# @juleswaller_ on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DcNNwuvkxIu
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/69498778-juleswaller-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/1b53a9049d.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-08-19T03:24:06.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Julie Waller (Jules) | School Refusal Support (@juleswaller_) — https://gondola.cc/juleswaller_

## Caption

At the hardest point in my daughter’s school refusal journey she missed over 100 days of school in a single year.

I did everything the “experts” told me to do.

🔸Reward charts. 
🔸Consequences. 
🔸 “Just get her in the car.” 
🔸 “She’ll grow out of it.” 

and so it goes on …

I sat through appointment after appointment - week after week - year after year - nodding along, trying every strategy I was handed.

None of it worked. 
Because none of it was actually solving the problem.

Every single piece of advice assumed she was choosing not to go. 

That if I just found the right consequence, the right conversation, the right push - she’d get in the car.

But her body wasn’t choosing anything. 
It was frozen. 
Fully dressed, standing at the top of the stairs, unable to move - before a single word was even said.

It wasn’t until I stopped following the advice and started paying attention to what her body was actually doing that anything changed.

⛔️ It’s not school won’t.  It’s school can’t ⛔️

She successfully graduated high school with entry into her first-choice university.

Not because we finally found the right consequence. 

Because we finally understood what was actually happening in her body - and worked with that, instead of against it.

If you’re in the middle of it right now and nothing anyone’s told you to do is working, I promise - that’s not a parenting failure. 

That’s a sign you’re being handed the wrong map.

We got through, and you will too ! 

With love,

- Jules ❤️

#schoolrefusal #schoolanxiety #gotoschool #teenmentalhealth #childrensmentalhealth

## Stats

- **Views:** 0
- **Likes:** 10
- **Shares:** 0
- **Comments:** 26

## Tags

schoolrefusal, schoolanxiety, gotoschool, teenmentalhealth, childrensmentalhealth

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