Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Pulling an 11 year old out of school to "unschool"

I was reading where a few of you have pulled younger kids out of school to decompress and "unschool". If you've read my posts, you know we're having so much trouble with out son. Anxiety, fatigue, won't get things done, only wants to play on the computer, defiance. He can't get out of bed in the mornings.

He says he likes school and is challenged.

I'm wondering if maybe we should pull him out of school for a while with very few expectations on him? He's like a time-release time bomb - exploding a little at a time but with the big one yet to come. Or maybe like a coiled spring that releases just a little and then recoils. I don't know.

The minimum he'd have to do for schooling: finish Algebra I, do the required content for Social Studies, English, and Science. None of that should be too hard for him to do. The downside is that he wouldn't have anyone but me during the day, unless we temporarily joined a homeschool group. He might get bored. He'd probably be up at 6:30 every morning.

I just had this thought this morning so I'm not sure it's a good idea. I guess I'm just brainstorming. I would have a hard time selling it to both him and my husband. My son would really miss not playing in the band. We don't have partial homeschooling here, bummer.

We're looking into doing Neurofeedback therapy with him and possibly a dairy/gluten intolerance test (not having either for a month and then reintroducing one or the other) so not being in school for that time would be less hectic and stressful and we could do the NFT 3 times a week without him missing school. We have a neuropysch appointment in July.

How hard is it to pull out a 7th grader and then have him reenter in the fall as an 8th grader?

Just random thoughts about it at this point. I'm starting to think that the defiance and behavior issues aren't a diagnosable pyschological problem but exhaustion, stress, boredom, and depression. The psychiatrist is so sure it's ADHD that he won't discuss anything else so we are looking for a new psychiatrist.

Having him home would be very hard on me but it can't be much harder than what we are going through now. I feel badly posting another topic like this as I imagine that you are all thinking "what, her again, can't she give it a rest" or "what a pest" so I apologize if that's the case. I'm just so desperate and my IRL friends don't have a clue.

can't tell you much about pulling out of school since my boys aren't anywhere near that age just yet ... but just a thought on the dairy / gluten thing. We've been doing GFCF (gluten free / casein free) diet for about 3 months now and I have seen a HUGE difference in my boys before and after. They are both 2E and with the younger one I could see the difference within a week and with the older one took about 3 weeks. The dairy free part of the diet seems to kick in almost right away (days - few weeks) ... the gluten part though might not show itself till months later (it can be noticeable right away in cases where people are truly allergic or very sensitive but if it's just small sensitivities, it takes a long time for gluten to leave the body ... from what I've read and what I've seen at our house) ... again, looking at our younger one, I think the gluten free part of the diet is just now starting to take effect ... 3 months since we started. ... but it's most certainly worth trying!

If your son likes the band so much, maybe you should start with the diet first and if you don't see much improvement in a month or so, then pull out? Before we went on the diet, my younger one who was then 2.5 had been aggressive (for months) towards all other kids within about 10 feet radius and was very tantrummy (he has since been diagnosed with high functioning autism) and refused to communicate and just 5 days being completely dairy / casein free, he stopped hitting kids, his tantrums went from 30 minutes to 2-5 minutes if at all and he finally started telling us / showing us what he wanted or needed.

sorry I made it so long but wanted to give you some encouragement

That's not unschooling. If you've got problems with his behaviour at home and with him doing his homework efficiently, doing this is definitely not unschooling!

Don't feel bad about it; it happens when someone's child is having a hard time.

But honestly, this sounds, to me, from what you've said, like a terrible idea. He says he likes school and is challenged there and doesn't (from what you said before) have behaviour problems there; he does have behaviour problems and trouble getting things done at home. Sorry to be flippant, but I think I'd be considering boarding school before I'd be considering homeed!

I agree with Colinsmum.

Remind me, Petunia-- Have you made any progress toward getting a neuropsych evaluation? Until you have a full diagnostic picture, you're flying blind on how to fix it.

