Not-so-Mellow Yellow

I am reaching the point of being pretty stressed out about Patrick.

In his parent-teacher conference last month, Mrs. W hinted that she thinks he may have a hyperactivity problem. She of course wouldn't say anything outright, because they're not really allowed to, but she said that she was letting him use handheld fiddle toys to help him sit still and give him something to do, because that's what her mother did with her brother, who had ADD. When I asked her if she thought he had a problem, she backpedaled so fast it's a wonder she didn't fall over her own feet, and said if that was something WE were concerned about, we could talk to a doctor about it.

Uh, when you plant a seed like that in someone's head, who wouldn't be concerned, whether I believed it or not? Either he has an issue, and needs help, or he doesn't, but she's treating him like he does.

Not to mention, he's been getting Yellows almost every day, all year long. (For those of you w/o school-age kids, this is a behavior thing; kids start the day on 'green', and get moved down a scale to other colors based on the teacher's perception of their behavior. Yellow is the first color down after green.) In this particular class, there's no physical chart, so the children aren't moving a clip or marker of any kind, and therefore have no idea when they have moved from one color to the next. This nice in that there's no public humiliation, but a pain because the kids don't know exactly what they did sometimes to get whatever color they get.

For months now, we've been trying to encourage the green behavior, while stressing out over whether he's just not capable of it, and if not, maybe there IS a problem, etc. Then, the other day, I caught him lying about having already done his homework, and the root of the problem smacked me in the face: he started crying and saying he didn't want to do it because it was too easy and boring. (This is true; his class is doing simple addition when he could multiply many of those numbers.) After talking with him a little further, I realized that the times he's getting in trouble are when he's waiting for other people to finish their work, and he's sitting there bored in his seat looking for something to do.

Suddenly, I felt like I had broken through the ice and could breathe again. There's no problem with my boy. There's a problem with the school. They're not challenging him, and he's bored, which makes him fidgety, which in turn is making the teacher treat him like he's got some medical issue. I know he does a lot of weird things, and boredom probably isn't the only reason he gets in trouble, but I'll bet it's a big part of it.

Enter The Guilt. I was taking the side of the school's behavior system over my boy, and believing things they were not-quite-saying rather than looking for an answer myself. He's not having problems with his schoolwork, he has lots of friends, and he functions well in almost every environment but those where he has to sit still and simply wait quietly. I should have known. I'm his mother, why did I come so close to accepting someone else's definition of my son?

Last night, I did two things: one, I filled out an application for Patrick to get into a magnet program for science and math next year at a local school. It's a drive, but he would get to do schoolwork 1-2 years above his grade level, and yet still be with his own peers. He was so excited when I told him about it he started jumping up and down. The other was that I emailed his teacher, explained what I thought was going on and how it's the same as last year before his K teacher started sending him to 2nd grade for reading, and asking if he could either have more challenging work, or if I could send in a workbook or something for him to use when he has down time, even if it wasn't something he handed in to her. I haven't heard back yet, but I'm almost scared to. I tried talking to her at the beginning of the year about it, and got shut down, so we'll see. Fingers crossed, people.