School Non-Attendance in Japan Today (Part 2): The Psychology and Support of Children, Parents, and Teachers

In the previous article, “School Non-Attendance in Japan Today (Part 1),”I discussed the history of support for children experiencing school non-attendance and the environment surrounding children today. In this article, I would like to consider how children experiencing "futoko"—prolonged school non-attendance in Japan—feel at each stage, and how parents and teachers who support them can also be supported.

• Often, Children “Do Not Know” the Reason
• Many Children First Need to Rest
• Children Begin to Move at Their Own Pace
• Holding the Other End of the Rope
• Feelings That Are “Mottled”
• Parents’ Feelings
• Counseling for Parents
• Parents Go to Counseling for Themselves
• Self-Compassion Comes Back to the Child
• Schools Also Need Team-Based Support
• Short Case Meetings and Assessment
• School Non-Attendance as a Turning Point for Thinking About the Future

Often, Children “Do Not Know” the Reason

Many children experiencing school non-attendance do not want to be repeatedly asked why they are not going to school. Teachers naturally want to know what happened. Parents feel the same way. Because they want to help, they want to know the cause. At first, if adults ask gently, the child may not mind. But when the same question is asked again and again, adults can gradually become more emotional, and the child may begin to feel cornered.

From the child’s perspective, in many cases, they themselves do not know the reason. I have conducted intake interviews with many children experiencing school non-attendance. But when I asked, “Did something happen?” or “Was there something unpleasant?” very few children were able to give a clear answer. Most became silent or said they did not know. There are many kinds of “I don’t know.” In some cases, the child truly does not know. In others, the experience cannot easily be put into words. In still others, the child may not want to remember it.

When a child is in that state, being repeatedly asked, “Why?” or “Why can’t you come to school?” can make them feel trapped. They may begin to think, “Am I not going to be accepted unless I give a reason?” or “Am I doing something wrong, something that requires an explanation?” They may also feel, “This person doesn’t really understand me.” Of course, it depends on how the question is asked, but my honest feeling is that asking the same question too many times rarely leads to a good outcome. Even if we do not dig up the past, there may still be things the child can say about their current state. I think it is better to start from there.

Many Children First Need to Rest

At the same time, many children also find it difficult to answer questions such as, “What do you want us to do?” or “What would make it possible for you to go back to school?” In a national survey in Japan, when children who had experienced school non-attendance were asked what they had wanted others to do for them at the time, more than half answered, “Nothing in particular.”

In other words, they often do not know what they want others to do. Because they do not know the cause, they do not know what should be done. Even if they do know, telling people around them—especially their parents—may create pressure to go back to school. With all these feelings mixed together, it becomes difficult for them to answer.

What can be said about many children, however, is that they feel, “I just want to rest first,” “I’m exhausted,” or “I’m having a hard time.” Quite a few children say that the most reassuring thing was when their parents told them, “It’s okay to stay home today.”

At the same time, even when they are resting, they are not truly at ease. They still worry about how others see them. They cannot stop thinking about the future or about their studies. Many do not play games simply because games are fun; rather, games may be their only place of escape. That is why they strongly feel that they do not want those games taken away.

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Children Begin to Move at Their Own Pace

After taking time to rest and recovering some energy, some children begin to move again at their own pace. Some may feel that the classroom is still too difficult, but that they might be able to go somewhere else in the school. Others may feel they could attend a place outside school, such as a free school.

There are also junior high school students who feel that returning to junior high school is impossible, but that they would like to start fresh in high school. In Japan, correspondence high schools have increased dramatically over the past ten years. Some programs require students to attend school every day, while others require attendance only a few times a year. A wide range of options is now available. As a result, beginning again from high school is no longer unrealistic.

Some children say they would like to go to university. Such students can use the High School Equivalency Examination, formerly known as the University Entrance Qualification Examination, which allows them to qualify for university entrance exams by passing subject-based tests. In the past, if a child stopped attending school, the only path forward may have seemed to be night school or part-time schooling. Today, the situation is completely different. Educational paths have become highly diverse. If parents and children attend local counseling sessions for students experiencing school non-attendance or joint information sessions for correspondence high schools, they will receive a large number of brochures. Just looking through these options can give both children and parents a real sense of hope.