Keep him for as much of his time as possible in situations where he can be successful. If getting a tutor/personal coach for more hours after school helps him be more successful at home, I'd do that. (A college age boy can work wonders where I cannot, it seems.)

DeeDee

Petunia, I know that I commented in your 'piano' thread about some eerily similar things that I noticed about your DS and my DD13 when she was your son's age.

I would also have said that school wasn't "the" problem-- and probably DID, at least at the time.

But it was. It was so clearly the problem that within days of the end of the term, it had become unbelievably clear that my kid had nothing in particular "wrong" with her that wasn't about school.


We also battled over seemingly everything-- bedtime, computer usage, eating (we were doing weekly weigh-ins for a while), sleeping habits, hygiene, homework (and how)... just everything.

She was still a straight A student during this semester, which boggles my mind.

In the end, it was all about task-avoidant perfectionism run AMOK. It wasn't an eating disorder. It wasn't ADD (though we had a psych team fairly determined in that same area, too-- we cancelled with them once EVERY behavior resolved within three or four days of school ending).

You might hunt up that thread(Deterioration/perfectionism thread) from a few years ago. I have to agree with ColinsMum that homeschooling with an eye toward finishing some "core" subjects is probably not the best idea here, if my intuition about what you're seeing is correct.

It's possible that this is a fairly common stage that HG+ kids go through between 9 and 12 years of age. At least those who have the right cocktail of personality traits, that is. In DD's case, the worst of it was the spring just before she turned 12.

DH and I found it nothing short of harrowing. DD seems to have weathered it with few if any ill effects. She has since shed some light on her twisted reasoning and priorities during this bizarre period of her life; apparently, she was prioritizing Pokemon as an obsessive, addictive interest. She regrets that, by the way-- and the thing is, we weren't really able to "stop" her from indulging in it because of her cleverness at finding ways around our firewalls, both physically and electronically.

I don't have any real advice other than for you to look carefully at what your son DOES place a premium on (especially if he's hiding it from you), and ask whether or not your gut is telling you what the problem is.

Okay, well it wouldn't exactly be "unschooling". I just meant that to go back to school in the fall into 8th grade, he'd have to be able to show that he knew those things.

It's just so exhausting to GET him to school and GET him through the evenings. It took me 25 minutes this morning to get him out of bed, and that was starting an hour later than he usually gets up. He is always saying "I'm so tired". It's almost like he's sick and needs to recuperate.

We have a neuropsych appointment in July. I just don't see how we're going to get to July without something changing now.

Boarding School: I've considered it but it would break his daddy's heart. And, I think it would be very bad for him to be away from us. He's very attached to us.

Dairy/Gluten comments: thanks for the advice. The only dairy he eats is cheese and the occasional ice cream and he has no stomach complaints so I'm not sure about it.

Howler's mention of Pokemon got me thinking. You talk about him playing his computer games. Is it primarily just one game he is playing?

If he has a game addiction, many of the behaviors would fit with it. No or minimal issues at school would be because it is inaccessible (but he could be somewhat distracted there.) He may even say school is plenty challenging, because he wouldn't want additional work that might take away from it.

It would also be in line with defiance and attention issues.

I agree with the people who are thinking that this seems like a bad idea. You've written that he enjoys school and doesn't want to homeschool, so I'm confused about why you'd want to force it on him.

Do they have after-school study hall programs at his school? My son's did. The kids would all go to a room and do homework under the supervision of a teacher. If his school has this (I think most do) you sign him up for it? Then you might not have to fight with him so much about homework.

I think he says he likes school because that's what he thinks he's supposed to say. It would be less about homeschooling and more about just backing off and taking a break, lowering expectations and not having so many power struggles, resting, recuperating.

I have no idea what he places a premium on. I've been asking myself that for 5 years.

Zen, what would you do about a "game addiction"? He likes Minecraft but it doesn't work on our computer so he just plays it once or twice a week at a friend's house and watches the tutorials at our house. It's pretty much just computer games in general.

