There are a lot of moving pieces to the school avoidance puzzle. Our experts can help you.
Never before have parents had access to expert school avoidance guidance like this!
As Seen In
Our Daughter is back after being out for 20 months!
Your Master Class was invaluable
Dear Jayne and School Avoidance Alliance,
You have been so instrumental in my daughter’s recovery that I want to share this with you:
Our daughter has been back to school for four weeks now and is doing great there.
She was out of school for 20 months, so this is the end of a long hellish period.
She goes to school each morning very easily and is liking the new small school she now attends.
We still have more work to do in terms of long-term habits to prevent depression and relapses of anxiety, but she is a different kid than she was a year ago. I realize there could be relapses down the road but I feel much more able to handle them if they happen.
Finding the School Avoidance Alliance and getting the Parent Master Class was the turning point for me — it was the first thing that really gave me the information we needed to address our daughter’s situation.
The master class was invaluable and I learned a lot from the times I attended your support group.
Hearing your story was the only thing that gave me hope for many, many months when I could not see a way out of our very serious mental health predicament.
I really appreciate how honest you were about what your family went through. And until I I came across the Alliance website and met you in the support group, I heard nothing but scary predictions about how our daughter was going to be ruined for life by not going to school and that she would likely have mental problems her whole life.
You were so positive about how people can go to very dark places and recover and go on to live very rich lives. I cannot express my full gratitude for the work you do, but thank you a million times over. You made such a difference in our lives.
Wishing you the very best,
L.T. (mom of 12 year old daughter)
Sometimes, I Feel My Child Can't Be Helped
There Is Hope!
You may feel discouraged. Yes, some days stink, ok suck!
There will be good days again and your life won't always be like this.
With the knowledge gained from our community, you will be able to address key components to getting your child back to school.
Hope is a powerful feeling that can help you persevere.
And you will regain that hope, strength, and determination once you take the Master Class.
That's what parents who have taken the class already have told us.
Our School Avoidance Master Class Instructors all have very encouraging messages within their lessons to help alleviate some of the worries and stress you carry around.
These experts successfully get kids back to school. They will explain their techniques and knowledge so your child can get there too!
Therapeutic Help
Best Practice School Interventions
Understanding Your Child's Rights (IDEA, 504s, IEPs)
Responding Helpfully at home
You may feel discouraged, desperate and helpless
I get how you feel, been there, thought that!
My son went through four years of school avoidance. I felt discouraged and hopeless many times. I spent many days crying, but just like you, I never gave up.
It took those four years to find the proper treatment, get our school to take responsibility, finally provide an IEP, and get him an out-of-district placement. I am grateful that he enjoyed his last two years of high school and graduated and went on to college.
Bullet List
If I knew
what my son’s therapists should have been doing,
if I knew how to respond to my son in our home correctly,
if I understood the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), that YES my son DID qualify for an IEP,
if I had a school insider explain how my school could have helped,
If I understood that sharing school avoidance best practices may have been welcomed by my school (who didn't understand school avoidance), a
nd if someone made it easy for me to learn everything from one central resource (like this course),
my son wouldn't have suffered so long.
And our family would have been spared years of uncertainty.
This is the reason I created this content to cover all the essential information you need to get your child the right help right now and help you avoid the mistakes I made.
This is your opportunity to learn the specifics so you can take actionable steps toward progress.
If I knew what my son’s therapists should have been doing
If I knew how to respond to my son in our home correctly
If I understood my child's right to a Free Appropriate Education
If I understood the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), and that YES my son DID qualify for an IEP
If I knew a school insider who could explain how the school could help us
If I knew that sharing school avoidance best practices may have been welcomed by my school (who didn't understand school avoidance at that time)
If someone made it easy for me to learn everything I needed to know from one central resource
y son wouldn't have suffered so long.
And our family would have been spared years of uncertainty.
This is the reason I created this content to cover all the essential information you need to get your child the right help right now and help you avoid the mistakes I made.
This is your opportunity to learn the specifics so you can take actionable steps toward progress.
In The School Avoidance Master Class for Parents, You Will Learn:
All about exposure therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy, which are important components for treating school avoidance, so you can inform your therapist and school what works and how it should look for your child.