Holding the Other End of the Rope

What kinds of feelings do children go through before they are able to start moving again? I would like to share two episodes.

The first is based on a conversation I had with a girl who had been experiencing school non-attendance for two or three years. During our session, she suddenly said, “Right now, I feel like I’m holding the end of a very, very long rope.” I asked her, “There must be someone holding the other end of the rope. Who is it?” She answered, “My homeroom teacher.”

According to her, if the teacher pulled hard on the rope, saying, “I want to see you. Please come back to school soon,” she would not be able to go. Even meeting the teacher felt a little too difficult. If the teacher pulled too strongly, she said, she would become frightened and let go of the rope. That would not be good.

On the other hand, if the teacher simply accepted her words—“I’m not going now”—and let go of the rope, then the rope would remain only in her own hand and hang limply. That did not feel right either. So I asked her what she wanted the teacher to do. She said that when she started to feel a little better, she would tug lightly on the rope. At that moment, she wanted the teacher to tug back firmly, or come to see her.

In order to catch the child’s signal when they tug on the rope, the rope must be kept taut. Pulling too hard is not good, but letting go is also not good. The child wants the teacher to keep the rope gently but firmly connected, always remembering them and continuing to wait. This is not an easy request. But the image of the rope is very useful when thinking about how to interact with children experiencing school non-attendance. I use it myself when reflecting: “Maybe I pulled a little too hard today,” or “Perhaps I let the rope go a little slack recently.”

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For school teachers, if they have 30 or 40 students in their homeroom, they are holding that many ropes, whether or not the students are experiencing school non-attendance. Each child needs to be approached at a different time and in a different way. Teachers must keep holding the ropes while adjusting how much they pull. This is extremely difficult. At the same time, children today strongly seek one-on-one relationships with teachers. I think there are many children—not only those experiencing school non-attendance—who are saying, in effect, “Please don’t let go of my rope.”

Feelings That Are “Mottled”

The second episode comes from a high school senior who had previously experienced school non-attendance. I heard this story at an event. This student had not attended junior high school at all. But as graduation approached, they began to feel that they did want to go to high school after all. They visited various schools with their parents and decided to enroll in a correspondence high school. Those around the student watched carefully, wondering whether things would go well after enrollment. But by the spring of their third year of high school, when they shared this story, they had perfect attendance. When I asked further, I learned that they were also serving as student council president. I was amazed. It was impressive enough that they had not missed school, but to speak in front of others as student council president was truly remarkable.

Even so, the student said that their feelings were still “mottled.” They were no longer completely black, as they had felt during the period of school non-attendance. But they were not completely white either. Their feelings were still mottled. In other words, they still worried that they might return at any moment to the person they had been during their school non-attendance.

When I heard this, I was a little surprised. Even after more than two years of not missing school, they still felt “mottled.” For counselors, when a child who has been absent for a long time begins coming to school again, we follow up carefully at first because we are concerned. But after about two months, we may begin to pull back, thinking that too much involvement might become annoying. If two years had passed and the people around this student had relaxed and stepped back while the student’s feelings were still mottled, they must have felt anxious. It is difficult to know how and when to “remove the ladder.”

At the same time, even though this student still felt mottled, they were attending school and serving as student council president. They taught me that a child can move forward even without becoming completely free of anxiety.

Adults around children often want to resolve every anxiety and every problem. But even if not everything is resolved, some children can move forward if just one source of anxiety is reduced. If there is even one thing that makes them think, “I’m looking forward to that today,” they may be able to feel like going to school.

Parents’ Feelings

We also need to consider the parents who support children going through these emotional stages.

What do parents talk about in counseling sessions? Sometimes they worry about what will happen if their child falls behind in school, or how long it will take before the child can attend school again. In such situations, counselors often say something like, “Let’s support your child gradually.” But from the parent’s perspective, being told to wait gradually raises the question, “How long do I have to wait?” If they knew it would be three more months, perhaps they could wait. But when there is no clear timeline, the burden feels completely different.

Many parents also blame themselves, wondering whether their parenting was wrong. Of course, parents are never the entire cause of school non-attendance. Even so, many parents blame themselves. When that self-blame becomes too painful, their frustration may sometimes turn toward the school, the homeroom teacher, or the counselor.

