My son didn’t like school. It was something that I saw could be a source of real problems for him. He began to express his dislike of school from when he began kindergarten. I validated that school can be something that is hard and not liked by everyone. I always communicated with the school to make sure there were no problems I wasn’t aware of that were causing the dislike of school.

I determined the problem was the fact that my son disliked sitting still in a classroom, disliked doing school work, and he felt bored and uninterested in what was going on in the classroom.  I knew I had to do something to help him surmount these negative feelings because they related to almost every thing that goes on in the classroom.  It took a few weeks, but I finally developed a plan that helped my son successfully get through his years of schooling until he graduated with honors with an electrical engineering degree from college many years later.  Boy was I relieved!

Beginning from the time my son was in kindergarten, I explained to him that everyone in the world has jobs. I had the job of being his mother and taking care of our home. He saw that his step father went to work every day and he knew that was a job he had to do to bring in the money we needed to live. I explained to him that going to school is a child’s job. It doesn’t have to be a job that is liked, it just has to be a job that is done.

I then developed a series of small rewards (or "pay days") for him that helped encourage him so he was able to develop the strength of character to do the right thing despite his feelings of not liking it. One early reward idea I called the "grab bag". It was simply a paper lunch bag full of really small things, like cheap tiny grocery store toys, erasers, pencils or pens, or small notebooks or small books, etc.

When my son would successfully get through a pre-determined time of going to school, he would get one dip into the grab bag to pull out one thing. I also made him small paper "award" certificates that I gave him at different times if he had a particularly rough time with disliking school but he got through it successfully. I would give him the certificate and we would hang it up on his wall or on the fridge. I also had the reward of story time where I would make up a story about a subject of his choice.

I would also constantly encourage my son and tell him how proud I was of him for going to school. I always encouraged him that he should not allow his feelings about school to keep him from doing the right thing - which was to do his job of going to school and getting his education. I would encourage him often and tell him how much better his life would be with an education, etc. We talked a lot about it and we talked often. I think it helped him to know that he could express his feelings about school when he felt the need to express them.  I tried to help him focus on the things that he did like about school; such as the fact that they had computers.

For really big rewards such as an exceptionally good report card or some other improvement, there was sometimes a shopping trip to the toy store with a pre-determined dollar amount for the top limit of what we would spend. He knew in advance that this reward would be coming for his good efforts at school.


Using a Sock Puppet:

Another thing we did with school problems and with other problems when my son was a toddler and later when he was in the early grades in grade school, was to use a sock puppet to help deal with feelings.  Using the puppet was one of the most effective tools that helped us get through the early years of grade school.  This "sock puppet" was literally one of my husband’s socks. I didn’t put a face on it or anything else. I just put it over my hand and moved my fingers to make its "mouth" talk. I also used a very high voice that was different from mine for the puppet’s voice.

For example: the sock puppet - named "Danita" - would announce that she hated school and didn’t want to go to school and didn’t know why she should have to go to school and then begin crying very loudly. My son would then respond to Danita by telling her that school was her job, etc. - all the things I had told him about school before that. Using the Danita sock puppet really helped us get through a lot of rough days and rough times. No matter what my son expressed, once I had talked to him about it and tried to help him with it, then the sock puppet Danita would express the same problem and my son would help her with her upset.

Eventually I stopped the hassle of putting a sock on my hand and I just used my hand as the puppet with my fingers opening and closing to make the words. My son loved helping Danita with her problems and he loved it that everything that upset him also upset Danita.

By the time he was finished with grade school and in middle school he no longer needed any rewards or help from puppets to keep him doing the right thing. By then he had learned to enjoy the internal accomplishment feeling of self esteem he would have inside of himself by making good grades. 

In high school he learned to enjoy applying for and receiving scholarships for his academic achievements. By then he had truly learned that school was his job and he learned to do it well. I’m glad I was able to find ways to help him overcome his negative feelings about school and do the positive thing for himself. He was then able to graduate from college and his college education was paid for entirely by scholarships he had earned through his own academic accomplishments! That was quite an accomplishment for a person who disliked school.


Helping a child cope with his or her negative feelings:

I spoke above about the use of hand puppets to help with feelings. Using a hand puppet worked well to help my son deal with with negative feelings because it caused him to try to help the puppet get over the same problems he was having.  Providing emotional support and rewards for desired behavior was valuable to help with the school issues as well as some other problem areas.  We also did something that was very different from those things that helped also. When my son was old enough to be able to express himself and his feelings with some words, I worked with him to learn to get his feelings down on paper - kind of a healthy examination of his feelings even before he could write.  I began this when my son was a little under four years old. When he would get very upset, after comforting him and trying to help him with his upset or straighten out the problem, I would then take out a piece of paper, or go to the computer and have him tell me what was going on so we could write about it.

We had kind of a general format. I would ask him who he was angry at or what he was angry about. I would write that down. Then I would ask him what part of him was being made upset by the problem or situation - was it his feelings, what he wanted, his fun time, his toys, his feelings for his mommy or daddy, etc. I would write all that down. Then I would ask him what other feelings he was having about the whole thing. Was he feeling afraid, unhappy, angry, sad, nervous, worried, out of control, etc. I would write all those things down.

Then I would ask him if he had any fears or worries about the situation or fears or worries about anything else in his life. I would write those down also. Then I would have a talk with my son about what we had written and about the situation. I would ask him questions and help him see if there was anything he could do to change or prevent the problem such as if there was something he could have done differently or someone else could have done differently.

We were talking about the situation at this point rather than just dealing with an emotional outburst or frustration overload so things were much calmer. The next thing we would do would only apply if you have a belief in God and want your child to have a belief in God. (I have suggestions about how to handle this in the paragraph below the next one on this page for those who don’t believe in God.)

After talking about everything and trying to see how it could be resolved, we would then pray together and ask God to remove and help with the negative feelings about the situation that we had written down on our list and for God to help make the situations better and for God to handle the fears and those fearful situations we had written down.

If you don’t believe in God, you could also help your child to resolve the situation inside of themselves after you have talked it all out by having them wad up the paper the feelings were written on and throw it away or picturing the upset or the upsetting situation flying away inside a balloon, or floating away on a cloud, etc.

During the talking time after the writing, we always came to some kind of solution that would help my son realize what he could have done differently or how the situation could be changed or resolved or, if there was nothing he or anyone else could do, then to realize this also and to try to deal with the feelings of frustration but to understand that some things just have to be accepted - they can’t all be changed. He already felt a lot better because we had talked about options and worked things out together.

Often he was angry at me because I wouldn’t let him do something he wanted to do that was dangerous or harmful. We would still do the writing and the talking and the praying and it did seem to help him to cope with the painful feelings of wanting to do something I couldn’t let him do. It gave him something to do with those feelings that was positive and not destructive.

My son was noticeably calmer after we would do this emotional helping exercise and, now that he’s an adult, I can see that he handles his feelings pretty well and works through things in a healthy way, rather than getting destructive to himself or others because he’s feeling upset or having problems. How I wish I had this kind of help when I was a child.