Acute School Phobia

[CamEdwards]

I can't believe this story.

http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-...45,print.story

Rebecca Maykish is 17 and dreads school so much that she stopped going regularly.

In fourth grade.

Those days off have come at a price to her school district and the Palmerton taxpayers who support it. Since 2004, the Palmerton Area School Board has authorized payments of more than $45,000 to help Rebecca make up for her missed school days. Rebecca's mother, Barbara, has used the money for at-home tutoring and education software purchases. She has also spent it on modeling classes for Rebecca, subscriptions to teen magazines, and travel to New York and Toronto with a summer camp.

All of the expenses were approved by the district.

Until December, Rebecca's education was paid through a compensatory education fund, which is supported through local property taxes and controlled by the school board. Compensatory education funds are distributed to students whose school districts have failed to give them an appropriate education, as required by the federal Americans with Disabilities Act.

Compensatory education fund

In 2004, a special education hearing officer with the state ordered the district to set up a compensatory education fund for Rebecca, according to Fred Stanczak, Barbara Maykish's attorney. Maykish and Palmerton Area school officials agreed in a private meeting to compensate Rebecca for 1,000 hours of missed instruction, at a rate of $45 an hour, Stanczak said.

The agreement allowed Barbara Maykish to spend the money on anything that would be educational, therapeutic or enriching, which gave her wide discretion, Stanczak said. The fund hit the $45,000 cap in December.

State education officials say they have no control over compensatory education funds and do not know how many exist. The Allentown District has a $57,000 fund set up for a special education student, said Superintendent Karen Angello. She would not disclose the nature of the student's need but did say the district has never set up a compensatory education fund for a student with school phobia.

The Bethlehem Area and Easton Area districts currently have no compensatory education funds in their budgets.

Scott Engler, special education director for the Palmerton district, said school officials had little say over how the money in Rebecca Maykish's fund was spent.

''The expenditures were paid under the terms of an order that gave virtually total discretion to the parent to determine what was educationally necessary,'' he said.

Last spring, about seven months before Rebecca Maykish's fund ran out, she left a California boarding school that she had attended for part of the 2006-07 school year. The district followed up with truancy notices.

Since then, Rebecca has been fined $1,900 and her mother $11,329 for truancy. In March, a district judge ordered Barbara Maykish to pay $8,000 for the 80 days that Rebecca missed this year.

''It's been really bad. I have my house for sale (to pay the fines) ... (But) when she did go to school, she would cry nonstop,'' Maykish said as she sat in the living room of her Lehigh Avenue home with her two Japanese Chin lap dogs and a Boston terrier nearby.

Rebecca says she's not lazy, but the thought of going to school has made her sick with anxiety. So she has just stayed home.

A 'long-standing' phobia

According to a psychiatrist and psychologists who have evaluated her, she suffers from an emotional disorder called school phobia, or school refusal.

In 2004, an Orefield psychiatrist noted in a report -- which Barbara Maykish shared with the The Morning Call -- that Rebecca had a ''generalized anxiety disorder'' that made her fear school.

''This is a young lady who has long-standing school phobia,'' wrote Dr. Larry Dumont, who recommended that Rebecca receive at-home instruction.

School phobia is a medical condition but is not one of 13 federally approved disabilities that allow a student to qualify for an individualized education program under the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act, said Rick Agretto, the director of special education for the Bethlehem Area School District.

However, a student with school phobia could qualify for some accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act, including a compensatory education fund.

When the final bills were tallied, the fund set up for Rebecca had reached $46,361. All the money paid to her came from district funds, said Steve Serfass, Palmerton Area School District solicitor.

Barbara Maykish spent $3,892 on at-home instruction, and hundreds more on educational software. She spent $2,100 for Rebecca to take classes at the Barbizon modeling academy, and nearly $6,000 to attend summer camp in Ferndale, N.Y., and go on field trips to Toronto and New York. The fund also covered $54 for subscriptions to Seventeen, Teen Vogue and Teen People magazines, according to documents provided by Maykish and the school district.