How to build exposure and reintegration plans so you can guide your school to ensure they are using best practices and evidence-based treatment.
Learn about the role of avoidance to understand how your child feels, and how you can help break the cycle of avoidance.
Get inside access to a school psychologist to understand how schools work, who you should be working with, and what the school can do to help your child.
Hear about a real students' case who had school refusal. You get to hear step by step how the school got their student back to school.
Learn helpful solutions when you have a child that will not go to therapy.
Learn how the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and Section 504 protect and help our school-avoidant children.
Learn to communicate with your child in a way that extinguishes your child's anxiety.
How to respond and handle your child at home. This is often overlooked, but it is an essential component of helping our kids. This course provides parental guidance and strategies that will give you confidence in your ability to help your child improve.
Learn about the four functions of school refusal behavior to know what treatments and strategies are recommended to help your child.
Learn about schools' capabilities and resources so you know what to ask for and what your rights are.
Get valuable advice from a leading special education attorney. He explains the school's responsibility and the disability laws that protect your school-avoidant child's right to an education.
How to deal with body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs) that some kids with anxiety have. Our instructor Dr. Piacentini from UCLA, has a lab and clinic dedicated to this specialty.
Learn how modifying the attendance policy should be part of a reentry plan so you can help educate your school about this crucial part of the intervention.
Learn about accommodations and modifications your school can use to help get your child back into school.
Answers to common questions parents have about CBT, functional behavioral assessments, and much more!
Get an Introduction to the School Refusal Assessment Scale (SRAS-R) from Dr. Anne Marie Albano, one of the authors! It is used worldwide to help determine the causes of a child's school avoidance.
Learn parental strategies to empower your child to persist in the face of fear.
Therapy Hasn't Helped and My Kid Won't Go Anyway
Same Here - I experienced the same with my son!
Dr. Jonathan Dalton, one of the best school avoidance therapists in the U.S. (you will meet him inside the course ), made a statement I wondered about but never heard verbalized by an expert in childhood anxiety.
As horrible as this is to hear, it's essential to know that you aren't at fault. And your child is not a failure at therapy! Please tell your kids this!
Inside the course, you will learn all about effective interventions so you can use what you learned to:
- Ask therapists the right questions to see if they utilize these evidence-based methods.
- Monitor and guide your child's therapy to avoid wasting valuable time and money.
- Share these best practices with your child's therapist, school psychologist, social workers, and teachers.
It is not uncommon that kids with school avoidance will refuse therapy at one time or another.
To overcome this we have a community of experts who can give you guidance as well as meet you with other parents like yourself seeking support and advice.
Our experts also discuss what you can do when your child won't go to therapy! Giving you practical advises on what to do and expect.
Only 18 % of all kids with anxiety disorders receive any treatment whatsoever. Compounding that tragedy (and this is again hard for me even to say) is that among the clinicians in the country who work with kids from a mental health standpoint, only about 12% of them are trained in the proper techniques to treat these kids with exposure therapy.
Tragically, if kids aren't given the right kind of treatment, they will not get better. And worse than that, they will believe that they cannot get better because they've seen somebody who didn't give them a treatment that works.
Our Experts Work at These Prestigious
Educational Organizations
Our Experts Work at These Prestigious Associations
Meet The School Avoidance Master Class Experts
Dr. Dina Nunziato
Clinical Director -
The Anxiety Institute
Dr. Dina Nunziato is the Clinical Director of the Anxiety Institute in Greenwich, Connecticut. They provide partial treatment programs and customizable outpatient services for children and adolescents with anxiety disorders and school avoidance.
Dr. Nunziato has helped young adults in anxiety-related clinical and educational settings for twenty years. She specializes in Cognitive-behavioral treatment of anxiety and related disorders. Her research and publications include using evidence-based mindfulness techniques to support anxiety management, academic success, and emotional well-being.
Most recently, Dr. Nunziato completed a doctoral dissertation entitled Embodied Learning Communities of Practice in Addressing College Student Anxiety.
