about mentalism, saying things like, "In my child's day, I endured things like this," it is only painful for the child. Most of our generation lived through the era from the Showa high-growth period to the bubble era when we were children. Furthermore, our parents' generation is the baby boomer generation, who experienced World War II or were born immediately after the war ended. Japan at that time must have been desperate for the whole country to be even a little richer, to develop and progress, upward and upward. We, who were raised by those parents, have been taught that it is good to sacrifice ourselves and work hard, as represented by the catchphrase"Can you work 24 hours?"The era has shifted from Showa to Heisei, and we have entered a new era called Reiwa. The 20 years since entering 2000 have seen various changes, represented by the IT revolution, occurring drastically. Especially in the last 10 years, the internet has become a matter of course, and it has become an era of smartphones, Wi-Fi, online payments, online classes, online meetings, and company sales conducted online. Children seem to be adapting to these drastic changes in the era, but they are more tired than we imagine. It is a situation where they feel anxious if they are not constantly connected. In the past, even if you fought with friends, you had time to go home and calm down. You might have been able to calm down, think alone, and make up the next day. But now, even when they go home, they see people talking behind their backs on social media, being left out, or desperately trying to stay connected so that they won't be. The overflowing information tires people's hearts. The reality is that children are carrying more stress than we can imagine. There are not a few mothers who come for consultation who are also worried about their relationship with their own parents. People who were not sufficiently accepted or approved when they were children, or who were subjected to strict discipline, cannot hug or accept their own children even if they want to. This is because they don't know what to do because they have never been treated that way, or because their subconscious rejects it, saying, "I wasn't accepted by my parents, so why should I do it for my child?" It is the so-called inner child problem. This is also something inherited from the parents' generation. If you don't stop the negative chain now that you've noticed it, your child's generation will inherit it. In my sessions, I always listen to the mother's childhood, and if necessary, I do work or therapy to heal the inner child. It is necessary to review how we interact with children, which is chained across generations. Through the child's school refusal, they are teaching us parents that it is time to review.
Rewriting perspectives and values to suit the era
Even among developed countries, the low self-esteem of Japanese people stands out. According to a survey of young people (aged 13 to 29) conducted by the Cabinet Office (conducted in fiscal 2018), when asked "Are you satisfied with yourself?", more than 80% of people in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, etc., answered "Yes," and 70% in South Korea also answered "Yes." However, in Japan, only 45% answered "Yes," which is less than half. Responses to the question "Do you have strengths?" were 62% "Yes," and "Yes" to "Are you loved by your parents?" was 34.9% for "I think so" and 44.1% for "I think so to some extent," which does not reach 80% even when combined, and it is the lowest in all items. This is deeply related to the fact that Japan is the only developed country where suicide is the number one cause of death for people aged 15 to 34. Why do young Japanese people have lower self-esteem and higher suicide rates than young people in other countries? I believe that the fact that we have inherited the Japanese culture of humility and shame, strict parental discipline, and academic credentialism is one factor. I don't mean to say that these old cultures are necessary in some situations and that everything is bad. But when an acquaintance praises your child, how many parents in Japan say, "Thank you. They have really grown up well"? Most parents are humble, saying, "No, that's not true. They are sloppy at home, and I'm really troubled." How do you think a child feels when they hear these words of humility? Even though they were praised by an uncle or aunt from elsewhere, if they hear their parent deny it, they will be disappointed and think, "My father and mother think of me that way. They don't recognize me." People in English-speaking countries often say, "I am proud of her (him)" in such situations. In Japan, many people think that being humble is important in communication with others. But there is no need to belittle your child to the point of ignoring their feelings. I want to develop the habit of accepting praise honestly with a thank you, rather than boasting. There is a sociological theory called
"labeling"
. It is also called sticking a label or a tag. It is a theory that some deviant behavior is not caused by something within that person, but is created by those around them sticking a label on them. When a parent labels a child as "this child is childish," "they don't have the power to carve out their own life," or "they are bad at communicating with others," the child acts according to that label. This is because the words of the label settle in the subconscious, and they believe that it is so. Humans unconsciously move to actions that prove what they believe. It means that words that a parent says out of humility or out of concern for the child can become words of a curse that torment the child. If you have any idea, stop it right now. A parent's opinion that "it is a luxury to say you don't want to go to school. There are children in the world who can't go even if they want to" is a valid argument. The child also understands well. But they might be mentally as exhausted as, or perhaps even more than,
children in the world who want to go to school but can't
. I remember a post to a newspaper I read a few years ago. It was a post by a young person who came to Japan as an intern from a country in Southeast Asia. "My country is poor, so I came to Japan with dreams and hopes, thinking that I would learn many things in Japan and make my family in my country happier. Even so, Japanese people don't look happy at all. They are economically rich, everyone is smart, safe, food and water are delicious and can be eaten with peace of mind, and things they want can be obtained immediately. Even so, I heard that Japanese people always have dark faces, look painful, and many people commit suicide. Why? Aren't everyone working to be happy and living to be happy? People in my country are poor, but everyone looks happy. I want to value richness of heart over economic richness." –––– Reading that post, I was startled. At that time, I still had the idea that graduating from a
good (= high deviation score)
school is a child's happiness, and I began to think aboutwhat is happiness
, and especially
what is a child's happiness. I realized that the old academic credentialism I had was tormenting my daughter, and furthermore, I was trapping myself in a narrow box and feeling suffocated. Behind the obsession with academic background, I think there was a feeling that if my child entered a good school, my face as a parent would be saved. I wanted to be thought of as a "good mother" by those around me. Through the act of school refusal, my daughter made me realize my narrow-mindedness and suffocation. In Japan, many people have the perception that not going to school is a bad thing. Even in television reports, when the perpetrator of some incident is a school refuser or a social withdrawer, there is a tendency to emphasize it more than necessary. Hearing stories that sound like the beginning of a child falling as a human being, it sounds to me like the anchors and reporters are conversely driving children who feel it is difficult to live and their parents into a corner. The era of seniority and lifetime employment, which was once taken for granted, is over. It is an era where major city banks recommend a four-day workweek and allow side jobs. We parents also need to rewrite our perspectives and values to suit the era.