The documents show Barbara Maykish spent $222 to board her dogs while visiting Rebecca at a California boarding school in 2007; $2,329 for her and Rebecca to fly to the school and $500 for tuition and spending from March-May.

All of the expenses were allowed under the agreement Barbara Maykish reached with the school district.

Barbara Maykish never received cash up front. Instead, she would purchase items and submit a receipt to the school district for reimbursement.

Stanley J. Majewski Jr, assistant superintendent for finance in the Bethlehem Area district, said the district has had few special education cases that have required the funds. None, he said, has included the kinds of expenses Rebecca Maykish has accumulated.,

''I've not seen anything come through for such things as [magazine] subscriptions,'' Majewski said.

Palmerton School Board President Carl Bieling Jr. said he and the board approved the payments because district administrators told them they were permitted under the terms of the compensatory education fund. He added that the expenses were first approved by former members of the board.

But he said he was bothered that Rebecca and her mother were receiving so much money.

''We are aware of the case, we are aware of the California thing. ... We've been advised that these expenditures were needed under the circumstance,'' Bieling said.

''It is troubling to see monies go out to one student that could have been used across the whole district,'' he said.

Acting Superintendent Lamar Snyder did not return repeated calls.

Compensatory education funds are typically set up to help students who have not received appropriate instruction in the classroom. They usually fund tutoring, according to Charles Pugh, an attorney with Education Law Advocates in West Chester, Chester County. The funds can also be used to help students with emotional or behavioral development, providing such things as psychological care or speech therapy. Or for equipment purchases that help a child with a physical disability, Pugh said.

Justified expenses?

Barbara Maykish said expenses for modeling school and summer camp were justified because the education fund was also intended to boost Rebecca's self-esteem and help her interact with kids her age.

At the beginning of most school years, Rebecca has tried to attend school but the longest she has made it was toThanksgiving in fourth grade. She began this year as a junior at Palmerton High School but stopped going after the third week of September.

''It's kind of humiliating to start out at the beginning of the year,'' Rebecca said. ''People always say 'Didn't you used to go to this school? What happened?' ''

Rebecca says she reads for pleasure, enjoying parodies such as ''Zen of the Zombie,'' a mock self-improvement book. But her writing skills are weak and she can only do basic multiplication and division on downloaded worksheets. She estimates she spends three hours a day learning. Barbara Maykish has opted not to homeschool her, saying she worried that she would not be able to help Rebecca with her math and writing problems.

Rebecca said she has only one friend in Palmerton. She spent her 17th birthday in March with her mother, who is her only close companion. Her father lives in Peru.

When Rebecca was a kindergartner, she would grip the bannister in her home to keep from going to school, Barbara Maykish said.

''You would have to peel her fingers off the railing. It would take two people,'' she said.

For the first couple of years, Barbara Maykish said, she would force her daughter to go to school. But Rebecca would cry, shake, and throw up in the mornings.

Some elementary school students get that kind of separation anxiety, but it is almost never seen among teens, said Elna Yadin, a psychologist at the Child Study Institute at Bryn Mawr College.

In his 16 years as special education director, Agretto, of the Bethlehem Area district, said he may have seen 10 cases of school phobia, most of them involving elementary school students.

''It comes in all levels of degree,'' Agretto said. ''You have to take each case on face value.''

School phobia, which

affects between 1 percent and 5 percent of students, is often associated with other anxiety problems or depression,

according to a 2003 report in American Family Physician by Dr. Wanda B. Fremont, a psychiatry professor at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University. Children with school phobia usually stay in their house during school hours because it is considered a safe and secure environment and are willing to do schoolwork at home, while truants are likely to be out of the house and have no interest in doing school work, Fremont wrote.

Rebecca is an extreme case of school phobia, according to Yadin and Palmerton school officials, who say they have never had a truancy case like this.

Typically, it develops when a student has a reason to dread school, such as a bully, a mean teacher, or a fear that something bad will happen if they leave the house, said Yadin. Once the cause is known, school officials and parents can usually find a way to address it.

''If you teach kids to stay away from what you're afraid of, that is not a good solution in the long term,'' Yadin said. ''Avoidance becomes a way of life.''

