Ask about the parts of the day with other people in them: the corridor between lessons, the dining hall, being called on, changing for sport, walking in late while everyone looks up. Those answers tend to come out quietly, and they will not come out at all if the child thinks you have already decided they are being difficult.

Distress you can soothe, and then move through together. A worked out case, less demanding work, nobody staring, no awkwardness at lunch, is something they will defend, and you can find yourself arguing rather than helping. Treat it as information when you hear it: the avoiding has settled in, and the return will need negotiating and not only comforting.

The child looking after an unwell parent, the teenager who has written the school off, and the one who cannot face the corridor all look the same on the register. They need three different responses, and a ladder of graded steps aimed at the wrong one can waste months. Ask what a morning they do not go actually looks like, and what would have to change for that morning to go differently.

Writing down which of those happened each day gives you something to watch. Most of the real movement, in both directions, happens inside days that would go down as present, and an attendance register hides all of it. A child who used to leave at eleven and now stays until two has had a good week, and should be told so.

The early wobble is usually about being apart from home for a long day for the first time. The later one lands when peer opinion becomes the loudest thing in the room and the work gets harder in the same term. Around those points, ask earlier and more often than feels necessary, because a child is unlikely to raise it themselves.

Low mood makes school heavy rather than dangerous: no energy, no interest, everything asking too much. Staying away helps at first and then takes away the walk, the friend at break, the one lesson they liked, and the flatness deepens. With this pattern the work is less about facing fear and more about putting small good things back into the day on purpose, before the mood improves rather than after.

This one is hard to see precisely because the soothing is kind and the distress is real. The usual shape is a fought over morning, the child stays, and the day then holds company, cuddles and calm that no school day ever would. None of this says stop comforting your child. It means moving the warmth so it is not lined up behind staying home: plenty of time together in the evening, and a plainer, quieter morning.

Patterns drift. A child frightened of the dining hall in September can, by March, be a young person with a settled day at home and a set of arguments ready to defend it, and looking only at March means treating the wrong thing. The early story usually still matters, and saying it out loud without accusation often softens a conversation more than any argument about attendance.

Children recognise this straight away when it is put plainly: the lovely feeling when you find out you do not have to go. Adults know it too, in the cancelled meeting and the message left unanswered. Once everyone can name it out loud, nobody has to play the villain in the morning, and you are all looking at the same trap instead of at each other.

This is not a punishment and it should not sound like one. It is about a sum the child does without noticing: if home offers the same day with none of the hard parts, no argument about the future will make school the better option. Say the rule plainly and without heat, hold it, and let the comparison do the work for you.

Hovering, chatting, sitting alongside them with a cup of tea: all of it is lovely, and all of it makes the day at home better than the day at school. Think of the role as a teacher watching a study period, present and pleasant and not much fun. Then be properly warm once the school day is over, when it costs nothing and everyone needs it.

The job is small and specific: be there at the door, walk with them to their locker, get them started, be findable later on. It turns the worst moment from something faced alone into something faced with someone. Agree at the start how this will wind down, so that in six weeks nobody discovers the child can only come in when one particular person is at work.

Ten minutes, twice a day, with a return to lessons afterwards, is a support. Open ended visits from the first flutter of nerves onwards teach a very efficient lesson about how to end a difficult morning. Say the limits to the child as well, so it feels like an arrangement they are part of rather than something tightened behind their back.

Supports meant as a bridge have a way of becoming the new normal, and by the spring nobody remembers they were temporary. Decide at the outset what the smaller version looks like and roughly when it starts, then review on that date whether or not anyone raises it. The direction is the whole point: fewer props and more ordinary school, over months rather than weeks.

None of those mean the plan was wrong. They are the ordinary weather of this work, and a family who heard them named in advance treats a bad week as a bad week rather than as proof that nothing works. Sibling knock on is worth planning for from the start in particular, because a rule that applies to only one child in a house rarely survives the month.

When staying home works on one morning in four, that occasional success makes the pleading more determined rather than less. Cut the plan back until it is something two tired adults can manage on a Wednesday: one rule, one reward, one person checking. Add to it later if it holds, and tell whoever is helping you early when it slips, so it can be simplified instead of abandoned.