Ph.D Anthony Puliafico
Director Center for Anxiety & Related Disorders (CUCARD)- Columbia University
Anthony Puliafico, Ph.D. is an associate professor of medical psychology in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. He serves as director of CUCARD Westchester, an outpatient clinic in Westchester, NY. Dr. Puliafico also directs CUCARD Westchester's Anxiety Day Program, which provides daily treatment programming for adolescents with anxiety, OCD, and school avoidance.
Dr. Puliafico frequently presents on the topic of school avoidance and consults with schools and local agencies on supporting youth and families struggling with school avoidance. Dr. Puliafico is the co-author of "The OCD Workbook for Kids" and is a co-developer of the CALM Program for young children with anxiety.
Dr. Anne Marie Albano
Founder - Center for Anxiety & Related Disorders (CUCARD) - Columbia University
Dr. Albano is a Professor of Medical Psychology in Psychiatry at Columbia University and board-certified in clinical child and adolescent psychology. She is the Founder and Director of the Columbia University Clinic for Anxiety and Related Disorders (CUCARD)in New York City.
Dr. Albano has co-authored over 200 articles and chapters, conducts clinical research, supervises the research and clinical development of interns and postdoctoral fellows in psychology and psychiatry, and is involved in the advanced training of senior clinicians in CBT. One of her most well-known works is co-authoring "Children and You and Your Anxious Child: Free Your Child from Fears and Worries and Create a Joyful Family Life" with Leslie Pepper.
She has been awarded the "Outstanding Contribution by an Individual for Clinical Activities" distinction by the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies.
Dr. Jonathon Dalton
Founder, Director -
Center for Anxiety & Behavioral Change
Dr. Dalton is one of our country's leading psychologists treating kids with school avoidance and anxiety disorders. He is a fierce advocate, educating others that evidence-based treatments, such as CBT, are vital to helping kids with school avoidance and severe anxiety disorders.
He is a licensed psychologist, founder, and director of the Center for Anxiety and Behavioural Change (CABC) in Rockville Maryland. He specializes in treating anxiety disorders in children and teens, focusing on anxiety-based school refusal.
He completed two years of pre-doctoral training at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine – Kennedy Krieger Institute and advanced postdoctoral training at the Maryland Center for Anxiety Disorders at the University of Maryland.
Dr. John Piacentini
Director, Child Anxiety Resilience
Education and Support (CARES) Center - UCLA
Dr. Piacentini is Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and Chief of Child Psychology in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and directs the Center for Child Anxiety, Resilience, Education and Support (CARES), and the Child OCD, Anxiety and Tic Disorders Program at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior.
Dr. Piacentini has authored over 300 scientific publications, including seven books, and has received numerous NIH and other grants assessing the etiology, assessment, and treatment of childhood anxiety, OCD, tic disorders, and adolescent suicide.
He is chair of the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) for the TLC Foundation for BFRBs, SAB Co-Chair for the Tourette Association of America, former president of the American Board of Professional Psychology (ABPP) and the Society for Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, and a founding fellow of the Academy of Cognitive Therapy.
Krystina Dawson
School Psychologist & Founder -
Center for One Consulting
Krystina Dawson, M.S.Ed., is a certified school psychologist and Mental Health Supervisor in Trumbull, CT. She has also served as a special education coordinator in Greenwich, Connecticut for almost a decade.
She is experienced and dedicated to leading teams and building plans to reintegrate kids with school avoidance back into school. She is an adjunct professor at Iona University, teaching graduate classes for mental health students and future school psychologists, such as: "Consultation and Collaboration in Schools," and "Personality and Social Psychology,"
Krystina is the founder of a private consulting agency practice, Center for One, PLLC, which provides educational and wellness services for school-aged children. The practice is located in Greenwich, CT; however, virtual consultations and services are also offered.
Andrew Meltzer, Esq.
Special Education Attorney - Sussan, Greenwald & Wesler
Andrew Meltzer is a special education attorney at the Law Firm of Sussan, Greenwald, and Wesler in New Jersey. He was just honored as a Super Lawyer, a listing of top attorneys in the United States.
Andrew specializes in special education law and works every day protecting the educational and disability rights of kids and their families. He is experienced in helping school avoidant students get back into their school or an out-of-district placement.
He was a classified student (with an IEP) who conquered his learning differences and now helps special needs students attain the success in school and life they are capable of through his advocacy.
This Master Class Is For You If...