Palmerton sent tutors to Rebecca's house during the 2004-05 school year. Barbara and Rebecca Maykish said they got along with one tutor, calling her ''phenomenal,'' but did not like the tutor who replaced her. They disagreed over appointment times, and Rebecca felt the tutor was not working with her. Tutoring stopped the following year.

In November of 2006, Rebecca enrolled at the Academy of the Sierras, a boarding school in California. Rebecca said being immersed in a school environment helped her anxiety, and she made friends and went to classes. But the school phobia soon returned, and she left around April 2007.

When Rebecca came home, she and her mother had no plan for her education. Palmerton school officials tried to work out a new individualized education plan for her, but Barbara Maykish and school officials could not reach an agreement.

That's when the fines started arriving again. Barbara Maykish has been fined 111 times for truancy, with the earliest cases filed in 2003, a year before the compensatory education fund was set up.

She fought the fines, but has lost every case in Palmerton district court, and 10 appeals so far in Carbon County. Maykish, who is unemployed, has paid $1 so far. State law allows a jail term of five days for each unpaid fine, although no judge has threatened jail yet, said Serfass, the school district solicitor.

Payment schedules call for her to pay about $35 a month through the year 2037.

Maykish plans to appeal to federal court, arguing that Rebecca cannot be expected to go to a regular school.

Her attorney, Stanczak, said the local courts have ignored Rebecca's disability. He said Palmerton has not accommodated her.

''This is an unusual disability and it's not something that schools are used to dealing with,'' he said.

Now that she is 17, Rebecca could legally drop out, but she says she wants to earn a diploma. She can attend Palmerton Area High School until she is 21, but she thinks a cyberschool or another boarding school would be better options.

Because her daughter has gone the past year without any formal education, Barbara Maykish said she thinks she might need another compensatory education fund.

[Eaglesfan27]

Terrible. All the experts agree that the optimal treatment for School Phobia is to have the child return to school ASAP, doing half days at first if necessary (while also teaching the child a variety of coping mechanisms.) Home schooling is not an option for this as it gives into the fear and as Yadin said in the article, it reinforces the fear. I've had several parents whose kids had Social Phobia ask me to sign papers so their kids could be home schooled, and I always refuse.

[Lathum]

my parents would have kicked my ass and told me to get on the bus.

[B & B]

Cowboy up.

[rowech]

I have three students, this year alone, who have whatever the heck this garbage is. They have a phobia because they miss a week at a time and then come back and have a boatload of stuff to makeup, feel pressure, and then can't manage so they stay home again. It's garbage. The one girl is constantly seen by other kids parents out at the mall, etc during school hours.

[flounder]

Why couldn't this scam have been around when I was a kid? I was stuck having to fake stomach aches to get out of school.

[Barkeep49]

I feel bad for this girl who has a legitimate problem and doesn't have a mother who knows how to help her and who instead coddles her and swindles the tax payers of her school district.

[Lathum]

Originally Posted by Barkeep49

I feel bad for this girl who has a legitimate problem and doesn't have a mother who knows how to help her and who instead coddles her and swindles the tax payers of her school district.

I don't. She is 17 for fucks sake!

you don't think she knows what she is doing?

[Lathum]

dola- BK, I know you are an educater and care greatly for your kids.

That being said it is total bullshit. How come I never heard about anyone having this 20 years ago when I was in school?

It's just another sad reflection of where we have gotten to as a society. We are so soft on our children it is absurd.

When I was a kid the only way I missed school was to go to the doctor.

[Barkeep49]

Originally Posted by Lathum

I don't. She is 17 for fucks sake!

you don't think she knows what she is doing?

She's been coddled like this since she was 9. No, at 17 I don't think she knows what she's doing because she's never really known different.

[Barkeep49]

Originally Posted by Lathum

dola- BK, I know you are an educater and care greatly for your kids.

That being said it is total bullshit. How come I never heard about anyone having this 20 years ago when I was in school?

It's just another sad reflection of where we have gotten to as a society. We are so soft on our children it is absurd.

