Anxiety

[joanofarchitrave]

For the last term and a bit ds (10) has often said he's feeling sick or has leg pain in the morning. These things never trouble him in the holidays.

I've come to the conclusion that he is anxious about school. We were expecting to hear bad things at his last parents' evening and I was totally wrongfooted by his teacher saying how well he was doing, how much he seemed to enjoy school, no friendship issues etc etc. I just wondered though - he mentioned with approval that ds had come into the classroom to finish off some extra work at lunchtime. I have to say when I was at school that would never have been allowed - your break time was your break time even when your knees were freezing off and it just raised a possibility with me that he is avoiding the playground. Apparently it was a one off though.

He has been bullied in the past but insists it's not happening now. He had some weekly social and emotional input last term at school which he liked, apparently, but that's now finished because he's doing so well.

He gets very het up about finishing stuff - it MUST be finished or... disaster apparently.

I'm wibbling on... don't know quite what I'm asking. Have you had similar experiences and what helped?

Joan my DD has a bit of this too. She's not verbal about her emotional life so it's hard...I understand your pain. All I do is let her know that if she DOES want to talk I am there...I've stopped questioning her as I realised it made her worse. She's always worried about finishing things too...can you ask his teacher to double check he's ok at playtime? It won't take her a mo to look out of the window a few times...that's what I'd do....the midda assistants aren't contactable and it's them who REALLY know what's happening at breaks isn't it.

Thanks Maureen that's a good idea. In fact, i used to work there as a TA so I might ask the assistants - the teacher can't see the playground from his classroom and i'm not sure he would be up for it

Get your DS to design his perfect 'magic wand' school. It can be anything he likes as long as he is there and there is a teacher. Ask him to make it the place he thinks he would be happiest and learn best.

He could do it as a drawing, with models or just verbally. When I asked my DD2 to do this I learned a lot about what she found hardest in the playground and in the classroom. It was really useful.