My teenager gets anxious from the 'noise' at school

For some teenagers, being in the physical proximity of so many other teens is highly problematic.  School classrooms are full of people, and some teens are not comfortable in this situation.  They cannot concentrate to learn with this level of 'noise', and they cannot relax and think freely within the pressures to conform to 'the norm'.  

Bullying and anxiety become a self-perpetuating cycle, and the students withdraw more and more into themselves as they literally become silenced by the 'noise'.   Because these students are not as vocal about their school disengagement, it is often a psychological episode that brings this to your attention (the parents), such as eating changes, dropping sports or social activities, withdrawing to their bedroom, problems sleeping, headaches, etc.   The chances are you will be speaking to your GP about your teen before you are looking for us.

The good news is that we are generally really successful with these students, provided the GP or a psychologist can support with reducing the anxiety.  Students in this category do not hate learning, they have just gone off learning in school, so re-engaging them in learning and showing them that they can succeed is often a huge release of pressure for them and they can thrive.  The key is managing the anxiety, and so we are very careful to go at the pace that the students need, and to focus on areas that they can cope with.

We do not recommend homeschooling these students where you, the parent are the facilitator, as the parent:child relationship has its own pressures and power struggles and can further exacerbate anxiety completely unintentionally.  The chances are your teenager is going to be feeling that they are letting you down and 'failing' regardless of anything you say - this is part of the cycle they are in.

Best options for these students: 

1.  If possible, it can be good for these students to remain enrolled in their current school and work with us a FLO partner.  This is because sometimes students can 'recover' from this and at least partially return to school for subjects/areas they enjoy, such as a sport or drama club, even if they do their studying with us.  However, this is dependent on the school agreeing to partner with us and pay our fees which they are under no obligation to do.  That said, we have good relationships with over a dozen schools so it is good to explore this option first.

2.  If you are in South Australia or the Northern Territory, we can enrol you in our Open Access Cohort if your student is in years 10-12, or we have a small cohort with another school for years 7-9.  This means the student remains in publically funded education and is enrolled at a public school.

3.  We do offer a 'private school' provision which is our 'complete' package for students who cannot take advantage of options 1 or 2 above.