My daughter, who was a school refuser for two years in junior high, is now a university student.

*The header is one of the photos my daughter (then 13) took every day at dawn when her day and night were reversed.
(I have included a poem called 'Dawn Moon' at the end of this article.)

My daughter's visit home

My daughter became a university student this April and started living alone in the same prefecture. She spent three weeks of her summer vacation at our family home before returning.
During her stay, we didn't go out together or do anything particularly memorable. The closest things to events were eating birthday cake, and having hand-rolled sushi or a barbecue on the balcony at home.
Feeling a lingering sense of something missing, on the last night, the three of us—mother, father, and daughter—lit sparklers to wrap things up.
The crackling sound of the sparks was lively.
I felt a sense of nostalgia for the old-fashioned smell of gunpowder.
When they were little, both my children were active, and I remember setting off fireworks with all the neighborhood kids.
I don't think now that anything back then was wrong. There's no need to think about such things.

My daughter stopped going to school at the end of her first year of junior high. After two years of school refusal, she transferred from a private integrated school to a correspondence high school. She enrolled in a regular attendance course and gradually got used to student life. Although her studies for entrance exams were delayed, she spent an extra year as a ronin, got into her school of choice through an AO entrance exam, and began living on her own.

In her new life, she attends almost all her classes, hasn't failed any credits, and is enjoying new relationships.
I was surprised to see her doing her own housework and living in a clean space!
It's a start that's almost too good.

I thought she had fully recovered and felt relieved, but when she returned home, she slept for nine hours at night and took three-hour naps. She spent the whole day clutching her smartphone on the sofa, only occasionally going out to meet friends. She changed from one set of pajamas to another and wouldn't even wash a single glass she used.
The daughter I saw was exactly as she had been when she lived at home.
She complained of feeling unwell, saying, 'I have a headache' or 'I can't shake off the sleepiness.' It's not so much that she has a constitution prone to autonomic nervous system imbalance, but rather that the imbalance has become fixed.
When she comes home, she probably feels safe enough to be spoiled. She might be exhausted from keeping her guard up in her daily life.
Coming home is likely her way of resting, so that's fine. I understand that.

Even though I intend to be grateful for everything, thinking about how much she has recovered, there are still times when seeing my daughter disturbs my heart.
I get irritated when I want her to help out, I worry excessively about her sleeping all the time, I tire myself out by doing things for her without being asked, or I suddenly want to be alone. In any case, my pace gets thrown off.
I should be used to it by now, so why?
Surely, memories of those painful times create delusions, calling forth anxiety and disappointment.
I find myself thinking unnecessary things, like, 'Has she really not recovered yet?' or 'Will she be able to work every day when she becomes a member of society?'
No, there is no need to worry about the future. Society is changing rapidly. If anything, worrying will only create a bad future.
I keep telling myself this whenever I feel weak.

I decided to take this opportunity to write down my thoughts from the years I spent living alongside a child who didn't go to school. It will be a long-winded piece, but since this is a magazine for miscellaneous notes, I'll just write it with momentum.

On how parents can process their feelings when living with a child who refuses to go to school

(This is completely honest, but please forgive me as I have changed since then.)
For the first two years after the school refusal began, a storm of emotions raged within me.
My daughter spent most of her seven teenage years on the sofa at home. (She didn't shut herself away in her room; she was always on the living room sofa.)
The stress of being together all the time, even though she wasn't a baby, was immense. I loved school when I was young, so I felt like my daughter was an alien, and I couldn't understand her at all.
At times, I couldn't think of her as cute, and I didn't even know if I liked her anymore.
At those times, I thought like this:
'Since I'm angry and worried and can't get her out of my head, it's proof that I feel a great deal of love. If I hated her, I wouldn't care. I must be worried because I love her. With this, I've confirmed that I have love for my child.'
I wonder if it would be painful for her to hear that. Please forgive me, as this was a story from a time when I was cornered and tense.

When things were tough, I would often go for a walk, buy a single serving of sweets at a distant convenience store, and eat them in secret by myself. I repeated such petty 'acts of spite'.
In my case, my daughter was in junior high, so I was grateful that I could create time to be apart. Even so, if I stayed away for too long, I would get anxious, and there was a worst-case possibility she might grab a knife, so basically, I stayed nearby.
Inside the house, I would move to another room where she wasn't in my line of sight and do things I liked. That was for the best for both of us. Playing the piano, gathering information about school refusal... it made me feel much better than doing nothing.


