Hello, I'd like to get some advice about testing. My son is 5.5 and in kindergarten. He is having a rough year so far and it's only been about a month! He doesn't want to go to school. Ever. He gets a nervous stomach every morning and really stresses about school. He is very sensitive and his teacher is not. She's very loud and brash, and he does not like her at all, unfortunately. He's scared of her and terrified of making a mistake.
This is so sad because he's had just a history of perfectionism and we've worked so hard with him to let things go more easily. Since school started this has gotten much worse. He stresses about his writing homework, worrying if he doesn't get his letters on the lines correctly (his teacher wants us to correct homework with our child, but I've started not correcting pretty much anything unless it's completely wrong). He stresses about me talking to his teacher about anything, afraid he will get in trouble. He says she yells all the time (I'm guessing she isn't actually yelling at 5 year olds?) and just last night he was stressing that his teacher said he couldn't go to recess if he didn't finish his drawing in time. I brought that up with her this morning and she said that she didn't say that. I feel that's a strangely specific thing to make up, but he does seem to be misunderstanding a lot of things that are happening at school. Or not processing them like most people might.
He does seem to be somewhat bored in school as well, and so far has only liked when they learned about different types of scientists and learned that bats use echolocation. He's already reading some (though he's somewhat reluctant. Not sure if it's hard for him or if he's afraid to try and mess up.), and they're still going over letters. He already has most addition and subtraction down pat, and will sometimes do simple multiplication, while they're still working on "circle the one that's different" or "count how many".
His teacher says he's very sweet and listens well. She said she doesn't think she's ever yelled at him. She says he seems nervous to talk to her though. So far I've spoken to his teacher and the school psychologist and they've only suggested doing things that we're already doing so I may have to contact them again.
I'm not sure if he's gifted or not. I know he's very bright and very intense and sensitive (doesn't always melt down, but things strongly affect him very easily), and his brain works in ways that amaze me. He seems to "just know" an awful lot, loves numbers and math, has interests that most people his age don't, and always wants to read books (he's started reading but much prefers me to read to him). BUT, I do feel there's something going on with him. Anxiety, perfectionism, some kind of issue that causes him to not take things the way people intend them? Is that a thing? Possibly dyslexia as well, though I'm sure it's a little young to know that. My husband has anxiety, and my mom and sister both have dyslexia so it's on my mind.
If we were to look into testing, would a neuropsych eval be the way to go? Or are those issues not covered in a test like this? It would be helpful to know if he was gifted as well, but at the moment I'm more concerned about the other issues.
That was very long, so if you made it through, thank you so much for reading!