When I was a kid the only way I missed school was to go to the doctor.

Listen I agree that this situation is unacceptable. But as EF pointed out right away it's as much about bad parenting/psychiatric treatment as anything. As the expectation rises that we must fully educate every child, and thus meet them where they're at, instances such as these are only going to rise.

[Lathum]

Originally Posted by Barkeep49

She's been coddled like this since she was 9. No, at 17 I don't think she knows what she's doing because she's never really known different.

I completly disagree.

At some point she realized how to use this to her advantage, as did her mother.

[JonInMiddleGA]

I kept thinking I'd see where this story came from The Onion or something.
Then EF posts & rowech posts and I realize ... OMG, this actually exists?!?!?

Look, I teeter close enough to being full blown batshit crazy that I think I'm pretty liberal when it comes to accepting that there's a lot of things psychological and/or emotional that can screw with someone in horrible ways.

But a school-specific phobia? Not just generalized anxiety but something triggered specifically by school, complete with a catchy name? And at additional expense to the taxpayer? For the love of ...

Mama needed to get her Peg Bundy bon-bon munching ass up off the couch, put her foot up Precious' rump & provide some motivation.

[Lathum]

I agree with JIMG.

She can go to the mall but can't bring herself to go to school?

Maybe it's because the mall opens at 11:00

[Barkeep49]

Originally Posted by Lathum

I completly disagree.

At some point she realized how to use this to her advantage, as did her mother.

No disputing that her mother is, and has been for a while, working this to her advantage. And you could be right that the daughter is working this to her advantage. But just like the 17 year olds from that Mormon group who claimed to be adults when the police raided their compound, this girl could very well just not know better because it's been this way for the majority of her cognitive life.

[Eaglesfan27]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

But a school-specific phobia? Not just generalized anxiety but something triggered specifically by school, complete with a catchy name? And at additional expense to the taxpayer? For the love of ...
.

FWIW, if a child had a school phobia without a generalized anxiety disorder or a more general social anxiety disorder, I personally would be very suspicious of the diagnosis.

[BrianD]

Understanding my so far undiagnosed social phobia, I can see where school situations could mess with a social-phobic person. I can also see where going to the mall wouldn't cause any anxiety at all. Even with this being the case though, I can see where medications and/or therapy should be able to help. If this really is a social-phobia strong enough to make school impossible, getting and keeping a job after school should be just as impossible. Some sort of treatment will be necessary to allow a normal life, and homeschooling is just delaying the fix.

[Lathum]

Originally Posted by Barkeep49

No disputing that her mother is, and has been for a while, working this to her advantage. And you could be right that the daughter is working this to her advantage. But just like the 17 year olds from that Mormon group who claimed to be adults when the police raided their compound, this girl could very well just not know better because it's been this way for the majority of her cognitive life.

I think you're stretching a bit here.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by BrianD

If this really is a social-phobia strong enough to make school impossible, getting and keeping a job after school should be just as impossible.

Thanks for making a point that I probably should have expanded on in my own post.

I can buy a distinction between the mall & school triggering different reactions but modeling school vs regular school? Or school vs work? I can't quite make those distinctions make much sense.

[BrianD]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Thanks for making a point that I probably should have expanded on in my own post.

I can buy a distinction between the mall & school triggering different reactions but modeling school vs regular school? Or school vs work? I can't quite make those distinctions make much sense.

Using myself as a very limited and not well understood model, the trouble areas would be social situations with a large group of people who may or may not be strangers. Being around the group might not be so bad, but knowing that you are going to have to interact with them is very bad. Homeschooling avoids that situation. The work part is going to be a bitch though. Sitting through a job interview with multiple people should be as tough as going to school. Having to deal with people on the job will be tough as well. If she doesn't get this taken care of, her job choices are going to be very limited.

[sabotai]

I can see how kids could suffer from something that is given the nickname "School Phobia". If a kid has a form of social and/or seperation anxiety, the symptoms of it may not come out until the kid is forced to be away from home for extended periods of time, every day of the week. The first time that happens in 99% of kids is when they are forced to go to school, so it makes perfect sense that their condition wouldn't surface until they went to school. Hence it gets the nickname "School Phobia".

