Can anxiety now predict attendance difficulties later on?

 Can anxiety now predict attendance difficulties later on?  

A recent study of autistic young people found something that I think parents and schools would find it really helpful to know.  

Researchers in Australia followed a group of autistic youngsters to find out what might predict school attendance difficulties later on, and the clearest finding was anxiety. Children aged 11 to 14 who had high levels of anxiety three, four, and six years earlier went on to miss much more school later. And importantly, they didn't just miss more school overall. They missed school specifically because they found it so emotionally difficult.

Now this research doesn't mean that an anxious child will inevitably end up with attendance difficulties. And it definitely doesn't mean that anxiety is the whole problem because we still need to ask,  "Why is that young person so anxious?"

 Could they be overwhelmed by noise or other sensory issues? Are they struggling socially? Are they masking all day? Are they worried about getting things wrong? Do they find uncertainty and unexpected change really difficult?  

Anxiety is usually a sign that something is feeling really hard for that young person, I think that's the most important message from this research. So please don't wait until your child is regularly missing school to try and work out what's going on.

If a child is already showing signs of school anxiety, please get curious. Ask "What's making school so hard and what can we do to make it better?"  

If you're not sure where to start, my free school anxiety checklist can help you identify some of the factors that might be contributing to your child's worries. You can download it here. 

And here's the research paper I'm talking about: 

Adams, D., Gray, K.M., den Houting, J. et al. Concurrent and Longitudinal Predictors of School Non-attendance in Autistic Adolescents. J Autism Dev Disord (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-025-06976-9