The struggle of parents who have children with school distress: "It becomes what our whole life is about"

Parents in the families interviewed by Lydia Mathilde Nystad said, “It’s impossible to compare everyday life before and after school distress.” They described them as two different worlds.

School distress “has become what our whole life is about," one mother said.

Both she and her husband had turned down job offers. Their careers crashed. They suffered from poor health. But the grief was the worst, that their child’s childhood was somehow being lost.

“Everything was about this one issue. What was supposed to be about raising children in a family and helping them become strong … it all kept circling back to this issue.”

A major crisis in the family

The theme of Nystad’s doctoral thesis at Nord University in Norway is how extended school absences affect the family. The recently published study examined the parents’ perspective, which is seldom the focus of research on this topic, according to Nystad.

She has conducted in-depth interviews with parents in eight families where children have had extended school absences. In most cases, there were complex reasons for the absences, and two cases included physically ill children.

Nystad has also participated in meetings with the school and has had access to documents in the various cases.

“Most of the research available involves mapping the reasons that the children are not attending school,” she says.

“But this issue affects the entire family dynamic. Whatever the reason, families experience it as a major crisis. It affects parents and siblings and can have consequences for the entire family's mental and physical health.

There are no good figures on how many children in Norway have long-term absences from school. However, in the last 15 years, the number of children who do not complete primary school has tripled, according to figures published in Utdanningsnytt, Norway’s news portal for the education sector. In a survey conducted for NRK, the Norwegian broadcasting corporation, 39 percent of parents aged 30-59 responded that they had children who refused to go to school.

It is the parents who have had to work hard to get the school to acknowledge who struggles the most with the problem.

Impacts the family’s whole life

“It’s mentally demanding to constantly be faced with a comment like, ‘can't you just drive your child to school, then it will be okay,’” It’s actually not about you not having tried,” says Nystad.

The parents are ashamed, says Nystad. Some end up in conflicts with their employers, others have understanding employers and offer flexibility that allows parents to work. Many are on sick leave. For some parents, their financial situation worsens because they are unable to hold down a full-time job.

“They say no to career opportunities because they need to have a stable situation. They’re locked in their homes and can become very isolated,” says Nystad.

In cases where the children do not leave home at all, parents can also lose contact with their friends and the local community.

“People no longer invite them, since they never come.”

Nystad's qualitative study mirrors many of the findings in a British study from 2025. Here, half of the parents of children with school distress developed their own mental health problems as a result of the situation.

Arguing about causes

While careers are put on hold, parents work diligently to coordinate all the actions concerning their children. Some juggle various services that don't talk to each other, others work to obtain more specific diagnoses for their children that might trigger supportive measures and help the school be more understanding.

The parents of children who are absent for physical reasons generally have a good relationship with the school.

They don't have to argue with the school about the reason for the absence and have the responsibility for it laid on them.

The situation is not imposed on the parents.

“It isn’t easy for the school to accommodate parents all the time either. They don’t really get any more offers or accommodations than other parents,” says Nystad.

“But their mutual trust is not subjected to the same pressure since ongoing negotiations are not as necessary.”

On the other hand, parents who do not quite know why their children do not want to go to school, and who do not have specific diagnoses, have a different experience.

“They have to spend a lot of time in meetings discussing the reason for the child’s absence. And they often find that the school has a different opinion than they do about this.”

What is the school's responsibility?

It is not always clear whether the parents or the school are responsible for following up on the child. In the families that Nystad interviewed, the responsibility ultimately falls on the parents,.

“It is clear that the school must implement measures in the event of school absence, but the question is where the line is drawn for the school's responsibility,” says Nystad.

She believes that requiring the school to do more without clarifying exactly what that would entail, and without accompanying resources, is not right.

“Schools are overworked. If they are going to take on more responsibility, it needs to be clear what they are going to do to follow up with students who are not attending school.

According to Nystad, the fact that parents are stressed and ashamed and worried is not necessarily the school's responsibility.

“These may be internal feelings that they themselves have to work through.” But she emphasizes that the school has a responsibility to recognize that this is a challenging situation.

“Collaboration cannot start with having to defend your child and being accused of not having done enough.”

The problems begin prior to the absence

Several of the parents Nystad has interviewed have contacted the school before absences became a big problem, but found the school to be dismissive of their concerns. Some found that the wrong measures were implemented, because the school did not take the  time to find out what the problem really was.

“School absences do not start with the first day of absence, they often start before,” Nystad points out.

“And regardless of what the reason for the absence is, it is a crisis situation for the parents. When meeting with these families, we have to recognize this fact and that they are in crisis.”

Need to increase understanding

Jo Magne Ingul is a specialist in clinical psychology and has worked for 20 years in Norway’s child and adolescent psychiatric outpatient clinic (BUP). Today he conducts research at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) on school absenteeism.

Ingul can relate to Nystad's descriptions of the parents' struggles.

“This resonates with my own experiences,” he says.

“My experience when I worked on this was that when a child starts to struggle with going to school, the parents take it seriously and try their best and speak up.”

Just as Nystad points out, help comes too late.

“The parents try everything, nothing works, and then the child drops out of school. The school and support services come and tell the parents: "Okay, get a grip."

As a parent, it’s a nightmare to have a child who does not go to school, says Ingul. The parents struggle with feelings of guilt and shame.

He believes it’s a positive step to be learning more about topic, so that the school and support services can meet the problem in more effective ways.

Measures cost money

Ingul also agrees with Nystad's point that the school cannot take on more tasks without more resources.

Both his own research and Nystad's study show that many children do not receive the adaptive measures that the support services believe they should have.

“Some expectations have been created about what the school and the public sector should be able to offer each individual student, but so far we have not been willing to pay the price. Then you end up with the kind of mismatch between the school and the parents that this study highlights,” says Ingul.

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Translated by Ingrid P. Nuse

Read the Norwegian version of this article at forskning.no

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