[Lathum]

Originaly posted by Chris Rock
"Whatever happened to crazy?"

..

[sabotai]

ef27, the closest thing to an expert in this field on this board, says it is a real thing, talked about the diagnosis for it in his first post and also said he'd be suspicious if the kid didn't have a general anxiety disorder as well.

You say it's complete bullshit and your best arguments have been "I didn't hear about it 20 years ago." and a quote from Chris Rock.

Gonna have to go with ef27 on this one.

[Lathum]

Originally Posted by sabotai

ef27, the closest thing to an expert in this field on this board, says it is a real thing, talked about the diagnosis for it in his first post and also said he'd be suspicious if the kid didn't have a general anxiety disorder as well.

You say it's complete bullshit and your best arguments have been "I didn't hear about it 20 years ago." and a quote from Chris Rock.

Gonna have to go with ef27 on this one.

lighten up Francis

[Lathum]

dola- I never said it doesn't exist.

I said it is absurd the way parents deal with it and they onlt make the problem worse. PArents are way to soft with kids these days.

27 said himself he refuses to sign the paperwork when parents want to homeschool their kids because of this.

[Lathum]

double dola-

I respect EF27 immensly but this problem didn't exist 20 years ago.

The reason IMO this problem and so many other problems exist with kids today is because at the first sign of anything wrong parents assume it is something mental.

Rather then be forcefull with the child and have to actualy be a parent they look for a pharmacological cure because something MUST be wrong. God forbid a kid has a tantrum about school because they don't wanna go and they know Mom or Dad will relent, nope, must be mental.

[stevew]

The girl should be euthanized

[sabotai]

Originally Posted by Lathum

lighten up Francis

Haha, I'm not the one going crazy over this.

I respect EF27 immensly but this problem didn't exist 20 years ago.

Actually, it did. If you go to http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/index.dtl and search their database for school phobia, you'll find articles going back to the 1950s.

[Lathum]

Originally Posted by sabotai

Actually, it did. If you go to http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/index.dtl and search their database for school phobia, you'll find articles going back to the 1950s.

I challange anyone who knows someone that suffered this 20 years ago, I can't imagine what my parents would have done to me if I said I was scared to go to school.

[Lorena]

Originally Posted by Lathum

I can't imagine what my parents would have done to me if I said I was scared to go to school.

Yeah I hear ya. My mom would laugh in my face, whoop my ass and tell me to suck it up.

[Eaglesfan27]

Originally Posted by sabotai

Haha, I'm not the one going crazy over this.



Actually, it did. If you go to http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/index.dtl and search their database for school phobia, you'll find articles going back to the 1950s.

Thanks for that Sabotai. This problem definitely has a long history and has been written about actually since the early 1900's but it wasn't called that back in those times. I actually had a classmate in elementary school (1984 to be precise) with severe school phobia who I befriended (I think I might have been his only friend at the school until he progressed in treatment and did much better in high school.)

[Lathum]

Originally Posted by Eaglesfan27

I actually had a classmate in elementary school (1984 to be precise) with severe school phobia who I befriended (I think I might have been his only friend at the school until he progressed in treatment and did much better in high school.)

Imagine that, his parents made him go to school and he made progress.

[Eaglesfan27]

Originally Posted by Lathum

Imagine that, his parents made him go to school and he made progress.

Exactly. That is the treatment of choice. In fact, all of the articles emphasize that as little school as possible should be missed. Coping skills and other types of therapy are the other primary treatment components.

Edit: I think what this girl's parent(s) did was wrong and the doctor is even more wrong which is what I said in the first post or at least implied.

[BrianD]

Originally Posted by Lathum

Imagine that, his parents made him go to school and he made progress.

He got treatment and made progress. Slight difference there. There is probably a combination of things going on here and historically. I'm sure these conditions existed in the past, but since they weren't advertised on TV 20 times a night, people didn't know they had them and pushed their way through. Only the really severe cases probably resulted in people having to stay home.