- You want to learn how the leading child anxiety clinics in the U.S. help their school avoidance clients and families.
- You want to understand why CBT and exposure therapy are helpful to school avoidance kids and getting them back to school.
- You want to know what CBT and exposure therapy should look like in practice to ensure your child is receiving that therapy correctly.
- You want to learn how the cause of your child’s school avoidance will dictate their treatment plan.
- You are not sure if your school is helping you get your child back to school in every way they could.
- Your school is not helping you get your child back to school, and you want to know your rights and what they can do.
- Your child won’t leave their room, and you don’t know what to do.
- Your school doesn't want to provide accommodations or modifications for your child to help them get back to school.
- You want guidance and strategies that give you confidence in your ability to help your child improve.
- If I want to pull my child out of school, how do I protect our rights and the possibility of having our current school pay for the new placement?
- You are confused about IEPs and 504s and how they help kids with school avoidance.
This Master Class Will Help You If...
- You want to know about schools' capabilities and resources, so you know what to ask for and what your rights are.
- Your child won’t see a therapist, and you don’t know what to do.
- Your school is unsure how to help your child.
- You want to hear from an experienced school psychologist, special education attorney, and expert clinicians on what your school can do to help your child.
- Your school says they can’t modify the attendance policy for your child, and you are not sure if that is correct.
- You want your school to build a reintegration plan to help your child back to school, but they don’t know-how.
- Your school is responding punitively to your child who has school avoidance.
- You can’t take it anymore, and you want to pull your child out of school to homeschool them.
- You feel unsure about responding helpfully to your child at home.
- You do not know how to help your child who is anxious.
- You sometimes feel exasperated, scared, or overwhelmed.
- You want to ensure you are doing the right things to get your child back to himself and back to learning.
Introducing...
The School Avoidance Master Class for Parents
I am so excited to bring you this Master Class!
Never before have parents had access to this level of experienced professionals sharing comprehensive and specific information that you can use right away.
You will get answers to questions such as:
Can my school modify the attendance policy for my child?
What do child anxiety specialists think about taking kids out of school?
How do we know when our child needs a higher level of care and what that may look like?
Can our school punish my child for a manifestation of their disability?
At what point should I hire a special education attorney & educational advocate?
Can I hear a real-world step-by-step reintegration plan that worked?
What strategies and responses will help me teach my child they can persist in the face of fear?
How can I communicate with my child in a way that extinguishes my child's anxiety?
Which treatments should I be utilizing that are best for my child?
What do I do if I cannot find a qualified therapist? or what if my child refuses to go? and much more!
You will hear from 5 leading clinicians, a special education attorney experienced in helping school avoidance families, and a school psychologist who gets students with school avoidance back to school.
They are the school avoidance expert dream team.
This one-of-a-kind video class gives you access to leading school avoidance experts who share what you need to know to help your child back to school.
Helpful Templates & Documents
We created and compiled these worksheets, guides, and templates for you to ensure your school knows and follows best practices to help your child effectively.
It is time-consuming to find or create these resources
Email template to request a school meeting to make a reintegration plan
Reintegration plan worksheet
School Re-Entry Plan (used for returns from inpatient, but useful for any reintegration strategy)
Building thoughtful and effective reintegration plans for school avoidance
Listing of useful strategies, accommodations, and modifications for school avoidance
Alternative assessments (for schools but you can use these as suggestions for your school).
Exposure explainer with same exposure hierarchy for school avoidance (Module 1, Lesson 3)
Parent reflection worksheet (Module 1, Lesson 4)
My son's high school graduation day. A day of gratitude and celebration after years of school avoidance. Don;t give up hope.
The Master Class is a result of
A decade working with leading researchers, clinicians, schools, special education attornreys, advocates and families.
Thousands of parents sharing gratitute, progress and success from our content.
10,000+ hours of research and expert interviews.
Get The Master Class
Please note:
This course is exclusively for parents.
If you are a school or educator please see our
Professional Development which is specialized for schools - Thank you
How Do I Know If This Master Class
Will Be Helpful For Me?
