When a young person is miserable at school, something needs to change.

If getting out the door each morning has become a battle, anxiety is overwhelming, attendance is deteriorating, or a student simply no longer feels comfortable or safe in their school community, continuing to push through the same experience may not be the answer.

For parents, watching this happen is incredibly difficult.

You know your child needs something different. You want the anxiety to ease. You want the conflict to stop. You want to see your child feel like themselves again.

Increasingly, families facing these circumstances are turning to online school.

It is easy to understand why.

Online programs can provide flexibility. They can remove a student from an environment that has become a source of anxiety, conflict, or failure. They can allow a young person to work at their own pace and, depending on the program, provide strong academic instruction and legitimate credits toward graduation.

For a struggling student and an exhausted family, that relief can feel enormous.

And relief matters.

A young person who is suffering should not simply be told to tough it out. Leaving an environment that isn’t working may be exactly the right decision.

But relief and growth are not necessarily the same thing.

Getting away from something that isn’t working can be an important first step.

But where is your child going next?

School is certainly about learning algebra, writing essays, understanding history, exploring science, and earning the credits necessary for graduation.

But those are only some of the things adolescents are learning.

They are also learning how to participate in a community.

How to ask for help. How to disagree. How to collaborate. How to recover from an awkward interaction. How to contribute something another person values. How to tolerate frustration. How to discover that they are good at something. How to navigate relationships with adults and peers. How to become increasingly independent while still relying upon others.

Those are not distractions from education.

They are part of education.

Human beings are not particularly well designed to learn and develop in isolation. Some of our most meaningful learning occurs through shared experience: an unexpected question from a classmate, a teacher who notices our confusion, a group struggling together with a difficult problem, the excitement generated by someone else’s idea, or even the healthy frustration of having to work with people who see the world differently than we do.

The best learning is often a shared experience.

It can be messy, social, spontaneous, funny, challenging, frustrating, and inspiring.

It is difficult for a screen to reproduce that.

For families considering online school, I think there is an important distinction worth considering.

What does our child need to get away from?

And then:

What does our child need to move toward?

The answers to the first question may be quite clear.

Anxiety. A school where they don’t feel understood. Social pressures. Academic frustration. A feeling of constant failure. A community where they have never quite found their place.

Getting away from those things may be healthy and necessary.

But removing the source of discomfort is only part of the solution.

We also have to ask what will replace it.

If a student who has become anxious about school moves primarily into the safety of home and online learning, the immediate anxiety may decrease. The morning conflict may disappear. Assignments may get completed. Credits may accumulate.

Those are real benefits.

But what happens to belonging? Friendship? Collaboration? Independence? Confidence? The ability to navigate discomfort successfully? The opportunity to discover new interests alongside other people?

Those developmental needs have not disappeared simply because school now happens on a laptop.