Not wouldn’t. Couldn’t.

I keep seeing school attendance in the news at the moment, and every time I do, it takes me straight back.

When one of my children was very young and had not long started school, they were struggling hugely. There was so much going on that we were yet to unpick and understand, and over time they were able to attend less and less. Then there was an incident, our family reached crisis point, and we found ourselves with another CAMHS referral.

It made us realise that mental health and wellbeing are far more important than academics and attendance. It’s a lesson I’ve never, ever forgotten.

My child didn’t feel safe. They weren’t able to attend.

Not wouldn’t. Couldn’t.

So we stripped right back. For around two years, my child was pretty much out of school, bar the odd hour here or there.

When you’ve got a child who is that distressed, with that level of anxiety, your day to day starts to look very different. My child needed co-regulation pretty much 24/7 and couldn’t spend much time alone at all. I had to step back from my career completely, which brought financial pressure on top of everything else. You’re exhausted. Your own nervous system is under huge pressure. You’re hypervigilant, constantly scanning and trying to anticipate the triggers, and you’re navigating your way through something you don’t know the answers to.

And alongside all of that, I felt huge pressure to get my child back into school. There was a lot of misunderstanding. I felt misunderstood and, if I’m honest, blamed.

I was fortunate that the small mainstream school we were dealing with were at least trying to support us. I wasn’t being threatened with fines on top of everything else. That would have been the final nail in the coffin.

Which is why the current conversation about attendance fines makes me so angry. A petition calling for an end to fines and prosecutions for school absence passed 100,000 signatures this summer. The government responded that it has no plans to ban them, and pointed out that 93% of fines last year were for term-time holidays.

But we’re not talking about jumping on a plane to Tenerife for a fortnight because we fancy a bit of sun. We’re talking about extreme anxiety and serious mental health crisis. We’re talking about families on the brink of collapse, barely clinging on by their fingertips. People say to them, “I don’t know how you do it,” and they just look back blankly, because they don’t know how they do it either. But they get up every day and do everything they can for their children, because that’s what you do.

Imagine being that parent, and having a letter arrive that treats you as the problem. That says, in effect, you’re a bad parent because your child isn’t in school, and here’s a fine to prove it. It’s so utterly insensitive and tone deaf.

And here’s what I don’t think is understood. When a child is that anxious, pushing them to attend doesn’t give them the ability to attend. It just adds to the distress. If a child feels safe, if they’re being taught in a way that suits how their brain works, their anxiety comes down and they will attend more. Perhaps not full time, but more. Push them before they’re ready and school becomes even less safe. That distress doesn’t stay at the school gate either. It comes home, and it’s the parent who holds it.

Even once my child moved to a specialist setting, the pressure didn’t stop. They still weren’t able to attend full time, but they were at over 80% – more than they’d managed in several years. Then a standard letter arrived telling us their attendance was a concern, because it was below 95%. It was triggering. It didn’t acknowledge anything my child or our family had been through to get there, or just how far they’d come. It left us feeling alienated and misunderstood, by the very people who knew this child’s background best.

The bigger picture doesn’t help. The money hasn’t kept up with need, with funding per child with an EHCP falling by around a third in real terms over the last decade. Most special schools are already over capacity. So children are left in settings that can’t meet their needs, and then parents are blamed when those children can’t attend. I am angered and I’m saddened, because the people with the power to change this simply won’t face the reality of it.

There’s a new short film coming out called Unauthorised Absence, about a mother who is punished for advocating for her neurodivergent daughter. I really hope it reaches people, because unless you live this, it’s very difficult to understand.

If you’re in the middle of this right now, with the letters arriving and the percentages being quoted at you, I want you to hear this. A child who can’t attend isn’t a sign of a bad parent. Very often it’s a sign of a parent who has noticed something is wrong and is putting their child’s wellbeing first. That’s the lesson I learned all those years ago, and I’ve never forgotten it.

I hear from so many of you about this. Have you been fined? Have you fought it? Or, like me, have you had the letters and felt the pressure without ever reaching that point?

And please remember that you matter in all of this too.