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Areas › Worry and anxiety › The cost of avoiding
It is tempting to wait for a good week, a settled mood, a morning that feels different. Waiting hands the decision to the anxiety, and the anxiety will never vote for going. Keep everyone pointed at the same plain endpoint, being in the building, and treat every other improvement as a welcome extra rather than a condition that has to come first.
Take action! God will see your actions (Quran 9:105). The instruction points at the doing, and it is the doing that is seen, not how confident anyone felt while doing it.
التوبة
وَقُلِ ٱعۡمَلُواْ فَسَيَرَى ٱللَّهُ عَمَلَكُمۡ وَرَسُولُهُۥ وَٱلۡمُؤۡمِنُونَۖ وَسَتُرَدُّونَ إِلَىٰ عَٰلِمِ ٱلۡغَيۡبِ وَٱلشَّهَٰدَةِ فَيُنَبِّئُكُم بِمَا كُنتُمۡ تَعۡمَلُونَ
Say [Prophet], ‘Take action! God will see your actions- as will His Messenger and the believers- and then you will be returned to Him who knows what is seen and unseen, and He will tell you what you have been doing
Qur’an 9:105read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A meta-analysis across 75 childhood anxiety trials found programmes weighted towards exposure did better than those weighted towards anxiety management, and suggested the comfort focused parts can quietly serve avoidance. The trials pooled here vary a good deal in what they actually contained, so the contrast is approximate. As a rule of thumb it is still worth asking of any plan whether it mainly helps a child cope with staying away.
Whiteside SPH, Sim LA, Morrow AS, Farah WH, Hilliker DR, Murad MH, Wang Z. (2020). A Meta-analysis to Guide the Enhancement of CBT for Childhood Anxiety: Exposure Over Anxiety Management.. Clinical child and family psychology review doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Going in is the thing that shows the fear it was wrong, so little shifts until that happens.
If a child is genuinely unwell or exhausted, that is a medical question first and a behavioural one second.
Nobody is asking you to go cold. Comfort your child properly, and watch where it lands: alongside them as they go, rather than waiting for them if they stay.
Whoever is standing in the hall at half past seven needs to understand the trap as well as the child does. A plan agreed on a Tuesday afternoon will not survive a Wednesday morning otherwise.
A child coming back after weeks away is walking towards a mountain of missed work. Cut that mountain down before the return date, or it will punish them for coming.