In some cases, a child’s school non-attendance can create tension in the parents’ marital relationship. In other cases, it becomes an opportunity for the family to reconsider its relationships, and those relationships improve. There are both negative and positive sides.

Sometimes, when parents reach a point of acceptance—thinking, “If my child cannot change right now, then I must change,” or “In a 100-year life, one or two years will somehow be manageable”—the child unexpectedly begins to move forward.

In this way, the hearts of parents and children seem to fluctuate in sync with one another.

Counseling for Parents

For this reason, counseling for parents is extremely meaningful. Let me share the case of a mother whose son was in his first year of junior high school. She always made an appointment first thing in the morning, came to counseling, and then went to work.

One day, she arrived at the scheduled time in great agitation. Her first words were, “Teacher, my son betrayed me!” When I listened to her, I learned that her son had said the previous weekend, “I think I’ll go to school starting next week.” She had been hopeful. But on the day itself, he did not get up. When it was already time for him to be late and she went to wake him, he was under the covers crying. Because her expectations had been so high, her anger did not subside, and it came out as the word “betrayed.”

The mother continued speaking without giving me much chance to say anything. But after she had spoken everything out, she seemed to cool down. Then she began defending her son, saying, “He really did intend to go.” By the end, she said, “We’re back to square one, but I’ll keep trying,” smiled a little, and went off to work.

At that moment, I felt very glad that I had been meeting with this mother regularly. If she had not been able to release her feelings in that setting, she might have directed them at her child. If a child is told, “You betrayed me,” the child will feel devastated. Then the mother, seeing the child suffer, will blame herself. I felt that preventing that cycle was very important. Parent counseling often serves as a crucial place for parents to release built-up pressure.

Parents Go to Counseling for Themselves

I also think it is important for parents to understand that they are going to counseling for themselves. This is because children may have complicated feelings about their parents going to counseling.

At the event I mentioned earlier, where a high school student with experience of school non-attendance spoke, I met a mother who wanted to go to counseling. Just as I was about to say that it would be good for the mother to begin counseling, the high school student raised their hand and said, “It doesn’t feel good when a parent talks about me to someone I don’t know. I also didn’t want my parent to suffer because I was not going to school.” Hearing this, I thought, “Yes, that feeling makes sense.”

At the same time, I could never tell a mother not to go to counseling. So I said something like this: “As you have just heard, children may have these kinds of feelings. That is precisely why it may be better to think of counseling not as something you attend for the child, or because of the child, but as something you attend for yourself.”

If a parent feels, “I am going to counseling because of my child,” anger may arise: “I am struggling so much, but my child is not changing at all.” When the child sees that, they may feel guilty, thinking, “This is my fault.”

But if the parent goes to counseling for their own sake, it may reduce the burden on the child and make the parent feel lighter as well. When I said this, the high school student who had said they did not want parents to go to counseling seemed to look as though they could accept it, at least tacitly. Personally, I believe it is very important for parents to take the first step toward support.

Self-Compassion Comes Back to the Child

When parents smile a little more, relax their shoulders, shift their perspective, or become better at asking for help, these changes can have a positive effect on their children.

Children are extremely sensitive to their parents’ moods. They notice when their mother seems tense or when their father seems upset. This is not limited to children experiencing school non-attendance. On the other hand, if a parent can release their feelings somewhere, feel refreshed, and smile a little, the child may feel relieved and smile too. Then the parent, seeing the child smile, feels a little happier. In this way, a positive circular relationship can emerge.

This is where the concept of self-compassion becomes important. It means healing oneself and treating oneself with care. I encourage parents to do things for themselves: go to counseling for their own sake, take up a hobby, eat something delicious, or give themselves some kind of reward. When parents themselves feel refreshed, that can return to the child in a positive way. I strongly feel that it is important for parents and guardians to connect with support first.

The Circular Relationship Between Parent and Child

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Schools Also Need Team-Based Support

Finally, I would like to talk about schools and teachers who support children experiencing school non-attendance.