Augh!

I was just floating that out there. I think it would be obvious if it was something like World of Warcraft, and he was staying up late to play that. If it is a wide variety of games, then game addiction doesn't seem likely.

If it was an online game like WoW, then even impersonal impacts could cause freakouts. For example if the internet was out or the computer doesn't boot you'd expect some extreme reactions. I had a good friend who had a gambling addiction; she played on riverboats. When there was flooding one day and the boat was closed, she had a full on panic attack.

Hmmmm... well, from experience, such a gaming/internet 'addiction' (if one calls it that-- it could just be "obsession" instead) can be diffuse and not focal in nature. That's how it seemed to us, because it WASN'T any "one" site, or even any one behavior. It also wasn't addiction so much as escapism channeled through a particular obsessive interest.

Or it could be focal and furtive enough that you just don't know what it is, or think that it's relatively minor when it isn't.

I have no idea what he places a premium on. I've been asking myself that for 5 years.

I think that you have to figure that one out. What does your GUT tell you he cares about? What does he do when he can do ANYTHING he wants to do? (I mean, really, truly carte blanche.) What previous obsessive interests has he had trouble managing, if any? Those things are all clues to what he might be using as an escape.

What happens if you disable electronics overnight each night for a week?

This is a minimum? It doesn't sound like unschooling to me. It sounds like schooling, except at home and without anyone else to talk to. Personally, I think you'd be setting yourself up for power struggles that surpass what you've seen already.

You've said in many posts that your son has trouble getting stuff done at home. Why would this change if he's suddenly forced to spend all of his time at home? My eldest is homeschooled and he's very self-motivated. Even so, I have to guide him quite a bit.


I didn't understand what you meant here until I read this:



So, he was in school or in a scheduled activity from around 8 a.m. until 5:40 with exactly 5 minutes off? This isn't downtime by a large margin. And then he had another scheduled activity at 7? And he's on a baseball team? This seems to be a very heavy schedule. Maybe he's just worn out (or burning/burnt out).

Also, you seem very negative about daydreaming. I believe that many developmental professionals say that significant solitary time spent in unguided thought or pursuits is essential to healthy development.

Just wondering: is this a typical evening? If so, I can understand why he might rebel. But I don't think he was "stupid" because he missed Scouts. I also don't it's healthy for a anyone to be "on" from early in the morning until close to bedtime, and certainly not a child.


I'm confused. Why did you say "hah!" here? Is being a section leader a bad thing? Overall, from what you've written, he seems to be having relatively few problems in school and more issues at home.


Gentle suggestion: maybe you're overinvested here.

I'm only making comments based on what I've read. I know that what I've written may not be what you want to hear, but from what I've read, homeschooling --- especially if he's against the idea --- doesn't sound like a good idea. Have you thought about asking him if he'd like to ease off on his activities? If so, let HIM pick which one(s) to drop, not you.

Although your son is a lot older than mine was, I have to echo what HK said - we never saw a single behavioural issue at school, they were ALL at home. bad sleeping, bedwetting, anxiety, "I'm tired" all the time, apathy, not wanting to do anything except watch tv, degenerative in speech, physical development, emotional development etc. Bad eating too and then aggression, anger, lashing out etc. Also, within 3 days of school ending it all would fade away, until we would remind him of school starting in 2 days time (or whatever). Then it would start again.

He also told us he liked school - when I went to fetch him he would hide away and beg for 10 more minutes. The school saw no problems except the ones "in your (my) head".

We pulled him and it took 9 months of weekly play therapy and almost as long of doing absolutely nothing to help him be self-motivated again. This is called deschooling. Where he was allowed to ride his bicycle, swim, daydream, play lego, go for walks, watch tv, choose games to play, outings to go on, playdates with friends, sleepovers at grandparents etc.