The course lessons are based on the needs, experiences, and insights of hundreds of conversations with:
- School avoidance families
- Master Class instructors
- Special education attorneys
- Education advocates
- School mental health professionals
The topics and questions were discussed at length with our expert instructors for their feedback. We made sure every lesson in this course is:
- Relevant
- Actionable
- Easy to understand
- Valuable
Even though our kids are all different, there are common challenges that all school avoidance families face such as:
- Therapy options
- Kids who refuse therapy
- Getting your school to help
- Understanding your child's right to a Free Appropriate Education (FAPE)
This course is appropriate for every stage of school avoidance. It applies to kids from kindergarten through high school. Whether it just started or you have been on this journey for several years. Of course, each will be tailored and nuanced to meet the needs of each individual child and their circumstances.
There are four major components to helping kids with school avoidance as noted below:
- Therapeutic interventions
- Parental and school strategies and responses
- Your school's role
- U.S. educational and disability laws
These distinct pieces of the puzzle are exactly why school avoidance is tricky to address. It's pretty darn difficult to wrangle all this information on your own, sort through the BS, understand it, and take care of yourself, your child, and your family all at once! So, all the experts in our Master Class address each component for you, saving you time, money, worry, frustration.....and most of all, saving your child. This is why we created the Master Class.
What Parents & Professionals Are Saying About Us
"What a great resource!! I can only say that I wish you had been around ten years ago for my son. I am glad to find you now; I have sent your links to the father of a student at the school where I work. We have a small staff and no school social worker, but I recognize the signs and am in touch with the child and her dad. So a big thank you for being here and providing so much great information."
Nancy T.
School Administrator
"Thank you from the bottom of my heart to the moon and back. Over 4 years not one person, lawyers, advocates, or family. friends have helped as much as you have and care.
I’m thankful I found your website. I’ve never met a person as true and helpful as you when it comes to school refusal and helping my son.
Words cannot explain my gratitude that there’s still somebody in the world that actually cares."
Robert M.
Parent
"I recently stumbled upon your website and am in the midst of a very challenging time with my 8-year-old son at school. . Thank you so much for your help and guidance."
Sam W.
Parent
"The information you share has been a tremendous resource to help me and my ADHD clients. Thank you."
Andrea L.
ADHD Specialist
"It's so reassuring to have the support of a parent that has the same experience. I have already come to the conclusion that this is School Avoidance. I also have my first meeting with the support team at her school on March 1st.I did not know that school avoidance is a thing until today! I now feel more empires going forward with achieving a solution to this problem."
Danielle W.
Parent
"Thank you for your website and Facebook Group. I have been part of your Facebook Group for 3-4 years. I found very valuable information on the website. The Facebook Group has been a source of support. My daughter did one year program online last year. I found that school on your website. I appreciate all your hard work."
Nala T.
Parent
Frequently Asked Questions
How many modules and lessons are there in this Master Class?
All seven modules together are about 3.5 hours in total. Each module is between 30-and 42 minutes, made of several lessons that vary in length between 5-15 minutes long. The modules and lessons inside are each titled and described, so you can see what is covered and watch at your convenience.
Is the Master Class helpful for families outside the U.S. because of law regulations?
Six of the Seven Modules are applicable anywhere in the world.
The treatments and strategies the clinical experts cover in Modules 1-5 are based on internationally accepted research and successful outcomes. Module 6 is a school psychologist explaining how schools can get school-avoidant kids back to school with gradual exposure and strategic reintegration plans. Module 7 with the attorney is the only content that is only applicable in the United States.
Once I buy the class, how will I access the content?
You will get an email with your login credentials and 24/7 access to the course.
Can I share the Master Class with my school or friends?
No, this is copyright-protected content.
This is a license agreement for your personal use only.
Can I share this Master Class with my partner or spouse?
Yes Absolutely! We encourage it, so you can both be on the same page and work together more effectively to help your child.
Is this Master Class helpful for school teachers or educational advocates?
Yes! Every module teaches the keys to helping kids with school avoidance. Added bonus for you in this course is hearing a special education attorney apply IDEA and Section 504 specifically to school avoidance. And our school psychologist details how her school gets kids back and she describes a real case step by step!
Is this for health professionals who treat kids with school avoidance?
