The county appraiser showed up at our door today and as he was leaving he smiled at DS and asked "So are you excited about school?" DS said "no" and started to launch into a big spiel about what a waste of time it is. The weird thing is that all of his teachers say he is continually happy and cheerful there so I don't understand how that's possible when he's such a grump about it at home. Now the question is, do I tell the teacher that he has been griping about school starting, try to get him to tell the teacher himself and advocate for himself if something is excessively boring, or tell him to "deal with it", because I think he may be doing this in part to over-dramatize it or manipulate me so I keep him home. Also, everyone has to deal with being bored sometimes. Probably 50 percent of the workforce is completely bored with their jobs but they do it anyway. I know it's unacceptable for a child to be bored the majority of the day and be completely unchallenged, but how much is too much? The teacher last spring said that's probably what he is trying to do (manipulate me), however, that doesn't change the fact that he'd be thrilled if I kept him home and he has no interest in going to school.