Realizing that you are controlling your child
Up to this point, I have written that interacting with the old habits and thought patterns of our parent generation has an impact on the child's heart. But, of course, that is not the only cause of school refusal. A parent's over-interference with their child is also one of the causes. I am often asked, what is the difference between over-interference and over-protection? A while ago, over-protection was spoken of as synonymous with bad parenting. Since both over-protection and over-interference have "over," you know that it is going too far. Over-protection is when a parent does too much for a child's requests and demands. Too much is as bad as too little, but in terms of accepting the child, there is actually not much of a problem. Rather, the child has a sense of satisfaction that they have been accepted. Especially children who refuse to go to school lack the feeling that they have been sufficiently accepted by their parents. Please prioritize satisfying them as much as you think is a little over-protective. Over-interference is when you do things ahead of time that the child does not want, restrict their actions, or forcibly decide the direction they are going, which nips the child's independence in the bud. Most parents who are over-interfering are unaware of it. They do it out of a desire for the child's future. A certain amount of worry is part of being a parent, but if you have a complex about something, or are overly worried about your own or your child's future, you are unconsciously controlling them to be as you idealize by pushing your strong feelings onto the child. You don't want your child to be like you, you don't want them to have such painful experiences, so you interfere with things like entrance exam schools, cram schools, and even elective subjects. The same can be said if you want them to follow the same path as you. Then the child will not develop the power to think or choose for themselves. I am often asked what kind of advice I should give. They say, "It is a parent's duty to lead a child on the right path." When you think you should give advice as a parent, there is a feeling behind it that you want to bring them closer to your ideal image of a child. It is control that tries to trap the child in a narrow box. Every child has the power to choose for themselves and the power to carve out their future. It means you are taking that away. If you have no purpose in life other than raising children and your eyes are only on your children, you may be finding your own reason for existence by taking care of them. It looks like an action done for the child at first glance, but it is often an action to satisfy your own desires. The child also comes to always wait for the parent's instructions and advice, and it becomes a codependent relationship. When it becomes codependent, they cannot become independent from their parents forever, and the parents cannot find value in life other than their children. It cannot be called a healthy parent-child relationship. I have written various things up to here, but actually, I was also an over-interfering parent in the past. I would reach out and speak up ahead of time so that my daughter wouldn't fall or fail. My daughter couldn't pass her first-choice school in the junior high entrance exam, and even though she was happy to pass her second-choice school, it was short-lived. With little celebration or words of appreciation, I was thinking about how I wanted to make sure she didn't fail in the university entrance exam, that she had to start preparing for the university entrance exam as soon as possible, and so on. I was thinking about failure and my daughter's hard work in that way. Thinking about it now, I feel very sorry, and I also think it was a terrible way of thinking. My daughter noticed that feeling, denied herself for not being able to meet her parents' expectations, and even denied the school she had finally passed. Children have an amazingly high ability to read their parents' non-verbal cues. This is because they have heard their mother's voice and footsteps since they were in the womb, and since they were born, they have read their mother's mood and non-verbal cues to survive. Even if you don't say it in words, they read their parents' feelings from facial expressions, sighs, timing, and footsteps. You can't tell a dandelion to become a cherry blossom, can you? Excessive expectations for a child are like telling them to become something else. Dandelions have the goodness of dandelions, and cherry blossoms have the goodness of cherry blossoms. Recognizing the goodness of each flower. Just recognizing them is enough.
