Hello all...
I've got a brewing crisis on my hands. I've been trying to get my ds6 evaluated so we have leverage with the school since AUGUST, it's taking SO LONG to do I want to scream. And my son is decompensating. He's gone from unhappy and upset to telling me he can't handle it any more, and I've seen that it's a genuine anguish when he's telling me that but then he'd go on to other things and feel better, but tonight he just melted down. And for the first time I thought, he may really not be able to handle it. He says he's so worried and scared about school that he feels sick. He can't describe what feels sick or wrong, he just feels sick. He's scared he's getting in trouble for trying to work ahead (he is), he's worried that he can't handle it even one more day.
My instinct - which I'm pretty sure my dh is not going to share - is to pull him at least for a few days to let the situation settle a bit. I think it was provoked tonight by his dad finally teaching him fractions, so he got to do all this fun mental math, adding fifths to halves and 3rds to quarters and all that sort of thing, and then had to get ready for bed and school tomorrow.
We're in the midst of this eval, and the psychologist strongly wants us not to talk about results until she's done all the different kinds of tests, including the classroom eval the school is stonewalling on. And she strongly strongly urges we not say 'gifted' or demand any kind of change until we have her eval. My hands are so tied for like a month or more, and I can't take it, b/c my son can't.
So I'm wanting to know, if I keep him home to buy him some psychological relief - I mean, I think the kid may be literally starting to have anxiety attacks - do I run up on truancy laws? (I know state matters...I'm in CT) But I have no idea what the consequences might be. Does it wreck his school record? Does this matter in first grade? Do I tell the school why? Would they call social services on me or do I have the right to keep my kid home? Would that make them think he was mentally ill or something?
If any of you have done something similar as well, I'd like to know. It would feel like jumping off a cliff without a rope to keep him home not knowing how or when to send him back! I kind of want to keep him and tell the school he's being seriously harmed by the situation and he won't be coming back until there are enough changes that he can handle being there, but that sounds so aggressive. How unreasonable would that be? Given that the first-order things he'd need changed would be to be allowed to start working on worksheets without waiting for instruction, to be allowed to work ahead at least on his own materials, to be allowed to check out books from a higher grade in the library, and to read them in his free time. Currently his teacher 'forbids' all these things b/c he is 'spoiling things' by trying to do this work.
any advice would be most gratefully received!
