Edit: my original response was unnecessarily brusque and rude, and I apologize. I can elaborate further, but in the meantime, you might squint at the doc again, because it was a particular message about agency aimed at people in exactly your kind of situation.
The end result of my experiment in school refusal was being put on psychiatric medication. (Which actually did help, if you consider changing my preferences to something more socially acceptable to be helping.)
In hindsight, my best strategy might have been seeking a diagnosis of delayed sleep phase syndrome and requesting accomodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act. (The trigger for all this was that the school changed its starting time from 8:10 AM to 7:40 AM and I was not willing to deal with getting up any earlier.)
I was in a special education school from third to seventh grade, and I was absolutely forced to be physically present at that school as much as any prison inmate was forced to be physically present in prison. They couldn’t force me to do schoolwork, and there were times I accepted a loss of privileges as the consequence for not participating, but any attempt to leave would be met by physical force. (The school even had a “time-out room” in which a student that became violent—a not uncommon occurrence—could be locked inside until he or she had calmed down.)
Participation was indeed a choice. Being physically present was not.
You missed the entire point.
Edit: my original response was unnecessarily brusque and rude, and I apologize. I can elaborate further, but in the meantime, you might squint at the doc again, because it was a particular message about agency aimed at people in exactly your kind of situation.
The end result of my experiment in school refusal was being put on psychiatric medication. (Which actually did help, if you consider changing my preferences to something more socially acceptable to be helping.)
In hindsight, my best strategy might have been seeking a diagnosis of delayed sleep phase syndrome and requesting accomodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act. (The trigger for all this was that the school changed its starting time from 8:10 AM to 7:40 AM and I was not willing to deal with getting up any earlier.)
I was in a special education school from third to seventh grade, and I was absolutely forced to be physically present at that school as much as any prison inmate was forced to be physically present in prison. They couldn’t force me to do schoolwork, and there were times I accepted a loss of privileges as the consequence for not participating, but any attempt to leave would be met by physical force. (The school even had a “time-out room” in which a student that became violent—a not uncommon occurrence—could be locked inside until he or she had calmed down.)
Participation was indeed a choice. Being physically present was not.