When Your Autistic Child Refuses to Go to School: What's Really Going On and What to Do

It starts before the alarm goes off. You already know by the sounds — or the silence — what kind of morning this is going to be. The door won't open. Or the screaming starts before you've even said good morning. Or they're hiding under the covers, completely non-responsive, and you're standing in the hallway calculating how late you can be before your boss notices, again. You call the school. You figure out childcare, or you work from home while your kid sits in their room. You feel the guilt and the helplessness and the creeping fear that this is just going to keep happening. You are not alone in this. School refusal is one of the most common crises that parents of autistic kids face — and one of the most isolating, because it's not something most people talk about at pickup. Here's what's actually going on, and what to do about it.