Hi Tilla
I am sorry for you and your DS - school refusal is tough to deal with! My DD11 (then 10) had several days last year when she was also 'sick'.
You are right- it is so hard to know what to do - should you somehow 'make' them go? But the days of physically picking them up and carrying are pretty myc over. And my powers of persuasion were really not good.
In my DD's case, the main problem was anxiety - and it was so confusing, because the advice you read tells you not to let kids 'avoid' what they are anxious about - that it will only set up a pattern of: anxiety of X = run away from X, repeat.
However, I just did not know how to make her go to school when she was anxious and refusing.
We tried counselling - went for a couple of sessions, and then DD refused to go back. She was just not able to discuss these issues in front of anyone other than me. It ended up that I (and sometimes DH) went for the counselling - basically I looked at the psychologist as a coach in terms of how to talk to DD about these issues. It was really helpful!
If your DS will agree to counseling, he may be able to learn some tools to cope with big issues (e.g. climate change), and also how to cope with/talk to the kids in his class. Because, you are right - he won't always be able to avoid big scary topics, or unpleasant people.
Even if you do decide on the distributed learning, I think I would try to start the counseling.