Now that every possible thing has a disorder named for it, people probably recognize it better and look to treat it. Some people (like the mother in this case) probably treat it incorrectly and we get stories like this. I wonder how my life would be different if I had been treated for this back in High School. My college and post-college life may have been much different.

[chesapeake]

Lathum, remember that shy kid you and your buddy beat up behind the gym in third grade? He had this

Seriously, though, I imagine that when you and I were in school, kids that had this or other things that get diagnosed today simply dropped out and just disappeared.

Ignorance all around. The SD didn't want to really address the problem, so they signed the checks and swept the receipts under the rug. The mom didn't really know what to do either, and it was so easy to just pluck the fruit off the money tree and let things go. The kid then gets dropped through the cracks. Way to go, guys!

[stevew]

Snopes me if you want, it's probably an urban legend.

Local news/weather guy(if anyone is familiar w/ Tri Cities it's the guy with the bad blonde toupee) was at a school for career day. Asks kid what he wants to do when he grows up. Kid said he wanted to draw. Like an artist? No. Like his dad who draws a check every month.

Must have Acute Work Phobia.

[Lathum]

Originally Posted by chesapeake

Lathum, remember that shy kid you and your buddy beat up behind the gym in third grade? He had this

bah

He was getting an education on Darwinism

[Noop]

I call BS. Suck it up and go to school. Or have her parents foot the bill for her "problems"

[Zelig]

Barbara Maykish, you are a f-ing genius. Any new clothes for you?

[cartman]

Actually, it was a little over 25 years ago when I was diagnosed with this. I was in the 3rd grade. Up to that point, I loved going to school. But then the principal pulled really stupid crap (mental abuse) that caused me to not want to go to school. The principal ended up being committed to the State Hospital, and the crap she pulled made me scared to go to school for a while. I was out of school for about 3 months before I transferred schools and it took about a year before I was comfortable that the situation wasn't going to repeat itself.

[Danny]

I had this (undiagnosed) as well 15 years or so ago when I was really young. While this mother's treatment methods are bad, don't discount issues existing just because you don't remember them being diagnosed or existing when you were a kid. As for the suck it up and go to school approach, as EF27 said, that along with teaching coping mechanisms is the best treatment, but don't assume that "suck it up and deal with it" is the best approach for every situation. You should always have the highest expectations for kids and not label or demand any less than you would from any other child, but sometimes they need some extra help and ignoring an issue for many kids leads to it getting worse.

[judicial clerk]

my cousin had this. She is pretty, bright, and athletic, but she probably missed on average of 1/3 of the school year each year from 4th grade through high school. I never undrstood it.

As for me, my dad probably would have let me go for about 24 hrs before he would have started putting boot to ass.

[Eaglesfan27]

Originally Posted by judicial clerk

my cousin had this. She is pretty, bright, and athletic, but she probably missed on average of 1/3 of the school year each year from 4th grade through high school. I never undrstood it.

As for me, my dad probably would have let me go for about 24 hrs before he would have started putting boot to ass.

Glad you posted this. It's not just unpopular, nerdy kids that get this disorder. I treated one kid for this disorder (along with generalized anxiety disorder) who is now starting for a major college football team. He was athletic, very popular, and had lots of girls interested in him, but he also had significant generalized anxiety with a focused school phobia. He is also one of my favorite success stories that I remember on days where I'm having a crappy work day.

[Telle]

Originally Posted by BrianD

I wonder how my life would be different if I had been treated for this back in High School. My college and post-college life may have been much different.

Wow.. this really hit me. What would my life have been like if my mom had actually gotten me help when I was 9 years old and asking to see a psychiatrist? Instead of two more decades passing before I finally found the help I needed. Really makes you wonder.

[stevew]

The Acute School Phobia theme song.

[rkmsuf]

Researcher have found that fear of work generally follows fear of school.

[albionmoonlight]

Originally Posted by Barkeep49

As the expectation rises that we must fully educate every child, and thus meet them where they're at

Good point. The idea that society has an obligation to educate all of its children is actually a relatively new one in this country.

Used to be that if you could not afford school, then you didn't go.