DS y9 just turned 13yo came home from school today having made a choice on a whim that I think was a bad idea but I would like other mum's views.
He's been studying German and during y7 and y8. It's slightly relevant to know that he has Autism and is academically highly able (what would have been called Aspergers a few years ago before definitions changed). However, his autism also has some elements of Demand Avoidant profile and it's not always easy to keep him on-track academically. He has regular form for starting new things and giving them up once they become difficult - that is relevant too.
We had a year 9 options deadline back in June to choose some subject options for this year - there were a few new subjects being introduced and a few opportunities to drop some of the subjects that weren't being enjoyed so much - not narrowing down to final GCSE choices yet but making a but of room in the timetable by getting rid of one or two things that they definitely wouldn't be choosing at GCSE. At that point we agreed that he could start Business Studies, but we said no to him starting Russian too - for a variety of reasons including that we thought he would get overwhelmed with starting two new subjects, and that having a new language in an entirely new alphabet and needing to get up-to-speed in that pretty quickly would be a less good idea than consolidating and building on languages that he is making good progress on already.
But today was the first day of school and he has come home saying that he has dropped German and is starting Russian after all.
Now ultimately I know it is him that has to do the work but I am shocked that the school will let him do this without checking with us. I think that he will find it a novelty for the first 4 weeks and will then start feeling totally overwhelmed and hating it. Throughout y7 and y8 it has been a massive struggle to support him in getting his homework done and he has massive issues with having to do school work at home, but he can't do it at school in the library as he keeps misunderstanding the task and thinking his homework is done when he has not actually completed it so he needs parental input, but neither DH or I have the capacity to support him in Russian at all!
Anyway I don't want to be the bad guy and make him do German when he wants to drop it but he has made brilliant progress in it, and I think it would be a real shame to not build on that.
If anyone has any thoughts I would really appreciate it.