Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy School counselor?

As I was reading the friendships thread and thinking about my ds6 in 1st grade; I've started to wonder if talking to the school counselor would help him or even me?

I'm sure you know last year was awful- he was bored with no friends. However, mostly behaved in class per the teacher.
This year, he is able to verbalize more, but still I feel like parts are left out. He is already refusing to go to school- saying he's sick. On a good day, he may just say he wants to stay with me. His behavior after school is horrendous. He is crying hysterically, yelling, talking back, hitting himself. I feel like I'm walking on egg shells. He tells me he's lonely at school. Also, he has started having nightmares 3-4 nights a week (school nights) that all involve something killing him- monster, snake, etc. I'm thinking these are just anxiety dreams.

Last year, he resorted to being "the class clown" to get attention. So far this year, he has talked about wanting to be "hilarious", but needing to use self control.

I'm not sure if he needs skills to interact or if I need advice to help him or both. I plan to reach out to the teacher, but I am concerned that I need more. Thoughts? Thanks in advance. (I was hoping to have a more positive start. Sorry. Thanks for reading/ listening.)

It might help if you do an exploratory contact with the counselor first--

that way you'd know whether or not this is an adult that you want having that kind of access to your child. (OUR school counselor was "helpful" in some ways that I'm still angry over 10 months later, so your mileage may vary. Ours was incompetent enough that there wasn't even an awareness of "oooo-- this is a bit beyond my scope, I should advise you to talk to someone with more expertise," but yours might be great.)

If it were a good fit, this could be a way for your DS to get "breaks" from the classroom environment during the week, and to learn coping skills that are non-disruptive and adaptive rather than maladaptive.

It could, as you say, also provide you with insights that would be helpful.

Melessa, we may also be considering making contact with the school counselor for DS5 (already resisting K) so I'm there with you.

How long has he been back in school?

We've seen a lot of exhaustion in our house in transitions into school, particularly from kindergarten to first. It's just plain tiring. We get a lot of mileage from battening down the hatches, making for a calm evening, and an early bedtime.

That being said, you seem to be identifying a lot of signs of anxiety. The feeling sick when not ill can very much be real feelings of sickness arising from anxiety.

Yes, inform the teacher of what's happening outside of school. Nightmares and feeling sick before the school are signs that he's not adjusting to school. Beyond teaching kids to read, one of the primary jobs of an early elementary teacher is to ensure that the children adjust to school. The teacher ought to take this very seriously. Then go to the councilor, or better, have the teacher work with both you and the councilor to address the situation.

While not as bad as master of none's experience, we haven't had great luck with the councilor -- it just wasn't the right fit. We have, however, had good luck by finding one special person in the school who gets my kid. It's a bit of trial and error, but we have found the right person outside the classroom eventually for each of my kids.

Thanks everyone!
I have to admit, I stayed away from the counselor last year, because ds didn't especially like her. I like her, but I'm not him.

I would agree that maybe this is transition, but it is all the same behaviors (minus the nightmares) from last year- just sped up. (Last year: August- bored, November- saying physically ill, March- "wanted to die"). Therefore, I am more thinking school is somehow stressful situation- dealing with having to do "baby stuff", social, and behaving.

I am wanting this year to be better for him. Just trying to do things differently this year, as what I did last year didn't work.

Re whether or not the school counselor will help, chances are you won't know for sure unless you try. I see a few key areas to think through:

1) Even when you *know* the issue you're trying to work through, finding a good fit for children with a counselor isn't easy - you have to find a good match of both counselor personality and technique plus child personality plus child willingness to spend time and talk to the counselor.

2) You need to really understand as much as you can about what's at the root of the issue that's causing the anxiety and behaviors you're trying to find help with. Your ds is obviously highly anxious about school, and needs help - with *something*. But if you're not certain what that something is and the counselor doesn't really have any idea, chances are spending time with the counselor isn't going to help in a meaningful way.

3) I wouldn't automatically assume that anxiety is all about being misplaced as a GT student. Please know I only mention this from personal experience with my 2e EG ds when he was showing signs of extreme anxiety in early elementary - it's easy to make that leap and assume that's what the issue is - but it *might* also be something more.

3) I read back through a few of your previous posts to remember a little bit about your ds' past school experience etc. The neuropsych and developmental optometrist testing you've had show a challenge with handwriting and vision - I would start by observing and talking to your ds and trying to see if maybe there's a connection there to his anxiety and reluctance to go to school. The counselor might be able to help you with that - but school staff are busy and their time is limited, and they aren't ever going to be as invested in your ds' well-being as you are so they won't necessarily see the connections that you might find when you look in detail at what tasks your ds is doing throughout the school day and think through how vision/fine motor/etc challenges might impact them.

