For a single parent, a difficult school morning can unravel an entire day. Your child is upset, you’re trying to work out what’s wrong, and the clock is moving towards the moment you’re supposed to be at work. You want to give them time and reassurance. You also need to keep your job. Somewhere in the middle of all that, you’re expected to make the right decision about whether they can manage school today, often without another adult to talk it through with.

A Guardian briefing published on 12 October explores declining school engagement and pressures on pastoral support. For us at Frolo, that raises another question: when a child is struggling, what support is available to the parent trying to hold everything together?

The work that happens around the school day

Conversations about school attendance tend to focus on whether a child gets through the gates. For a parent, there can be hours of work surrounding that moment: listening to worries the night before, negotiating getting dressed, contacting school, rearranging appointments and trying to understand whether the difficulty is friendships, anxiety, learning, exhaustion or something their child can’t yet explain. Getting into school might be a significant achievement, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the underlying problem has gone away.

When you’re parenting alone, you may also be the person attending every meeting, remembering what was agreed and following up when something hasn’t happened. If your child comes home distressed, you’re the one helping them settle while making dinner and looking after any other children. There may be a co-parent who shares that responsibility, but there may not. Support for single parents needs to work for the families where there is no second person available to take over.

That matters when advice assumes a parent has endless flexibility. A meeting in the middle of the working day, a request to collect a child immediately or a suggestion to spend more time supervising homework can all sound reasonable in isolation. Put them together, and they can become a substantial additional workload. A parent who asks for a telephone appointment or needs notice to arrange time off may be doing everything they can to stay involved.

Parents need a conversation they can be honest in

At Frolo, we believe parents should be able to say that they’re struggling without worrying that it will be taken as evidence that they don’t care. “I don’t know how to get my child into school” can be a request for help from someone who has already tried everything they can think of. “I can’t keep leaving work” can be a statement about keeping a household financially afloat.

A useful conversation would make room for both the child’s needs and the parent’s circumstances. What is happening before, during and after school? What has helped, even briefly? Who will coordinate the next steps? What can the school offer, and what is realistic for the parent to manage at home? These are the kinds of questions we would like families to be able to explore together, with a clear plan rather than a growing list of separate tasks.

Teachers and school staff need time and resources to have those conversations too. A parent and a teacher can both want the best for a child while feeling stretched beyond what they can reasonably manage. Any serious discussion of support for children struggling at school should include the adults around them, and the conditions that allow them to work together.

Finding support when you’re parenting alone

There is also value in having somewhere to talk after the meeting is over. You might need to rehearse a question, untangle your thoughts or tell someone that getting your child through the door took everything you had that morning. Another single parent may understand why a seemingly small request from school has left you feeling overwhelmed, particularly if you don’t have family nearby.

This is part of the reason community matters to Frolo. Connecting with other single parents can give you space to be understood, alongside whatever professional or school support your family needs. You don’t have to arrive with a solution or turn your experience into a success story to deserve that connection.

When a child is struggling with school, their parent needs people who will listen, practical arrangements they can manage and a clear sense of who is helping. We should be asking how to provide that support before the whole family reaches exhaustion

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