Making Energy Visible: Using Energy Accounting to Support School Attendance

For many children and young people, attending school can feel overwhelming. What might seem like simple daily routines - getting dressed, travelling to school, entering a busy classroom - can require significant emotional and sensory energy. Without understanding these experiences from the child's perspective, we risk missing opportunities to provide effective support.

Exploring emotional barriers to attendance requires creating space for children to share their lived experiences in ways that feel accessible and meaningful to them. Traditional conversations about feelings and difficulties may not always capture the full picture, especially when children struggle to verbalise their experiences or feel their challenges aren't understood.

Visual frameworks and concrete analogies can help bridge this gap, giving children tools to express how different aspects of their school day impact their emotional and sensory wellbeing. Energy Accounting activities offer exactly this kind of structured, visual approach to understanding a child's experience.

Understanding Energy Through Different Lenses

The concept of managing daily energy has been explored through several helpful frameworks. Maja Toudal and Tony Attwood developed their Energy Accounting approach using the metaphor of a bank account. Just as we manage our money through deposits and withdrawals, they explained how we navigate our daily energy. Each interaction or activity either depletes our energy balance (a withdrawal) or replenishes it (a deposit). When we consistently make more withdrawals than deposits, we risk going into 'energy overdraft', leading to exhaustion and overwhelm.

Christine Miserandino's Spoon Theory provides another concrete way to explore energy with children. This approach uses the tangible image of spoons to represent available energy. Children can physically hold, create or draw spoons to show how different parts of their school day use up their energy 'spoons'. This hands-on approach helps make abstract concepts of energy and fatigue more visible and discussable. For instance, a child might identify that morning assembly costs them three spoons, while a quiet reading session replenishes (‘gives them back’) a spoon. This insight can lead to meaningful conversations about where in the school day they need more support or opportunities to 'recharge'.

Making Energy Visible: From Simple Batteries to Smartphones

For younger children, the simple concept of a battery provides an accessible starting point. Most children have experience with battery-operated toys or devices - they know batteries can run low and need regular charging to keep working. This basic understanding creates a natural bridge to exploring their own energy levels throughout the school day.

We might ask a young child to think about their 'battery level' at different points of the day: "How full is your battery when you wake up?", "What makes your battery feel low?", "What helps charge it up again?" Using simple battery drawings with different fill levels helps make these conversations concrete and visual.

As children get older, Jodie Smitten's smartphone analogy builds on this foundation by introducing the concept of multiple apps running simultaneously. This resonates particularly well with older pupils who understand how different apps drain their phone's battery at different rates, and how apps left running in the background continue using power.

Each school experience becomes like an app on their phone - getting dressed for school, navigating busy corridors, participating in group work. Some experiences drain the battery quickly, while others have a smaller impact. Importantly, challenging or distressing experiences can be like apps that stay open in the background, continuously draining energy even after the immediate situation has passed.

Using This Framework in Practice

When working with children, we might explore how different parts of their school day affect their 'battery level'. Through visual aids like battery icons or sliding scales, children can indicate their energy levels at different points in the day. This often reveals patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed - perhaps showing that certain lessons, transitions, or social situations consistently drain their battery more than others.

The activity becomes particularly powerful when we map out both energy drains and recharging opportunities. A child might identify that reading in the library at lunch helps recharge their battery, or that having a quiet space available after PE helps them recover from the sensory intensity of the sports hall.

Creating Personalised Energy Maps

Working collaboratively with the child, we can create their personal energy map. This might include:

• Identifying their peak energy times during the school day
• Noting which activities require the most energy
• Finding natural breaks where recharging can occur
• Planning ahead for particularly demanding periods
• Recognising early warning signs of low battery

This understanding allows us to make meaningful adjustments to support attendance. Perhaps a child needs a quiet arrival time before joining the class, or access to calming activities between high-energy lessons. The focus shifts from expecting children to 'push through' to actively managing their energy levels throughout the day.

