Hiya, first of all I’m pretty new here and hope I’m posting in the right category.. :)
I wonder if someone could help or give advice.
My son (12) started secondary last September as only kid from his primary school. He likes the new school and has been getting on pretty well until a new child moved his tutor class to my son’s last month.
This child is neurodiverse and, according to my son, disrupting class and getting away with it unlike the other kids.
I‘m not too sure why, but the new kid‘s existence seems to threaten my boy massively. He is scared to go to school now, cries, and has, what I assume, actual panic attacks. He even said he can’t go on like this and wants to die. He feels left out and like nobody likes him although some of his classmates got in touch with him to see how he his. He sees this child as the main problem although the child has not done anything personally against him (no bullying).
He‘s also not been too well physically pretty much since the start of the new term and not attended school consistently since then. It started with stomach cramps and soft stool/diarrhoea, but he also developed mouth ulcers and an infected throat so bad that school called me to pick him up.
We are in touch with school but the head of house hasn’t been able to deal with it yet due to her own children’s sickness. We are going to meet her face to face this Wednesday. Suggestions were to change some classes for my son or even the tutoring group.
I’ve also been to the GP and they’ve taken bloods and a stool sample to check if there are any more serious underlying health issues or deficiencies that could not only cause his physical but also mental problems.
His diet hasn’t been great in the past admittedly, but he’s now mainly had healthy varied non-processed home made foods (veggies and fruits, chicken etc) and I’ve been giving him different vit supplements (on GP‘s advice). Blood results won’t be back before the end of the week though.
I’ve also arranged for a private assessment for ADHD and ADS as it runs in our families and I’ve noticed certain traits in him. I wonder if that’s why he is so affected by this other child.
I’m not sure what to think about the situation because we had something similar in the past where he fell out with his best friend after a new kid joined (who was similar to this new kid). He was scared to go to school and pretended to be ‚ill‘ with similar problems. It all got sorted with school‘s help and making a new best friend.
This time is a bit different though because he doesn’t suddenly feel better when I say he can stay home. He still looks pretty poorly so I think he really isn’t well but I find it very difficult to judge. There were occasions when I sent him to school because I thought he was pretending but he was actually poorly and I had to pick him up again. He also knows that I find it difficult to trust him when it comes to his health/not going to school and he knows that I need him to be honest about it. Since the initial incident in primary school he‘s been truthful, from what I can tell.
Because we were in a similar position before, my ex puts a lot of pressure on him but also on me to have him back at school.
I also worry he’s missing out on a lot of stuff and keeping him home makes it even worse to go back to school eventually. I’m also aware of the age and that it’s not easy to go through puberty. But at the same time, I don’t want to teach him to run away from his problems but to face them, to be strong and resilient. But only if he’s physically well enough, too, of course.
He was getting better last week (mentally and physically) and after speaking to his dad we agreed to send him back tomorrow. Our son got a big stress attack and cried the whole evening. He later on complained of stomach cramps and actually had a soft, weird looking poo. I am now questioning whether he is ready to go back to school or if I should leave him home until he’s feeling better / we spoke to the head of house / got the blood results back.
Does anyone have any (considerate) advice out there?