DD just started year 9 and attends a girls grammar school and is doing very well academically. She has a nice group of friends and has only had one big friendship falling out in year 8 where she then had to make a new set of friends (which she did with ease). Her brother has ASD and I strongly suspect that she is neurodiverse, but she masks well and probably will not meet the criteria for a diagnosis. She does have some anxiety, finds it hard to make eye contact, is shy etc.
From the time she went to the GS she realised her mistake and has hated it. She tried extra curricular sport and music and loves her friends, but hates the atmosphere, the ethos of the school and the pressure from her anxious friends and teachers. She is so unhappy that I sometimes hear her crying in her room before a new school term. Daily she says she hates it so much before and after a school day.
In May - when she was in year 8 - I put her name down for a school a bit further away which is a church school and has great pastoral care, a better ethnic/cultural mix (my daughter is black/white mixed race and hardly any of the current school cohort are the same). A space has come up and they have offered it to her to move at half term. Logistically the school is further away from home, but closer to her brother´s school, so the school run would still work.
We visited their Open Evening last night and she liked it, but she is in more turmoil as to what to do (she finds it hard to make decisions!)
I don´t want to force her to change, in case it goes wrong and she blames me!
Any wise words from anyone who has done this move? My concern is that she will not like ANY school because of hidden neurodiversity.....WWYD?