Yes! Five of the modules are taught by your mental health colleagues who have deep knowledge and school avoidance expertise. They cover exposure therapy, CBT, parental strategies, the four functions of school avoidance, and the School Refusal Assessment Scale (SRAS-R) in detail specific for school avoidance. The special education attorney and school psychologist's content will help you understand IEPs, 504s, and the school's role, so you can guide your clients correctly.
I still have questions and would appreciate the answer ASAP.
If you still have any unanswered questions about the Master Class, please email [email protected]
Between 8 am-9 pm EDT
for a prompt response
The Master Class Was Created for You
To Save Time, Money, and Reduce the Amount of Time Your Child is Out of School
Would you like to feel empowered, recharged, and gain confidence that you can indeed help your child?
After taking the Master Class, parents feel ready and armed with new and vital information to help get their kids back to school. We hear success stories often.
Learn what kinds of therapy your child should be receiving, so you are not wasting hundreds of dollars and time invested in treatment that isn't helping.
You will hear what you can do when your child won’t see a therapist, which is quite common.
You can share this information with your therapist to help them integrate treatment recommended by leading experts in the country.
Finally, know if your school is doing everything it should be doing for your child, so you don't waste precious time wondering or hoping.
You learn how leading clinicians and school psychologists build reintegration plans, so you and your school have a framework for creating one for your child.
"I just want a professional to tell me if what we are doing is right." Now, you can!
The course experts explain everything you have been wondering, asking, and needing. You are paying for an unprecedented compilation of knowledge and expertise.
How is the Master Class different than the content on the School Avoidance Alliance website?
The Master Class gives you access to some of the most knowledgable school avoidance professionals in the field today.
Their comprehensive lessons are only available in the Master Class.
They are not available on the website.
The content in the Master Class covers strategies that are not on our website.
The Master Class also includes answers to important questions that are not included on the website.
The Dream Team of School Avoidance teaches the Master Class.
Getting parental strategies is also key to helping our kids; how we react to our kids is a big piece of the puzzle. I didn't realize that my responses may have
perpetuated his avoidance.
School Avoidance Parents Need to Educate the Educators
" I refer back to the Master Class often."
"I use what I learned from the Master Class in every meeting with our school. We finally got our IEP and now I know what to tell the school what my son needs"
"It has become our bible"
"I have learned so much over the years and took my son to the best therapists in the area, and I still learned and gained so much I didn't know"
Those are a few notes parents have sent me after learning from the Master Class.
I share them with you because that was my goal for building this course, to give you all the information you need to be the best advocate for your child.
'
Most schools have not had training on school avoidance.
They have misconceptions and usually don't know best practices and evidence-based treatments.
So, we must become school avoidance educators to ensure our schools provide interventions that help your child and don't harm them.
The information in the Master Class is easy to understand and you can watch it any way that is most convenient for you.
Once you watch our expert modules you will feel empowered and hopeful again. Ready to take your next steps toward progress?
What Does the School Avoidance Alliance Do With the Revenue From my Purchase of the School Avoidance Master Class for Parents?
Another good question, The School Avoidance Alliance is a Limited Liability Corporation. We are not a member-supported organization. We do not receive any form of government grants or funding, and we don’t solicit donations.
Forming the organization this way was purposeful. Fundraising and grant writing requires lots of time, money, and employees dedicated to those activities.
We feel that school avoidance is an urgent issue that needs to be addressed and improved without delay, so we created our website to share educational and supportive information parents and schools can use right away.
In addition, we actively advocate and spread awareness by connecting with stakeholders like schools, educators, school psychologists, policymakers, educational advocates, legal professionals, professional organizations, school avoidance clinicians, researchers, and the worldwide community involved in this issue.
So, this revenue allows us to keep advocating, supporting families and schools, improving, and saving kids' lives with school avoidance.
In addition to helping families, we are dedicated to increasing best practice awareness, reducing the stigma, educating schools, and creating a better world for families and their kids.
We are proud to announce that the School Avoidance Alliance has been recognized by the International Network of School Attendance Problems (INSA), the worldwide organization dedicated to school avoidance.
Jayne will be speaking at their October conference in the Netherlands about being agents of change.
To improve the flow of information between stakeholders, we can improve lives with appropriate treatment and early intervention.
