Epoh, this stuff is so hard. I'm sorry.
I swear it's made him depressed. He complains that he doesn't have any friends (and sadly he's right) and that the kids are mean to him.
Couple of thoughts:
1. talk to your prescribing doc about this. Mood changes have to be monitored closely for children taking pharmaceuticals.
2. If he's had tantrums at school, other kids are probably genuinely afraid of him. It will take quite a while of being tantrum-free before they start to relax around him. We found that an open discussion of DS's disability with the class, led by the teacher, helped the other kids get it, that he wasn't a mean kid, and that it wasn't his fault that he freaks out sometimes.
I tried to talk to him this weekend about how you make/keep friends. I explained that you have to talk about something your friend likes and not just what you like. DS's response? "That's stupid. That's just stupid. It doesn't make any sense." *sigh* None of the kids in class are apparently interested in the things he is, none of them read the same books or play the same video games.
This is something we have actively worked on with our DS. Not that you can make your kid like other kids, but you can give him access to information that helps him fit. We do choose to selectively expose our DS to sports, for example, that we do not particularly care for ourselves, because it's a huge part of social life where we are and a boy has to be able to have those conversations. We make sure he reads some of what his peers are reading, even if he's also reading other things.
We don't do all of what other people do (we have no plans to get TV, for instance) but we do the parts that seem like they help some.
I want so desperately to be able to FIX things for him. His teacher is nice enough, but his school doesn't do acceleration or differentiation.
Can you tell whether he's hating it socially, or academically, or both? Academic differentiation may help socially, or it may not; we found that we had to work on social give-and-take as a skill in itself, as well as finding the appropriate academic placement. And if the differentiation has him alone in the back of the room with a workbook, it can make things worse socially. Acceleration into another class is hard to schedule, but better for a kid who needs to learn how to connect with others socially.
I think it's fine to reopen the conversation with the school, let them know he's suffering, and ask for their help in making things better for him.
My step-mother's been driving me crazy trying to convince me to enroll him in the montessori charter school that's part of her school district (she's a principal, and thus, my kids can go to any school in her district.)
I'd say, look at all of your options closely and see what might fit your child better. Sometimes the relatively unstructured Montessori approach makes anxious kids more anxious; sometimes it's a godsend.
DeeDee