When things settled down a bit, I started going out more actively.
I took up yoga, learned to sing gospel, and attended seminars on psychology and pedagogy. I connected with entrepreneurial moms and learned how to use Zoom. The fact that my daughter stopped going to school was the catalyst for me to start job hunting for the first time in over a decade and begin a part-time job.

Perhaps because I honestly told my close friends about my children's school refusal, I always had fellow moms of school-refusing children nearby. We reported to each other, exchanged information, and helped each other while sharing our joys and sorrows.
Having this connection was the biggest thing of all.
The sense of isolation and despair, as if I had fallen into a dark hole and was all alone (or maybe just alone with my child?), and the anxiety about the future. And self-blame.
Until then, I had put myself second and devoted my whole heart and soul to my children, but I felt like everyone in the world was telling me, 'That's what you did wrong.'
I was lucky to be able to share my messy emotions bit by bit with my mom friends.
'My kid still won't wake up.'
'They canceled our plans at the last minute again...'
'I said something unnecessary and they cried... I'm so depressed.'
Even now, my daily sighs remain in our LINE chat history.
If it weren't for that, I'm sure I would have seriously wished for delusions like 'a giant meteorite hitting the Earth and all humans disappearing at once.'

Things to be careful about when school refusal happens

School refusal is not the end of life.
It just means that, at that moment, they are not on the standard, main path. If you calm down and acquire knowledge, you will realize that the future is open.
Over the six years I spent at home with my daughter, I wrote down the ways of thinking I found important. If a situation where your child cannot go to school continues, I want you to be conscious of these.

The first thing I want to convey is: 'Do not play detective.'
Do not think in simplistic terms like it's the fault of an overprotective mother, the fault of bullying friends, or the fault of a strict teacher. While these are not unrelated, there is almost never one single cause. Various factors, including personality, family environment, and timing, are intricately intertwined. A psychiatrist also advised me of this.
Even if you ask the child, they often don't know themselves why they can't go to school. From experience, I believe that pursuing the cause will only make things worse, not better.
What is needed is to accept the child as they are, no matter what they look like. Even if you can't understand it, if you can accept their life—like holding a baby whose neck hasn't yet stiffened—that is enough.
It took me a long time to realize this, but this is my reflection now, feeling relieved that we managed to make it this far.

The second thing I want to say is that I want you to prioritize your child's life above all else.
Don't say 'What an exaggeration,' but please observe them carefully. It is very difficult, but I want to listen to my child's words until the end without denying them. They might start saying incoherent, spoiled things, but denying them outright is an act that severs trust. Teenagers are surprisingly close to death. It will be too late after you have had a terrifying experience.
For parents, not projecting their emotions onto their children is a prerequisite for protecting their child from death. Children unconsciously test their parents. They are desperately reaching out to see if their parents will accept them as they are now—a version of themselves they believe has no value.

The third important thing is to ease your own emotions as a parent with knowledge.
In reality, a parent's emotions will also be in a storm. In such a situation, how can one calmly perceive the fact that their child is not going to school?
I believe that knowledge is the only thing that can counter emotions. I want parents to actively acquire knowledge from an early stage: learn about real-life examples of famous people who returned to society after school refusal, understand the process of change in school refusal (there are models with 4 or 7 steps), read books on psychology, and look at texts on the Convention on the Rights of the Child or childcare worker qualifications. If you research calmly, you will see that there are many paths beyond school refusal, and you will be able to observe by matching the child's state to each stage of school refusal.
Also, objectively considering the distance between yourself and your child, and between yourself and your own parents, can provide hints. People say that we unconsciously do to our children what our parents did to us. Objectively doubting whether your own 'common sense' as a parent is truly necessary is an important process.

And, the fourth thing.
Parents themselves should enjoy life. Please make sure to take time to do what you want to do. Charging your own battery creates room for others. Stroking a cheek with rough hands isn't pleasant, after all.
Now, I quit or cut corners on things I don't want to do. I list the things I want to do and prioritize time for them. I even changed my part-time job to one I like.
I realized that unless I spoil myself like that, I don't have the capacity to accept my child's freedom. Because I spent a long time making choices that aligned with my parents' wishes, I took a detour, but I decided that 'I decide my own life,' and finally, I came to think that 'children decide their own lives' is only natural.

