The grade 6 social studies curriculum seems to be mostly based on environmental issues. This is causing my son a lot of anxiety. He feels like he's getting it from all sides. Science topics have lead to discussions on solar flares destroying the world, robots and AI destroying the world. Other topics like climate change, overpopulation and general end of the world scenarios are haunting him.
He is in a pull out program once a week which seems, this year, to be populated with more blurty kids who offer up opinions on end of the world topics (unsolicited). They are likely also bombarded with these topics and are trying to make sense of them.
He is getting increasingly anxious and has now twice been unable to go to school (wobbly full of tears) because of his anxiety of the topics to be covered those days and has withdrawn from the pull out program.
I have spoken to his teacher who, very intelligently is also teaching the kids about mindfulness and how to deal with stress. We agreed that he could request to go to the bathroom if he felt overwhelmed by the topic. That doesn't seem to be enough for him (and he's mortified that I spoke to his teacher).
Help? Advice?
Have brought up the topic of counselling but he is refusing. Help on that topic too please. Not sure how to get a reluctant child to go to counselling.
The timing on this is critical as being "out of the norm" is very stressful at this age.