Initially he would ask for work, but I could see that his heart was not in it - he would dawdle, redirect and put it off over and over. So I would say lets rather go on a picnic etc.

Eventually he started seeking out activities of learning on his own.

So let me ask: is it such a big deal if he doesn't go into 8th grade in the fall? Would it be the end of the world if you kept him home now, let him have serious downtime and then decided together just before school starts back what you will do then? (whether test for 8th grade or homeschool or unschool?)

If your instincts are telling you this is what he needs, then don't toss those away; trust your instincts and allow him the freedom to do absolutely nothing for a while and then see what happens. The joy of switched on kids, is that they don't fall behind; they learn without trying and so you will know by then if he is ready and wants to do 8th grade or not. Time is one thing all our kids have - they can do more in less time and it can often be a blessing if we allow it to lead to more time to just be a kid.

That was not a typical evening. It just happened that we had the two activites on the same night.

I don't think he was "stupid" to miss Scouts - he's the one who started calling himself "stupid" and got very upset about missing.

I said "hah" about the section leader not because it's a bad thing but because he is so disorganized at home that it is very hard for me to believe he can be so organized at school. I didn't tell him that - just congratulations.

HE doesn't want to drop ANY activities. In fact, he wants to add more. And, daydreaming is not a bad thing in general. It does hinder you, though, if you WANT to get to boy scouts and you spend your time daydreaming instead of getting done what needs to be done so that you CAN get to boy scouts.

Electronics: he has to have computer access to do much of his homework. At 8 pm, though, they go off, on school nights anyway.

I guess if he could do anything he wanted, he'd either play on the computer or read. We've actually "grounded" him from reading in the past. We have taken away electronics as a consequence and used elecronics as a reward but it never seems to make a difference.

I think he could finish the required coursework by just doing a lot of reading in those subjects. Which he loves to do. The Algebra would be the only thing that would have to be structured as he needs it for Algebra II next year.

It was just a thought that maybe a break would help things. I'm exhausted, he's exhausted.

I probably am overinvested but he's my child and he needs help. I'm trying to find ways to help him.

And, like I said in my first post, it was just an idea, not thought out in any sense. Like, "oh, he's got mono, maybe he needs to be out of school for a while" or "he's recovering from lyme disease, let him rest". If he's worn down from the stress and anxiety of his life, maybe he needs to rest.

Not saying it's a good idea. Just saying the thought occurred to me.

I think that exhaustion and stress can look like ADHD and executive function issues. I once worked as an executive assistant. I had to coordinate multiple things at once and be able to prioritize and focus on the most important thing at the moment. I was good at it. I was always on time. Now that our family is going through medical issues, the anxiety and stress I feel absolutely affects my executive functioning and it seems so hard to get anywhere on time. My son, who always had trouble sleeping, now has anxiety that is making his sleep issues worse. He always had trouble turning off his mind and now it is worse. He can't fall asleep until almost morning now. It seems like the melatonin stopped working. It feels like things just get harder and harder and harder.

Out of necessity, we are unschooling at the moment and it is just the two of us. One of the reasons we homeschool is the medical appointments and stress that they cause. My son chooses to work on learning Japanese and history and economics and psychology and philosophy and current events. He reads everything he can on the newest advances in technology. He likes alternate histories and likes to imagine what life would be like if some small thing in history was changed. He is very picky about what he reads. If it is boring and doesn't make him think he will not read it. He finds the most interesting articles on politics and he loves to discuss and debate important issues, but all he has is me, his dad and his sister. I let him learn what he wants right now because I feel that he needs this. Mental health and health in general comes first. I just wish my son had more of a support group that included people beyond our family. We live in a town where almost everyone goes to a church that preaches against gays and although he is not gay he feels that people are born this way, just as he was born with disabilities that he did not ask for, and he doesn't want to be around people who would focus on something like that. Our only local homeschool group is very religious and they kicked out a family that had different views on this matter. They post things on facebook that lead us to believe that they think most of the problems of the world have something to do with accepting gay people. I think they would see my son's refusal to think the way they think as defiance. We talk about this a lot lately.