4) Does your ds have any accommodations for vision/handwriting? It's possible something relatively simple is leading to a lot of stress for him in the classroom. For instance, my dd who had vision challenges flew through K-1 without ever noticing herself that anything was hard to see, but in 2nd grade she was suddenly extremely upset about not being able to read from the board in the classroom. That was really puzzling to me at first, because her 1st grade teacher used the whiteboard all the time and she never said a word about not being able to read what was on the board. The difference was in the size of the teacher's handwriting (not all that much smaller) and lower light in the classroom.

5) I think it's important to realize that no matter how highly gifted our children are, in early elementary school they are still children and they might *not* be self-aware (or worldly aware) enough to help give us the info they need to understand what is causing them anxiety. My 2e ds used to rush through or refuse to do his written classwork in K-1 we thought that was simply because it was too easy and it never raised any red flags with his teacher or caused and "problems" in the classroom. He liked his teacher and he seemed to like school for the most part. He had two good friends at school. Then in 2nd grade his world started imploding on him - he became increasingly anxious to the point of having panic attacks. When I picked him up at school he was in an anxious rush to tell me something he'd been thinking about at school and really really wanted to build (or whatever) at home. His teacher told us he started off into space and didn't try to do his work and it had to be because he was either lazy or adhd. We thought the staring off into space and refusing to do work was related to giftedness and perfectionism. That was the year his anxiety built up to the point we finally consulted with a neuropsych and found out he was 2e. You've already been to the neuropsych so you already have a great deal of information about your ds' situation re strengths and weaknesses and how they will impact academics etc - so based on what you know from that, think through how it might be impacting him at school. It's just my gut feeling that there is a possibility there is something happening with respect to academics and being in the classroom that is potentially fueling his anxiety.

Last thought - I think (forgive me if I am remembering incorrectly) - that your ds has had some vision therapy and it's helped? It's just a word of caution - my dd who benefited *tremendously* from vision therapy also has had the benefits of it reverse and her original vision challenges come back and is now going through a second round of VT. One of her vision therapists has as dd with similar challenges who has also had the same thing happen - so I would recommend just paying attention to situations that might indicate vision is an issue again - and not all of those situations are going to be so easy and straightforward to figure out when children are so young - even though my dd is much more self-aware at 11, we just within the past few weeks discovered she's been having headaches for *years* but didn't really understand it was a headache so she'd never mentioned it to us. We only found out because we've had a yucky virus going around and my younger dd was asking for medicine because she had a headache. My older dd just out of the blue asked "What exactly *is* a headache?" - and she's a smart girl! We never would have guessed she didn't know what a headache was - and she knew *in theory* but once we described what it felt like she said "Oh! I get those all the time! I never knew that was a headache!". Yikes! So yeah, even as smart as she is, she also has had a history of sensory issues and living with headaches etc so I suspect she neither processes or interprets pain in the same way most of us do, and that she is used to it so she doesn't think to mention it. That's an example of how it can be difficult to really understand what's up with our children, especially when they are very young.

Sorry for that long ramble - I hope some of it helped!

Best wishes,

polarbear

We were posting at the same time, so I hadn't seen this reply. If your ds didn't especially like the counselor, I wouldn't send him to see her. He's already anxious about school, so I wouldn't want to add stress. It's also unlikely the counselor would be able to help him much or obtain any understanding of what was causing him anxiety if he doesn't like her.

That's just my 2 cents based on having been through a few counselors with my own ds - ymmv!

Best wishes,

polarbear

ps - fwiw, with my ds - each time we felt that working with a counselor would be helpful for my ds in reducing anxiety, we found instead that what really helped was changing out what was causing the anxiety to begin with rather than having ds talk to a counselor. I'm not saying that counselors aren't helpful or that the time wouldn't be well spent, just that in our ds' situation, he needed help with the actual situation that was causing the stress, not just a way to cope with the anxiety that resulted from the stress.

Polarbear-
Thank you for all your thoughts! My ds is in vision therapy currently. They have seen some improvement, but not at all done. ( I will however keep my eye out once vision therapy is done!)
We do not have accommodations for the vision yet. We have a meeting planned. I can tell his eyes are tired when he gets home. So, I do think the accommodations do need to be met; and is probably part of the problem.

Handwriting is grade level, so I contacted an OT for exercises.

I do think part of the problem is a gt kid being bored, because he is complaining about not learning and having to do "stuff for babies". He also has very low patience for repetition in anything.

Also, not having a "friend" is part of it.

His teacher says things are ok. So, that's good.

I will try getting more info from him. But maybe I just need to consult the tester. Hope things improve!

Thanks for everything guys. Everyone opinions and thoughts are so helpful. I truly appreciate it all!