How Parents Can Prevent Truancy

    • Make school a priority. Students must not miss school to help with the family business, babysit younger siblings, or go on vacations that fall during the school year. Allowing students to miss school for reasons other than illness or family emergencies sends the message that school is not important.
    • Insist on accurate record keeping. If your child has truancy issues, the school’s attendance policies may not be consistent or effective enough to track your child.

    • Ask the school to notify you when your child is absent whether the absence is excused or unexcused in order to ensure that your child is not forging your name on notes and letters to the school.

    • Investigate the safety of the child’s school. An environment with gang or bullying issues encourages truancy.

    • Talk to your school’s guidance counselor about the possibility of your child attending an alternate school in your district if any environmental issues cannot be addressed.

    • Escort your child to school, whether by walking or driving him. You can shield your child from violence or truant peers by taking him directly to his first class.

    • Work with your child on subjects in which he struggles. Children skip school to avoid embarrassment in the classroom when their academic performance is poor.

    • Take an active interest in your child’s schoolwork. Ask him what he learned in school. 

    • Ask your child his thoughts on truancy.

    • Monitor changes in your child’s friendships, teachers, and family relationships. Problems in all three areas can contribute to your child’s reluctance to attend school.

    • Encourage your child to take an active role in school clubs and participate in sports.

How to Stop Truancy

    • Contact the administrator of the school or the school district administrator responsible for attendance or truancy. Learn the district supervisory chain of command and try to resolve the problem with the administrator closest to the child.

    • Volunteer to be a mentor and support school activities such as music, athletics, and the arts.

    • Contact the local juvenile court that manages truancy policies. Determine how your child’s situation fits the attendance policies and procedures. 

    • Work with the school. Parents can’t do it alone. Talk with the classroom teacher about playground issues. Ask the teacher for a plan to help your child make up missed classwork. It is crucial that the parents and the school work together to help the child.

    • Create a contract, set some boundaries, and make it fun for your child to go to school.

    • Find other parents and older students who are willing to help your child with homework. Make your home the homework center. Put together a telephone tree available to all the neighborhood children’s parents so that all the parents can communicate with each other.

    • Obtain a copy of the district’s policies and procedures regarding attendance and truancy. Attendance and truancy information is contained in the Student Conduct section of the Student Handbook issued by many school districts. School districts place their policies on their Web sites. 

    • Request meetings with your child’s teachers, the school social worker, the school psychologist and the school principal, if needed.

    • Set a time for your child to go to bed, wake up, have breakfast, arrive at school, and complete his homework.

    • Reward good attendance. However, a day off from school should never be the reward for a student with attendance issues. 

    • Sign up and attend parent education programs. You can learn new techniques and share what you have learned with other parents.