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Areas › Worry and anxiety › The cost of avoiding
In the moment it is happening, a parent is not weighing up what gets learned over a term. They are trying to end the distress in front of them, and letting the child stay home does that immediately, for everyone. Time spent making sure the adults really understand why that relief costs so much is not preamble, it is the part that holds when the morning gets loud.
do not rush to recite before the revelation is fully complete but say, 'Lord, increase me in knowledge!' (Quran 20:114). Understanding the thing properly before acting on it is asked for here, and asking for more understanding is itself a prayer.
طه
فَتَعَٰلَى ٱللَّهُ ٱلۡمَلِكُ ٱلۡحَقُّۗ وَلَا تَعۡجَلۡ بِٱلۡقُرۡءَانِ مِن قَبۡلِ أَن يُقۡضَىٰٓ إِلَيۡكَ وَحۡيُهُۥۖ وَقُل رَّبِّ زِدۡنِي عِلۡمࣰ ا
exalted be God, the one who is truly in control. [Prophet], do not rush to recite before the revelation is fully complete but say, ‘Lord, increase me in knowledge!’
Qur’an 20:114read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A systematic review and meta-analysis of web delivered acceptance and commitment therapy found it improved mental health and wellbeing, which tells you this way of understanding avoidance can be learned without a clinician in the room. Online trials tend to attract keen volunteers and lose many of them, so the figures probably flatter it. Taken narrowly the point holds: the model can be taught, and the adults are worth teaching.
Brown M, Glendenning A, Hoon AE, John A. (2016). Effectiveness of Web-Delivered Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in Relation to Mental Health and Well-Being: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.. Journal of medical Internet research doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A person can only keep to something hard at seven in the morning if they believed in it well before seven in the morning.
If a child can go to the school office whenever they like and stay as long as they like, that is an exit rather than a support. Agree a length, and a gap between visits.
A plan followed on some days and not others can be worse than no plan at all. Choose the smallest version you are sure you can keep to, and keep to that.
With an older teenager the pull is often not fear at all. The day at home is better: sleep, screens, and friends who are also not going.