In some of my recent posts I mentioned that Nate's anxiety is up, WAY up. It's spilling out everywhere and he is having trouble simply functioning.
Add to this that Nate announced yesterday that he didn't wan't to go to 4th grade, that he was going to do 3rd grade again... in order to understand what a HUGE deal this is let me explain. Nate was retained in the 1st grade. He completely lost it when this happened, it was a big mess, pre-dx, really bad teacher that year, anyways, when he was retained he totally lost it. He didn't speak in sentences again for months, social contact slammed to a halt, trust me, huge mess. The following year Nate could not attend school. He couldn't get near the building w/out freaking out so he did 2nd grade via computer. He was able to return for 3rd grade but we live in a high stakes testing state and, being w/out dx, Nate HAD to take the test. If he didn't pass the test he wouldn't pass 3rd grade. I spent the whole year fighting for testing accomodations, getting him extra services so that he would be as prepped as possible for the test, not to mention paying big $ for private tutors. It was a terrible year w/ us and the school. Anyways, Nate passed the FCAT and has been passed to 4th grade. After all of that he announces he doesn't want to go to 4th grade afterall.
He is afraid it will be too hard. He is worried he will fail. He talks about that, along w/ my apparently impending demise, constantly. He's getting wound up about it and I am sooo worried that he's going to be unable to attend school again this year. He's doing lots of head banging again, his social contact outside the house is screeching to a halt and all his little quirks are flaring. So the big question is what am I supposed to do?
To top it off, he hasn't seen his psych in 2 wks due to our vacation and now his psych is on vacation. I tried to call his partner but their fax machine is hooked up to their phone line every time I call, VERY unlike them because they do have a sep. fax #. I can't reach anyone and he's just getting worse. Does anyone have any ideas for how to "fix" this? How do I assure him that he will be fine in the 4th grade? Where is the instruction manual?! Thanks,
I couldn't tell by your post. Has he been now dx'd. I know you said he hadn't been dx'd but I wasn't sure if that was done now. Are you able to try homeschooling? I know that's a huge responsibility though. Honestly my children are too young to relate much to his fear of going up in grades, but sounds like he is really upset about this. I wanted to bump this up so maybe someone else w/ better understanding and advice might be able to answer you. My only thought was to take him in and have him meet his teacher and see the classroom and maybe get a good feeling about it before he has to attend for real. Good luck.
Amber
Amber,
yes, Nate is now dx'd pdd-nos. Probably the worst part here is that I made my teacher request for next year directly to our principal. He was handling that for us, the same way he handles it every year for all of my kids. It's especially important for Nate because then he can look his new teacher up in the yearbook, we talk about her, get him used to her name because he has a very hard time w/ names, etc. But our principal just got promoted over the summer and the bad part is he supposedly didn't have time to get to any of the teacher assignments before he left. So now we've been prepping Nate for Mrs. Karpf since late April and he may not even end up w/ her. He doesn't transition well, doesn't deal w/ change, and won't understand this at all. Very frustrating. Obviously I'm going to the school on Monday to see what I can do at this point.
Nate did virtual school for 1 yr, which is homeschool via computer but that's not really good for him because school is the only social event that Nate participates in other than 3 mo of baseball every year. He just isolates if he's not in school, not good. Thanks for bumping this up and as soon as we know who his teacher will be we'll definitely be making the big visit, hopefully a few times before the year begins.