DS (7) has had a few days in recent weeks where he gets upset about something relatively small, eg, he can't find a particular Lego figure, just before we need to leave to go to school, and then he can't calm himself down. If it happened at any other time of day he'd get a bit upset, and then calm down, but when its in the morning as we're about to leave for school, as soon as he gets slightly upset he says 'I don't want anyone at school to see me crying' and then manages to gradually work himself up into more of a state.
The first time it happened I tried to calm him down, waited for a bit before we left the house until he had stopped crying, and he was fine when we started walking, but then he got upset again when we got closer to school and just kept saying that he didn't want anyone to see him crying.
The next time I did similar but he didn't calm down before we left and I just tried to distract him on the walk to school, talking about silly things that would normally make him laugh, but it was though he'd decided he was going to be upset and nothing could get him out of it.
Its only happened 4 or 5 times and other days he will run in absolutely fine. I've spoken to his teacher to see how he is at school and she says he seems happy and he's got close friends. Normally when I leave him he finds one of his friends and they're thick as thieves and giggling together straight away.
He does have ongoing toileting issues which affects his confidence, but most days he is absolutely fine going to school.
Anyway, to get to the point! Today we were getting ready for school - he's been off for the last two days with a bad cold/cough so today was his first day back. I said he needed to put on his winter coat because it was icy our and really cold. He said he didn't want to because its embarrassing wearing it. I tried to reason saying that everyone else will be wearing winter coats because its really cold, and especially because he's been ill and feeling the cold more the last couple of days. He started to cry and said the only thing that would stop him crying would be to not wear his coat, and that he didn't want to go to school when he was crying.
I thought I can't back down and say ok don't wear your coat, so I stuck to my guns and said he must wear it because its cold and I asked him to. So he continued to cry, and from past experience I realised he was going to be upset, even if we waited and tried to calm down. So I said right we're going to school and we walked all the way there with him in tears. I tried to chat about normal things to distract him but he just kept repeating that he didn't want to wear his coat and sobbing.
When it was time to go in, he wouldn't go in and his teacher couldn't get him to let go of me. So I took him in, which is what I've done each time this has happened. He then got more and more upset and lashed out at his friend when he asked if he was ok. I took him into his classroom and he was obviously really embarrassed about crying in front of everyone. The last time this happened the teaching assistant took him outside until he calmed down - last time it took nearly an hour. This time there wasn't a teaching assistant there, and I had to take DD (4) to her classroom and didn't want her to be late, so I gave him a cuddle, said bye and asked him to sit down on the carpet with the other children. He tried to run out after me - he was quite hysterical by this point. His teacher had to physically hold him to stop him getting out of the classroom, while he was thrashing around trying to escape!
She told me to go, and she shut the door to keep him in. I could hear him screaming while I walked down the corridor with DD.
Sorry this is so long, I just wondered if anyone had any advice on how I should have handled it - leaving him at school in hysterical tears isn't good for him, me, DD (she then had a bit of a minor wobble when she had to go into her classroom) his teacher or any of the other children in his class!
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How should I have handled this? Left DS at school in hysterical tears again. Long sorry.
16 replies
iwouldgoouttonight · 22/11/2013 12:27
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