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academic underachievers/anxiety

619 views 1 reply 2 participants last post by  moominmamma 
#1 ·
Hi Mamas -- I haven't been on mothering in ages, but we are struggling with my son's school issues. I need advice!

Short story -- He's a 4th grader. He is in the gifted program at our school, and he does well with our gifted teacher in pullouts, electives, etc. The regular classroom is an entirely different issue, however! When I'm in there, he daydreams a lot, which means he doesn't know what to do. Then of course, he's not completing assignments, etc., and now his grades are horrible.

He has an anxiety disorder w/ panic attacks. We have that largely under control, but it also makes it very difficult for me to push him to try to explain what's going on at school because I don't want to send him spiraling.

I'm just lost. We were both in tears at dinner trying to decide what to do and where to go. I often just want to scream that it shouldn't be so hard! I would welcome any advice, resources, or anything else you can offer.
 
#2 ·
I'm sorry I don't have any parenting experience with school for kids this age. I do recall my (PG) brother started to get into problems with grades at school around 6th/7th grade because he could no longer figure out enough to score an A when presented with a test and gawking around the room for the first half of the allotted time. He too was incredibly day-dreamy, and my parents found he couldn't explain anything about what was going on inside himself. I imagine that 4th grade is the new 7th grade in terms of its demands on kids' organizational and output-generation skills, so it would be no surprise that nowadays a kid might run into problems sooner.

Is it possible that he's struggling with executive function skills? That's what in retrospect turned out to be the problem with my brother. Once he ended up in small traditional private school where he had people keeping an eye on his organization and attention and scaffolding his skills, and where the learning was challenging enough to engage him, he began to really do well. If you think there's anything to the idea that he might not have the necessary executive function skills to cope with a less-than-optimally-engaging environment perhaps a book like "Smart but Scattered" might give you some ideas. Haven't read it myself but it gets recommended a lot.

Miranda
 
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