Communication in the society called family
Up to this point, I have mainly written about the mother's influence on the child. A mother is the only one who can raise a baby in her womb for ten months and ten days, and if she breastfeeds after birth, she is the only one who can do it. Since the mother inevitably spends the most time interacting with the child in the family, it means that her influence is the greatest. That said, the father's influence is also, of course, very significant. Problems that appear on the surface, such as a child's school refusal, social withdrawal, or eating disorders, are not just the child's issues or the mother's issues, but are ultimately the issues of the entire family. The father's way of interacting at home depends on his personality and type, but generally, there are instinctive differences between motherhood and fatherhood. Roughly speaking, the mother's role is to accept and wrap the child. Since the father has the role of making it possible to live in society, there is a difference in that he sometimes acts strictly as if to push them away. It would be ideal to have both motherhood and fatherhood balanced well. However, when a child is carrying a large weight in their heart, such as school refusal or social withdrawal, the father's instinct to "raise them to be able to live in society" can conversely become an obstacle. He becomes desperate, thinking that they won't be able to go out into society like this, and that he must do something to make them go out and work, and he becomes stricter than necessary. If the mother thinks, "I shouldn't force them now" or "It's better to let them rest slowly," the policies between the couple will differ, and it is not uncommon for the relationship to deteriorate. Many of my clients start with their child's issues and then consult about their husband's issues. There are various cases, such as the husband not being able to understand the child and not speaking at all at home, the wife being high-handed toward the child no matter how many times she says it, leading to a fistfight, the husband becoming neurotic because he cannot bear the child's school refusal and eating disorder worsening, or the couple's relationship being very bad in the first place. When that happens, the mother is already having a hard time with the child, and to make matters worse, the husband also becomes a source of worry, so she cannot rest. The family also falls apart more and more. When the child is in a state of not being able to go to school, not being able to move their body, and not being able to do anything, the father should put his fatherliness, that is, his strictness like "I must raise them to be able to live in society!" aside for a while. First, it is better to accept the child as they are. It is necessary to interact in a way that they can feel that they have been accepted by both parents as a valuable existence just as they are. However, when conveying that to the husband, if an attitude like "your way of thinking is wrong" is visible, it will only worsen the couple's relationship. It is important to accept the husband's opinion and propose. Once the child can feel that they have been firmly accepted, it is the father's turn. The father should provide solid support when they go out into the outside world. For that purpose, it would be good to have a place for the three of you to talk, to firmly talk about the fact that you as parents always think of your child as important, what kind of life is important to live from now on, and to listen to the child's current feelings without interrupting as much as possible. Of course, there are also single-mother and single-father households. In that case, there is no need to be tense, thinking you have to play two roles. It is most important to strive to accept them firmly and for the child to be able to talk about their own feelings. Family is the smallest, closest, and most important society in our human society. We tend to neglect communication in this most important society called family. "Because we are family, they should understand even if I don't say this much." "Because we are family, this much should be forgiven." "Because we are family..." But would you take such sloppy communication with your friends or work-related people? It is necessary to take more careful communication because we are family, and it is necessary to value and respect the other person more because we are family. Because they are children, they don't understand, parents are more correct, children who are refusing to go to school are not thinking about the future at all... Aren't you thinking like that? A child who is carrying a weight in their heart and cannot move is thinking about various things more than anyone else. They are thinking about things that they wouldn't normally think about, and they are frightened. That is why I want you to accept them as they are and respect their thoughts and values. Even when watching TV, sad news due to trouble between family members flows almost every day. A child pointing a kitchen knife at a parent, or a parent killing a child. Every time I see such news, something indescribably bitter spreads in my chest. If these families that have become incidents had communicated more carefully between family members and respected each other more, wouldn't this have happened...? Every time I think that, although what I can do is small, I have a prayerful feeling that this activity will be useful in saving even one precious life, and that even one more person will be able to head toward happiness.
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That's all for Chapter 1!
If you would like to read the rest, it will be on sale at each e-book store from July 15th, so please purchase it.
The link below is the product page on the Amazon store. You can also view the book's details and table of contents from here.
Book 'School Refusal is a "Message" from Your Child: Habits to Break Free from School Refusal and Bring Smiles Back to Your Family'
Author Profile
Riko Suzuki
Family Relationship Repair Coach
Graduated from the Faculty of Letters, Keio University. Supported over 20,000 people in about 15 years as a training instructor. Presides over "KET Riko Juku to Bring Smiles Back to the Family."
Her own third daughter refused to go to school in her third year of junior high school, but she thoroughly reviewed parent-child communication by utilizing the psychology, counseling, and coaching she had learned. Her daughter became healthy and successfully passed her desired university. When she wrote about that experience on her blog, it gained the empathy of many mothers, and she began to receive requests for consultation. Currently, she presides over about 100 hours of personal sessions per month and a psychology/communication course titled "KET Riko Juku to Bring Smiles Back to the Family." Her sessions from the perspective of an experienced person and a mother have a good reputation and have gained the support of many mothers.
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