When my son has trouble getting out of bed, he is cranky but I don't see it as defiance. He says that he feels bad all day if he doesn't get enough sleep and I know it makes anxiety issues worse.

The neuropsychologist my son saw when he was 11 didn't think the fact that he hadn't slept much the night before testing and was getting a migraine during the test and had anxiety would affect the results of the test. Since I know these things affect my performance I didn't think the results of the test really helped us that much except that is a picture of his ability when he is exhausted and stressed and has a migraine. It helped me to realize that compensated for these things well in some areas and others, not so much. We got confirmation that he was verbally gifted but there were some test results that did not make sense at all when looking at what he is able to do outside of test situations and the neuropsychologist did not like it when I mentioned this. I hope you get more answers than we did.

It was easy for me to pull my son out of school but I don't think I could put my son back in school. He will have to learn the way he learns best and take college level CLEP tests when he is ready.

I think not being able to do band would be hard. Band is the one thing in our football obsessed small town for smart kids who don't do sports and they just look like they have so much fun together. I used to wish my son could just take band and nothing else but it isn't allowed here either. He used to have friends who were in band as well as musical theater. When my son had to quit musical theater because of medical issues there was no opportunity for him to be around other teens except church and I have been tempted to force him to go, thinking he really needs to be around other teens.

Madoosa,

You must have posted while I was writing the above. It might have been your post about de-schooling where I got this idea. He wouldn't have to go into 8th grade but I wouldn't want him to repeat 7th grade. It's already too easy and repeating it wouldn't be a challenge at all. Plus, all his classmates would be going on to 8th. I think he'd really rebel if he had to repeat a grade.

I think he is not "switched on", which is a good phrase, thanks. That's why the deschooling might be good for him. So, I guess my post should have been about deschooling instead of unschooling. My instinct tells me that something has to be done. My head tells me I have no idea what to do.

You seem to know what to do. Nothing is forever and if you feel he needs the down time then I would suggest giving it to him. I am sure you could still get him into 8th grade if you both wanted him to return to school by then. Otherwise he could stay home and learn through home or unschooling and then have more time and energy to hang out with friends after school.

At the very least if something needs to be done, then please don't leave it. Do something, even if its just to remove the school thing and allow him time and space to just be for a while. You can figure it out together later. Nothing is forever

all the best in making the decision. You will find that once you have made it it will be a lot easier and YOU will feel at peace about it.

Petunia, no offense, and apologies if this sounds harsh or judgmental-- it's not, as I hope that my thread from two years ago shows-- but there are some things that I think you should be thinking about before you DO anything else.

1. Everything you've described sounds like escapism to me. Your son's preferences for leisure time, his desire for "down" time (reasonable or not), and his daydreaming. What is he looking to escape FROM? Or is it that it's something in particular that he's escaping TO which he has no other access to in his life?

2. IF you make the decision to remove a child from a social milieu that they enjoy and are functioning well in... you have to consider some things very carefully in a cost-benefit analysis. Lori and Madoosa have both offered some insights there, and I'll add to that chorus. If your child is at all socially-oriented, and particularly if that child is also an ONLY child... hit pause and don't skip this step. What will he LOSE if you do this? What will he GAIN? What about the negative things lost and gained?

3. Will homeschooling make your child your SOLE focus? Some of what you've said indicates that this may already (mostly) be true. There's nothing wrong with that, by the way-- Lori and I have both lived like this for years, as I think is obvious from our posts. But it WILL raise issues that you'll have to look at with a fairly critical eye. Being at home with a preteen/adolescent who is isolated is a recipe for enmeshment unless you guard very carefully against it, and always keep your eyes on that particular gauge with brutal self-honesty in place.
Ironically, it is EASIER to enmesh with talented children-- at least I suspect that it is-- because we can cover it up with rationalizations about "nurturing" and "push parenting" and "support/hothousing." It's very hard to remain healthily independent when it is so tempting to "guide" your child's every decision and action-- and when it is POSSIBLE to do so.