Life hints hidden in school refusal

And now, I have come to understand what the seniors who have moved past school refusal say.
Stories about how they (or their families) were able to change because of school refusal. Stories about how they have a better present because of it. I didn't believe it before, but now I feel it myself.
Both parents and children gain a lot from school refusal.
It is said that the 'desires' of the entire family, the mother, or the child, which had been suppressed until then, surface in a distorted form as school refusal. Although it is a painful reform, I want you to accept that the time has come to face your family's or your own 'true desired state'.
Those who are in the midst of school refusal now may feel it is the worst while grieving, but there is no doubt that it is a catalyst for everyone around to 'change.' If you accept it as a catalyst and try to change, it should surely go well.
A time will come when you can think that you gained something because you experienced school refusal. Of course, it's better not to experience school refusal, but a time will come when you can say that the harvest from it was great.
Surely the future is bright. Believing that without any basis attracts hope.

A simple answer

In any case, the important thing is to believe without any basis.
I am okay.
This child is okay.
Things will work out.
I think things started to turn around once I became able to believe in everything completely.
Believe unconditionally.
First in yourself. And then in your child.
Since it won't work on the child unless you truly mean it, my training, still full of hesitation, will likely continue for a while.

My child stopped going to school, and I was able to change too. There is no doubt that school refusal helped our family grow.

An article I wrote about my daughter's state when she was in her third year of high school and my reaction. If it conveys the situation...

From here on, it's a heavy, long-aged draft.
Two poems.
The first one is from about six years ago, which I took from my smartphone diary and put into the article draft three years ago. The second one was written three years ago while looking back.
Three years ago, it was still a period of intense ups and downs, and we were far from being in a state of peace.
Now that the situation has stabilized quite a bit, I feel like it's okay to make it public.

<Poem> Dawn Moon

That child's daily routine is
When the sky turns white
To say goodnight to the moon
And take a picture

And then, listlessly
Falling asleep
Huddled on the sofa
Pulling the blanket up to her face
With a pale face tired from the battle

Because I have scary dreams at night,
that's why I stay awake the whole time.
Because the night is lonely,
that's why it's okay to keep the TV on.
Because the night is long,
that's why I have my smartphone pass the time for me.

Because there are demons in the night,
I feel so pained I could go mad.
Because I feel like my existence is about to vanish,
I'm so scared, so scared, I feel like I'm dying.
Because I can confirm I'm real if I feel pain,
I have no choice but to hurt myself somewhere.

What that child
was saying,
truthfully,
I didn't really understand,
but because she was crying softly
in a voice that seemed about to vanish,
I pretended to be gentle
and just placed my hand on her back,
staying just like that.

On the soft part of her arm,
blood was seeping out.
It seems she had dug her nails in.
My heart ached with sadness,
and deep down, I felt a cold intuition
that the present was not 'normal'.

As the sun rose higher
and it grew brighter,
on the living room sofa,
a pale, mature-looking face
began to sleep innocently,
retaining the purity of a young child,
with a peace unchanged from sanity,
with a certain body heat,
exposing her scarred arm.

It's okay.
You can just be here now.
The moon at dawn
will tell you of the morning
again and again.
Even if it seems to have vanished,
even if it seems to have melted into the light,
it wanes and waxes,
and from now on, too,
it will surely tell you of the morning.
Tomorrow, too,
the day after, and the day after that,
a new morning will come.
A morning illuminated by light will come.
It's okay, it's okay,
it's okay, it's okay.

<Poem> Wailing. The beginning is winter.

Wailing exists only as words,
and it doesn't bite the real me.

That thought was a mistake.
Everything turned upside down.
It became miserable and meaningless.
I missed the ordinary days,
and tears overflowed.

What will happen from now on?
Was everything a mistake?
Is it my fault?

Ah, I am again
worrying about myself.
Even though that doesn't matter at all.
I'm a failure after all.

Which way is forward, I wonder?
I don't know.
I don't want to think about it.
I mustn't move,
because I'll make another mistake.
Someone, someone,
help me, please.

.....

Back then, somewhere in my heart, I might have
unintentionally plotted to drown in my emotions.
I was a narcissist-like, too-weak version of myself.

Until I became able to let go of
what I had been gripping so tightly,
I didn't yet know
that a mind-numbing amount of time would pass.
Because I didn't know, I suppose I was able to bear the pain.
That I held onto hope because of my ignorance
was the strength of my weak self, wasn't it?