In schools, it is important not to leave everything to the homeroom teacher alone. Support should be provided by a team, such as the teachers in the same grade level or a team that includes school administrators. The benefit of team support is that it allows for a more multifaceted understanding of the child. A child may show one side of themselves to the homeroom teacher, another side in the school nurse’s office, and yet another side during club activities. When support is provided as a team, there are also more people available. For example, if the homeroom teacher has to say something difficult, the school nurse’s office can provide follow-up support. The school counselor may take the lead in supporting the parents. Since school non-attendance often requires long-term support, everyone can become tired over time. A team structure helps staff support one another as well.

However, in order to provide team-based support, teachers must be willing to open up. They need to be able to say, “I am struggling with this situation in my class,” or “There is a child like this in my class.” To do that, the team atmosphere must be healthy. If the atmosphere is cold, teachers may worry that they will be criticized for speaking openly.

The whole school needs an atmosphere in which everyone shares responsibility. I often tell school administrators that they should avoid creating an atmosphere in which school non-attendance is blamed on one person or one class. Instead, they should foster a culture in which the whole school looks at the issue together.

Short Case Meetings and Assessment

As an extension of team support, there are also case meetings. Separate from regular staff meetings, these are meetings in which the homeroom teacher, school nurse, and several other relevant staff members gather to discuss a child experiencing school non-attendance. They share information, conduct an assessment, and decide on the next step. The meeting can be short—10 or 15 minutes is enough. What matters is deciding on the next action, such as asking the parents to come for a meeting or referring the child to a specialized agency. Then, after one or two weeks, the team meets again and discusses the case in the same way. Holding these frequent, small case meetings can make support much easier.

One important point is that when people with different areas of expertise, such as teachers and counselors, meet together, their perspectives may differ. If this turns into conflict, nothing productive will result. But if everyone respects one another’s expertise, the meeting will go much better. Teachers may value certain aspects, while counselors may focus on others. Both perspectives are important.

Assessment remains the foundation. The first important thing is to understand the child. What is the child expressing? What strengths does the child have? What overall characteristics do they have? What are their positive qualities and abilities? When a child stops attending school, adults tend to notice only negative aspects: the child struggles with relationships, or has fallen behind academically. But when we look at the child’s positive qualities, the people around them can feel hope, and the child may gain confidence.

It is also important to assess not only the individual child but also the environment. What is the family like? What is the classroom atmosphere like? We should also look not only at the present moment, but at changes over time—for example, compared with a year ago—and pay attention to positive changes as well.

Another important perspective is to look around the child and ask: Who is struggling right now? The child may be struggling, of course. But if the parent is the one currently in the greatest distress, then support should begin with the parent. If the homeroom teacher is exhausted, then the grade-level team or the whole school needs to support that teacher. Ultimately, it is important to support the child, the parents, and the homeroom teacher. But we also need a triage perspective: where should we begin?

I have also written about school-based efforts in my book "School Mental Health: How to Support Children and Teachers" published by Iwanami Shoten. I hope it may be useful as a reference.

Support for School Non-Attendance in Schools

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School Non-Attendance as a Turning Point for Thinking About the Future

Based on my experience meeting many children who have experienced school non-attendance, I do not see it as an irreversible setback or failure. Of course, there are very difficult periods. But after children get through that difficult time, many say things such as, “Because I had that time, I came to understand myself better,” or “Because I went through something painful, I became kinder to others.”

That is why I hope the people around the child can see school non-attendance as a turning point—a time when the child has stopped in order to think about their own future—and can find meaning in that time while walking alongside them. From the child’s perspective, being seen in that way can bring reassurance: “My parents accept me,” or “They understand me.”

Every child is different, and there is no formula for school non-attendance. One important realization is that trying to understand “school non-attendance itself,” or trying to identify a single reason for it, may be the wrong approach. Precisely because there is no formula, we must keep trying different forms of support without giving up, and continue trying to understand that particular child. The people who can do this best are the parents and teachers standing right in front of the child. I believe that the very act of trying to understand the child becomes a source of strength for that child.

That said, when a child is experiencing school non-attendance, both the child and the parents are going through a difficult time. So even if parents and teachers cannot run alongside the child, I hope they can walk with the child while skillfully asking for help from others around them.

（This article is based on a lecture given at a study session held on February 14, 2026.）

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