I don’t really know where else to ask this tbh. My DS is 12 and has just started year 7 and I am starting to think we have a much bigger problem than I realised.
He has had a really rough time health wise since he was little. He was born with kidney problems and things got worse and worse as he got older. Covid came when he was in reception and obviously that was a weird time for everyone but for him it was when his health really started going downhill. He ended up having very long stays in hospital, needed a transplant and was really really poorly at one point. He had sepsis as well and his heart was affected when he was so ill. He also has epilepsy. He has had his transplant now and thankfully is much more stable than he was, although we still have hospital appointments etc.
The problem is he missed loads of primary school. I mean loads. There were times he was in hospital for weeks and then he’d be home recovering and then back in again. We did what we could with school work but honestly when your child is that ill school isn’t really the first thing you’re thinking about. His primary were very good and always said he was doing well considering everything, so I don’t think I ever really took in just how much he’d missed.
Now he’s started year 7 and it’s like it’s all caught up with him at once. He hates school. At first I thought it was just him settling in but he’s started bunking off lessons with the other lads. He walks around the corridors instead of going to class, hangs around with older boys and there have been days where he hasn’t gone in at all. His attendance is 78% already and a lot of that is because he is actually bunking off with the other lads rather than being ill.
School have obviously noticed and we’ve had calls and meetings and he’s had detentions and other consequences. They know all about his medical history and the amount of school he’s missed. They have said they’ll monitor how behind he is but have actually offered him a tutor to help him catch up but he won’t engage with it. He doesn’t want to stay after school either and just says he wants to go home. I’ve tried explaining that the extra help is there because he’s missed so much but he just gets angry and says he doesn’t need it.
He’s changed at home as well. He used to be quite an easy going kid considering everything he’s been through. Now he comes home late and if I ask where he’s been he’ll swear at me or tell me to fuck off. He slams his door, refuses to do homework and keeps saying he’s not going back the next day. Sometimes he’s lovely and you can see he’s still my little boy underneath it all, then something sets him off and he’s horrible.
I honestly don’t know if this is just 12 year old behaviour mixed with starting secondary school or whether we’ve got a child who has basically fallen so far behind that he can’t cope with what’s being asked of him.
I’ve started wondering about home education and I don’t know if I’m being completely ridiculous. Part of me thinks take him out before his attendance gets even worse, let him calm down, work out exactly what he can and can’t do and let him learn at his own pace.
But then another part of me thinks taking him out when he’s already refusing school and bunking off is the worst possible thing I could do. What happens when he decides he doesn’t want to do the home education either? I’d be left trying to teach a 12 year old who has missed loads of primary education and is already very angry with me. And I’m on my own with him so it’s not like I can tag team it with someone else.
I don’t want him to spend the next few years getting detentions and being labelled as badly behaved when really there’s a massive gap underneath it all. But I also don’t want to make things worse by taking him out.
I’m honestly completely stuck with this.