Report Card Day

Today, was report card day. I always look forward to report card day, at least for now! S is a great student and continues to do well. Up until this point, we've had to do very little work with him, and he has excelled in each area. Certain spelling words are becoming a bit more difficult...something about words not following the right rules. He still is doing well and got a report called full of 3's and 4's. 3's meeting expectations and 4's are exceeding. All these things make me so proud.

His teacher made a comment on his report card, a comment that made me sad. Don't get me wrong, she did the normal S, is a great student, bright, etc., but she said that he has been experiencing some anxiety in the last few weeks and that she'd keep us posted.

This didn't come as a surprise to us, as in the last week and a half, we have dealt with something we weren't prepared to deal with. S, has had a sort of break down.

They started doing lock down, fire and tornado drills again at school. After the first one, S couldn't stop talking about and worrying about fires. I know this is normal and age appropriate response as my niece went through the same thing. I thought nothing of it, until it started to affect his desire to go to school.

Maybe desire isn't a good word...the child flat out refused to go to school. We knew this wasn't an option and geared for battle. The first day was just a lot of crying and sobbing until we got him to school....then it was a bit of himming and hawing but he went. The next day was...well it was. M ended up bringing him back home at close to 9am. He had to go to work and S was a heaving, sobbing, mess of a child. He came in and I had him go straight to his bed. Once he had calmed down, I went to his room and talked with him. We talked about what was bothering him and what was going on. He calmed down a bit and I had my mom come over and sit with the kids so I could take him to the school.

We got to the school and it really got interesting. To make a long and horrifying story short, we ended up in a meeting with the school social worker. He was great with S. He talked to S and played a few games. He told him to tell me goodbye and then proceeded to pry my sobbing and pleading 6 year old off of me. It took everything within me, every ounce of strength that I possessed to not break down sobbing.

I left and waited in the office. By this point, I was bawling. The school secratary handed me some tissue and said I could wait to see how it went. 15 minutes later the social worker came back and told me he was finally in class and asked me to come back to his office.

In his opinion S has emergent OCD. M and I have thought that for a while now and wasn't too surprised to hear that. We've had several conversations with S about his thought processes. The last one being: "Mom, the bad or scary thoughts jump into my head sometimes. I try to push them out and think good thoughts that make me happy, but the just keep coming in there. I can be doing something fun and they just jump in my head and I can't get them out". He described perfectly what I feel quite regularly!

He said in his 33 years he had never seen a child persist like that and that he saw REAL and true fear in his eyes. He said he didn't believe that S was trying to manipulate the situation and that he is/was genuinely afraid. He was quick to tell me that S was kind and not disrespectful, but that he just refused to go into class and couldn't seem to stop sobbing. WOW...that made me feel good. He assured me that these types of things were a sign of a good mom...yeah, I'm not buying that so much. He made me laugh when he said he told S that if he went home he would just have to be bored and sit and S told him "No I won't. It's fun at my house and we do fun things". Why does the child always say he's bored then?!?!

Anyhow, I contacted the school and made a plan with the principal and his teacher. I am so thrilled that the school has been willing to work with us. It has made this difficult time quite a bit easier for us! The next day was hard, but Friday proved to be the worse. We literally had to pin S into the car and lock him in. He tried to get out of the car while M was driving in fact. M literally had to drag him into the building and they had to hold him while M left. It took us a good 10 minutes to even get the child into the car. I was glad M took him that day...when S has adrenaline pumping he's stronger than me.

We took away many priveledges and discussed with him how this was unacceptable behavior. We prayed with him, loved on him and talked with him. Nothing seemed to work.

Today, went quite a bit better. He started to get nervous and we talked. I held him for a few minutes and talked to him. He willingly got his coat on and walked to the car. He didn't hide instead of getting dressed either! When M got him to school, he asked M to walk him in and he walked straight in to see the principal - which is the plan for us right now. No tears, no screaming and no dragging involved. It made me so proud. M was thrilled. He was able to drop S off AND still have time to get a cappuccino before work.

S told M today that the voices in his head were trying to tell him to get nervous and run back to the car. He told him:"Daddy, I just push this button (his belly button) and it makes the thoughts go away". M told him to tell the thoughts that they were stupid and S assured him that he didn't need to do that, that he could just press his button.

I'm thinking about trying this button pushing thing. Maybe, I can go off my medicine if this button thing works!