Hi Platypus,
Thank you so so much for your long reply! I'm sorry for the delayed response, we got busy with holiday preparations and then my son had a bone graft surgery right after Christmas that kind of kicked all our butts. I think his school experience is going to be much better next semester just because he has that done and out of the way. Plus we got a new ear tube placed so he should have good hearing in both ears.
Your response was so incredibly helpful and has given me a lot of good things to think about. It is incredibly hard to tease apart 'can't' and 'won't' with my kiddo - he's quite socially savvy. He has been a bit more talkative about school lately though and I've been getting more good information. One thing he said is that I think they're requiring kids to write for longer periods of time this year compared to last and my son is finding it difficult (handwriting has been a consistent issue, not idea generation).
Luckily, we seem to have gotten some of lying and excuse-making tamped down when he realized that I could check in with the teacher and confirm his story and that he wouldn't get to play on the playground after school if he deliberately left things out. I will start trying to think through good rewards and what parts of school he finds the most rewarding though (mostly getting to read from what I can tell).
I think it's good for him, but he seems to mostly be in the 'happily bopping along' category. I'm the one introducing angst because the constant reminders are bugging his teachers! I got a few ADHD books to look through and I'm going to start thinking about our executive functioning skills and how to build a few scaffolds for him.
Thank you so so much again. I really very much appreciate all your input.
