Thank you. This is all very useful information. He is seeing an outside psych FOR anxiety, and they are all well aware of that. He had a "wild animal" episode in the jump start K the summer before kindergarten started. We took steps to ensure this didn't happen again by introducing him to people and allowing him to explore before school started. It worked well. We had issues last year, don't get me wrong, but not like that. This year, they changed the entire after school program and he was not prepared. By about day 6, we had an episode.
We are meeting with the principal, counselor and teacher. We have met twice with a bigger group. Those three, two instructional coaches, and the director of curriculum and gifted services (although she has zero experience with gifted services. It's a small school district). I was pushing for IAS, but they wanted to wait until we received scores, which we paid for out of pocket. Unfortunately timing is everything, and we didn't get the report back until after first grade started. Compound that with DS's extreme hesitation to consider acceleration (anxiety), and we decided it might be better to work with his teacher.
She has said, "He wants to do the right thing." Last year, all we heard, other than he's smart, is he's overwhelming, he's manipulative, he's too much in the classroom, etc. It's so great to hear something different and for someone to actually see that he really does want to do the right thing. It's a point that came up on the Anxiety Index (MASC).
I'm going to try to find some common ground and get us all to agree. I'm also going to suggest some curriculum compacting. I THINK the teacher will be susceptible. I hope. If not, I may have to push for a 504. He already has one for Celiac...so why not one more?
Thank you so much for your advice. It's very helpful!