Please understand that I'm not accusing you of anything like that. I'm pointing out that this is one of the dirty little secrets that is almost universally true about homeschooling families. You DO have to be very deliberate about promoting independence from yourself as a parent, and you have to admit that this goes against many of our natural instincts as parents, to boot.

GREAT advice.

I agree with MoN and would also add "Involve Dad in this decision."

I can't easily go back through other threads in my phone. For my own benefit and hopefully yours I am making some dot points to try and get it all in one place

1) he's well behaved And achieving fine at school, really difficult at home?
2) one idea is ADHD
3) one idea is that school is the problem at home / task avoidant perfectionism gone crazy
3) he's heavily scheduled but wants to do more not less

Have I missed any critical points?

I have a bunch of random thoughts, my main one is that there are a variety of things that could be wrong here, producing the same behavious, which you would need to "fix" in very different ways and you need a professional you trust, not us to help you figure out which it is.

It seems to me that it's not an uncommon pattern for gifted kids to bottle all their bad up for home, and that it can happen wih a variety of causes.

My eldest DD has aspergers and has been quite hard to get diagnosed because through great effort on our part and hers she looks pretty normal out in the world.

My second DD has ADHD, the vast majority of her problems occurr at home too. She's socially normal, HG+ and in a group environment (in yr1) these attributes mean that she's well behaved and also well able to keep up by figuring out what everyone else is doing or reading instructions. She also hates to be told what to do, but doesnt seem to take group instructions personally, and so will do as she's told at school. At home she's unable to get dressed or eat without supervision (unless she's had her medication) she has trouble going to sleep, is oppositional, I could go on and on... School enables her to hide her ADHD (at this age) in a way that home does not.

Most of your posts make HK think task avoidant perfectionism, I see aspergers or ADHD, because that is what I see at home...

Preservative, flavour, coloring, GF/CF and salicylate free diet has changes my kids lives, don't procrastinate, just do it, 2 weeks o doing it properly will tell you if t helps. Just because food is not causing obvious gut issues does not mean its not causing emotional/behaviour issues. Alcohol causes behaviour changes way before it makes you vomit. Food intolerance is not just mild allergy, allergy can be dramatic and life threatening or mild, intolerance can also be extreme (not usually life threatening) or mild, it's a load issue like alcohol, a little might not be a problem, a lot will be, how much is a problem varies between people, some are way way more sensitive than others.

And now for a completely left field idea. Is there a chance that a physical condition/illness that is causing your son's difficulties with sleep, tiredness, executive function, etc. You know the saying they teach drs "when you hear hoof beats dot think zebras."... sometimes it IS a zebra. I myself have two very rare health problems, one of which it is estimated that less than 5% of sufferers are diagnosed (all that not thinking of zebras). It's conceivable he does not have a psychiatric disorder but a physical problem which impacts brain function.

If the root of the problem is task-avoidance due to lack of challenge in school, then deschooling can help. If the problem is lack of unstructured time to play/explore/think (which is vital for healthy child development), then deschooling can help.

However, given the costs for a child who is otherwise doing well in school and craves social interaction, I would be reluctant to pull him from school as long as I can reasonably suspect that the problem is the latter. The more elegant solution there would be to scale back on the after-school activities. Not only would it give him the space he needs to be himself for several hours a week while preserving his social standing, but it would also reduce stress on you, and save some money.

So basically, before I would pull him out of school, I would start cancelling certain after-school activities.

We have a DD7 with a lot of drive and diverse interests, too, and we've acted as a brake in this way, when she starts pushing to go overboard. Once she has enough activities going, assuming there are no other scheduling conflicts, we offer her a choice... if you want to take up this new activity, pick the one that will end. We've also found that on days where she's overscheduled, she blows up. For example, her drama class ramped up to 3-hour nights for the week before her performance, and the first night, when it was time for bed and she realized she'd had no time to play, she was very upset. So, we pushed bedtime back an hour (yay homeschooling) and reminded her it was only for a week, and she was fine.