Empowering Children and Schools

The real strength of energy accounting lies in its ability to validate children's experiences while providing a shared language for discussing needs. Children often feel relieved to have their energy demands recognised and understood. Schools gain practical insights into how they can better support attendance through environmental accommodations and simple tweaks to a child’s day.

Supporting children's attendance isn't just about reducing what drains their battery - though this is certainly important. We might help them avoid having too many high-demand activities back-to-back, reduce sensory overload in busy spaces, or adjust the timing of challenging subjects. However, equally important is ensuring regular opportunities to recharge throughout the day.

These 'charging points' look different for each child. For some, it might be quiet reading time in the library, access to a calm space between lessons, or time to engage with a special interest. Others might recharge through movement breaks, time with a trusted adult, or using sensory resources. The key is working with each child to identify what genuinely replenishes their energy and then deliberately building these opportunities into their daily routine.

By taking this dual approach - reducing unnecessary drains while maximising recharge opportunities - we create a more sustainable environment for attendance. Rather than expecting children to simply endure until they reach empty, we help them maintain healthier energy levels throughout the day.

Working in Partnership with Families

Understanding a child's energy patterns requires insights from both home and school. Parents often notice early warning signs of a depleting battery - perhaps their child is exhausted after school, struggles with morning routines, or needs significant downtime at weekends to recover. This valuable knowledge helps build a complete picture of the child's energy needs across their whole day.

Families can also share what recharging strategies work well at home. These might be adapted for the school environment or help inform the timing of more demanding activities. For instance, if a parent knows their child needs quiet time after social interactions, this might influence how we structure their timetable or break times.

Creating Sustainable Support

The most effective approaches may involve:

Taking a Whole-Day View

Energy accounting isn't just about managing school hours. Morning routines, travel time, after-school activities, and homework all impact a child's energy levels. Working with families helps us understand these cumulative effects and plan accordingly.

Regular Review and Adjustment

As children grow and circumstances change, so too might their energy patterns. What works well one term might need adjusting the next. Regular check-ins with the child and family help ensure support remains effective and appropriate.

Building Independence

It's also important to recognise that some children may find it difficult to interpret or express how different experiences affect their energy levels. These interoception difficulties - the ability to recognise internal bodily signals - mean they might need additional support to identify when their battery is getting low. Working alongside parents or carers who know their child well can help spot signs of depleting energy that the child themselves might not yet recognise.

Over time, we can help children recognise their own energy patterns and advocate for their needs. This might start with adult support to spot 'low battery' warnings, gradually building to children independently using their recharging strategies.

Developing a Supportive Culture

Creating an environment where children feel comfortable expressing their energy needs requires a shift in school culture. This means:

Understanding Every Child is Different

What depletes one child's battery might recharge another's. Some might need movement breaks to recharge, while others find physical activities draining. Recognising these individual differences helps avoid one-size-fits-all approaches.

Making Support Readily Available

Ensuring recharging opportunities are easily accessible rather than requiring children to ask repeatedly or justify their needs. This might mean having designated quiet spaces, sensory resources, or movement breaks built into the routine.

Normalising Energy Management

Helping all children (and adults) understand that managing energy levels is a normal part of the day, just like eating when hungry or drinking when thirsty. This reduces stigma and encourages children (and adults) to recognise and respond to their needs.

EBSA Horizons Resource

The EBSA Horizons course now includes an Energy Accounting resource to support this work. This practical tool provides visual materials and structured activities to help explore energy levels with children and young people in a way that validates their experiences.

When using this resource, it's important to remember that our focus should be on adapting the environment rather than expecting the child to change. Too often, we can fall into the trap of trying to build a child's resilience or stamina without first addressing the aspects of their environment that are unnecessarily draining their battery. Environmental adjustments - whether physical, sensory, or social - are always a useful starting point.

The Energy Accounting resource, available within the EBSA Horizons course materials, provides schools and professionals with practical guidance for navigating these considerations while working collaboratively with children and families to understand and support their needs.

EBSA Horizons Schools Training

EBSA Horizons Educational Psychologist CPD

Whole Local Authority EBSA Initiative