Advice Needed

[Guest guest]

My son started Kindergarten last week, and has a 1:1 aide. They're

not sure he's going to need the aide after the first 2 months because

he was doing so well, but we have until the end of October to figure

that one out. The teacher said he's very mature and well-behaved most

of the time, and seems to be more " ready " for Kindergarten than at

least half of the other kids in the class. She acknowledges that he

does have some quirks (which were covered in my teacher letter to her

before school started), but overall he's great to have around.

However, there is a kid in his class who apparently also just made the

cutoff date of December 2 (my son is Nov 7) who is currently 4 years

old. He is having severe separation anxiety, and has been crying

non-stop in class since school started last Tuesday. Apparently last

week 1 day my DS yelled out " Enough already, just STOP! " The aide

said that she and the teacher had to hold back their laughter on that

one, since he said what everyone else was thinking.

We had an IEP meeting on Tuesday and discussed how Damian is doing,

and everyone seemed to think things were going okay overall, and that

he doesn't stand out behaviorally. The teacher has a Green/Yellow/Red

system (like a stop light) for the kids. They start out on green,

work up to yellow, then red. There are lots of warnings on the way

up. If they still can't hold it together on Red, there is a pink slip

that comes home for the parents that says what happened & the parents

need to sign and return.

Tuesday Damian went up to Red, though she said he'd worked himself

back down to Yellow by the end of the school day. Yesterday he got a

pink slip. However, his after school care (where he also attended

Pre-K) says that he had really good days there, being helpful with the

teachers and that everything is fine. The only thing I can think is

that he's being overloaded in Kindergarten.

I'm thinking it's a combination of this kid crying incessantly (I

mentioned that to his aide this morning), and probably having 20 kids

in a classroom. They assigned him to this class (which is mainstream)

because they don't have any high functioning Special Ed classes in the

district, and they chose his teacher because she has lots of

experience and is more flexible than the other teachers.

Does anyone have any ideas of coping strategies for my poor kid, or

ideas about how to deal with this crying kid? I have a call into the

school psychologist, and I'm going to see if I can get her to give me

even roundabout information about how long this is going to go on.

Any ideas would be great, otherwise just the chance to vent helped too!

Thanks!