She gets it now, and has even been able to act as her own brake from time to time. This past summer, she declared she wanted to do nothing... no classes, no sports, no camps. Just play. And proving how constructive that can be, she learned to roller skate, and swim underwater.

All excellent points raised here

Yes, lots to think about. Like I said, it wasn't something that I was prepared to do right away or anything, just an idea that popped into my head. Benefits and disadvantages both. Thanks.

We were driving to boy scouts last night and talking about the "Suicide Prevention" presentation they had at school yesterday. And, then he said, "I realized that I do what they call cutting, you know, causing yourself physical pain to avoid emotional pain". My heart dropped. I tried to be calm and asked, "Oh, do you mean when you pick at your fingers (he picks at them until they bleed)?" and he said "no, not that". I asked what form his cutting took. "This is awkward telling you this. When I get angry at home or am in trouble, I push my fingernails into my skin until it hurts and I bang my head on things.".

Now I'm more worried.

Petunia, if he were mine, I'd get a cognitive-behavior therapist on board immediately and arrange for neuropsych testing ASAP. Self-harm can escalate, and he clearly needs and wants help in managing thoughts and feelings, which is what CBTs work on.

Hang in there--
DeeDee

Not sure what his medication status is currently. But it is worth noting that self-injury and thoughts of suicide are known side effects of both Strattera and Prozac.

This was true in my son's case. His fatigue issues are definitely due to a physical problem that causes fatigue and not a psychiatric disorder. His anxiety is because of bad experiences with medical professionals. My son and I kept going to doctors trying to find out why he was born with mild hypotonia and why he had fatigue and endurance issues and needed to stop and rest while the other kids kept going and why he had joint and muscle pain and his hands hurt after writing for only five minutes. It was frustrating to hear doctors say it was just growing pains and developmental coordination disorder or dyspraxia when his balance and timing and coordination were really good until the fatigue set in. He wondered why what he had would be considered a learning disability when he didn't have trouble learning anything. My son didn't think it did him any good to see a doctor. It caused anxiety when the doctors could not tell him what was wrong. Then he read about OCCAMs razor several years ago and we both realized that was what the doctors were using on him instead of looking for more evidence of what he really had. We finally have an appointment to see a geneticist after all these years because his orthopedic surgeon listened to us and suspects that it could be something that is rare. It could explain why the scoliosis brace did not work as well as it should have and why he got scoliosis in the first place when nobody in our family has it or the hypotonia. We went through so many doctors that did not really listen to us and that caused so much stress and loss of confidence in doctors.

I used to do that and I never told anyone. It is good that he can talk to you about it. I only did it when I was in a lot of pain and felt that nobody would understood my pain and I would just have to suffer in silence and isolation. I was a very sensitive kid. I never went to any kind of therapy or took any kind of drugs for it. The thing that helped me most was talking to my mother and feeling that she really understood.

Petunia, it is soooo good that your ds opened up and talked to you about his cutting. I'd do everything I could (as his mom) to keep the lines of communication open and help him realize what a strong and understanding ally he has in you.

I don't think homeschooling or unschooling or whatever should even be on the radar at the moment - jmo, but I think your first priority is to understand what's going on with your ds... and fwiw, it seems like he's doing ok at school, at least socially and emotionally. Changing up the school situation would only throw one more complicating factor into the mix to sort through.

I agree that you need to see a neuropsych. It also sounds like your ds might benefit from having a counselor or another trusted adult to talk through to sort through his feelings. And definitely you need to keep those lines of communication open, talk to him as much as possible, try to keep digging to find out more of what's going on with him.

Best wishes,

polarbear

Lori I have sent you a message.