We are also about to complete an educator's course to help our schools understand school avoidance and help our kids appropriately.
Why I Created The School Avoidance
Master Class for Parents
Jayne Demsky
Founder, School Avoidance Alliance
Hello, my name is Jayne Demsky.
I have been where you are. As a parent who lived through years of school refusal with my child, I understand how scary, confusing, and heartbreaking it can be. It turned our lives upside down.
I spent days, weeks and months working hours and hours scouring the internet looking for guidance. I was looking for success stories, what worked and how to get my school's help.
All I found then (2009-2013) was basic information; "Pack the backpack the night before and set out their clothes for tomorrow." Today there is certainly more information, but it still doesn't contain the depth and breadth of the most common challenges families face.
That is why I developed this course with support from our expert instructors.
Never before have parents had the chance to learn from multiple experienced school avoidance practitioners and professionals; sharing comprehensive and real-world information you can use right away.
You will hear from five leading clinical psychologists, a school psychologist, and a special education attorney experienced in helping kids with school avoidance get back to school.
As you know, it is hard for people (including friends and family) to really understand what we are dealing with. It is lonely and isolating.
So, in order to give you the kind and emphathetic support you deserve, we have been running our Parent Peer to Peer Support group for over two years. This is an opportuntiy to connect with and learn from other families who are experiencing school avoidance with their child. The feedback and gratitude families feel as a result of these calls has been heartwarming, hopeful, and for many; a game changer.
Our courses (we educate schools too), our bi-weekly Peer to Peer Paent Support Group, and our Parent Community, with our Ask the Expert Q & A sessions are educating and empowering parents. Kids are getting back to school, back on track and back to themselves.
Warm Regards,
Jayne
This is What Parents Think of the Master Class
"I would recommend this class to Everyone dealing with school avoidance. Especially before things get worse and worse. Also would be helpful for education advocates who don't have a lot of experience advocating for students with school avoidance. And the school staff too of course!!!"
Erin P.
Parent
"I wish I had this class in the summer of 2020. This class can make s huge difference for families at the beginning of the journey...so they don't get railroaded by the school."
Mike B.
Parent
"We are grateful for Peer to Peer Parent support group. To meet and talk with other families who understand us and want to help us is very comforting."
Sheila G.
Parent
"We finally learned how an IEP would benefit our son specifically vs the 504 plan. Everything we discussed in the support group prepared us for our school meeting. Thank you."
Pat K.
Parent
"The Master Class is fantastic! I learned so much valuable info-- practical tips about talking to teachers and working with school counselors as well as legal info which I have filed away. I thought I was very well informed beforehand but I still learned lots. and listening to it, I felt so supported!"
Chantal W.
Parent
"One of the best parts is that taking the class means you also are able to take part in a weekly(!) parenting group on zoom led by Jayne who is the amazingly empathetic and incredibly knowledgeable group leader. I think that the experience of being in a small group with other parents who are thoughtful, experienced, and who really get it is absolutely invaluable!"
Ann Marie T.
Parent
"The Master Class provides really invaluable and comprehensive information. I wish I could have taken this course earlier when my son wouldn't start HS...I believe if I had, I would have been able to "fight back" more effectively when I had to request an eval for IEP 3 times & my son missed a whole year of school."
Carol M.
Parent
"I didn't understand a lot. I found the section of the course with the lawyer very empowering. Really good info, especially if the school avoidance is in early stages or if it has been ongoing and the school just isn't helping."
Lauren S.
Parent
"You have put together so much critical information, which is enormously helpful. The lack of information and help for school-avoidant kids and their families is what is so frustrating and heartbreaking. Days become weeks, weeks become months, and months become years. What you are doing is really needed."
Irma G.
Parent
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“He is back to school for a few weeks now. I know this may be a roller coaster, but it's a really good ride right now! We think what we learned in the Master Class and the peer support group enabled him to start going again. Thank you!"
Parent P.C.
"The Master Class made ALL the difference for us and our situation. I can't imagine where we'd be without it"
Parent C.B.
There is no other resource like this anywhere; where you can educate and prepare yourself for what is necessary to establish a better life for your child
Evidence-based therapeutic interventions
Parental strategies and responses
Provides you with priceless guidance
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