Thursday Updates - late edition

[mommyatty]

DS says he had a great day today visiting his old school. A friend who teaches at the school said he saw him at lunch and he appeared really happy. He was sitting with a friend we have kept in touch with, and the group of boys was planning what to do at recess. But… the school we just withdrew him from hasn’t provided any info to this school. And we still have the Saturday assessment to see how far behind he is. And I texted DD’s old teacher, whose class he was in part of the day, and she didn’t respond to me. So that’s not awesome.

I really just want to get him settled somewhere.

[erbear]

mommyatty, I think I somehow missed the backstory here (my brain is mush) but I hope he gets settled in too

[mae0111]

mommyatty, all fingers crossed and good thoughts and prayers going your way. I really hope this works out for him. You all deserve for him to have a nice school experience.

[campermom]

Is he returning to an original school? I’m having a hard time following. I hope wherever he goes, he has a good transition!

[mommyatty]

Oh sorry! Back story. DS used to be in the same school as DD (school 1). He was great from age 3 through 1st grade. Then in 2nd grade, his executive functioning absolutely fell apart. We figured it was because as he gets older and things get harder, he just couldn’t keep up. Months later we found out he was being psychologically tortured by a bully who was telling him, among other things, that his family was ashamed to be related to him and if he told, his family would agree with the bully. Basically, this 8 year old was a freaking sociopath.

So we put him in a school for kids with learning differences (school 2) to help with executive functioning and get his confidence back. While there, we re-did his neuropsych evaluation and he was diagnosed with ADHD (not new), Autism Spectrum Disorder (new), a genius level IQ (new), depression, and general anxiety disorder. This was around the same time he FINALLY spoke up about the bully. This year, he had a teacher who just sucked. Multiple kids told us the teacher “liked everyone except DS and J”. My observations were that this teacher just did not like my kid and could not for the life of her find a nice thing to say about him. He started having behavior issues for the first time in his life. And had 2 meltdowns at school, which are literally the only meltdowns he has had in his entire life. The second one, he started a fight after 1) telling them he was in crisis and needed help, 2) hitting himself in the head with a keyboard hard enough that they checked him using the concussion protocol which they did not tell us about, and 3) finally starting a fight with two kids who didn’t deserve it. Note: kids with ASD have flat facial expressions. So often their expression doesn’t match their words. So they have to take drastic action or use drastic words to get someone’s attention.

Anyway, the school said since he’d put his hands on another kid, they couldn’t serve him. We agreed that clearly they weren’t meeting his needs and we didn’t want him there anymore. They told us if we withdrew him, this wouldn’t be on his record as any sort of expulsion or anything. They would simply say “we think he needs a fresh start”. We have had continued issues with them not following through on plans, not communicating, etc.

So now we are looking to put him back in the school where he was thriving until the bully situation (school 1). But we are worried that 1) school 2 (who promised they would just say he needed “a fresh start”) will tank him by disclosing all of this fully preventable bullshit, 2) school 2 just won’t provide anything to school 1 because they’re incompetent and assholes, or 3) DS will be too far behind and school 2 won’t think he can catch up.

It just sucks. It all sucks. DS is really sad he can’t go back to school 2. He’s going to be sad again if he also can’t go to school 1. Having a twice exceptional kid is just really hard.

[mae0111]

mommyatty, it is really hard. DD1 is classifies as 2E as well, and it is flat-out exhausting.

I assume that the bully is gone from School 1? And it sounds like your DS would be happy to go back there. Is there any timeframe with getting him back into School 1? I just imagine that he'll feel so much better when he's settled and in a routine (as will you).

I feel like I've been through this stuff so many times with DD1. Similar, but different. It's absolutely exhausting. Last spring almost broke me. I'm just coming out the other side. I'm thinking of you and am hoping and praying that things work out and settle quickly. Please reach out if you want to chat.

[supertrooper1]

mommyatty, I hope it all works out with school 1. It might be a good thing if school 2 doesn't provide anything and school 1 will evaluate him from their own prospective. Ex-H used to get evaluations from schools when kids transferred into his class and he said they were often inaccurate.

[twinmomma]

I really hope this all works out for you and DS mommyatty ! The 2e diagnosis is so tough. We deal with that over here too with DD2. She's ADHD, highly gifted, and I still strongly believe she's on the spectrum even though no one will evaluate her because she "does fine" at school.

[mommyatty]

mae0111- the bully’s dad was here on a 2 year military assignment from the Netherlands. Bully isn’t even on the same continent anymore.

[waverly]

I hope it works out to go back to the old school mommyatty!