First Week of School

Last week was the first week of school for all the kids. Overall, it went very well. After Mary's meltdown at the open house, I called a meeting with all of her core teachers to make sure we were all on the same page. It went really well and I feel like everyone knows a little bit more of what they are dealing with. The only really negative incident happened on Thursday when one of her connections teachers called to tell me that she had made Mary cry in class. She explained that there were several kids in that class who are always goofing off and making everyone behind schedule, so she had really been pushing the whole class to get into class on time with all of their materials ready. On Thursday, she had "yelled" at the kids (Mary says this teacher yells a lot) once again about not being on time, and Mary just could not take it any more. She broke down and cried so hard that the teacher excused her from the room. On Friday Mary was just "off" in the morning and dragging her feet about getting ready. I asked her if she was okay and she said she just didn't want to go to that class anymore. I realized this morning why that particular incident probably upset Mary so much... she HATES being rushed. If the teacher is feeling rushed and is pushing that onto the kids, of course it will set Mary off. I am debating whether to have her pulled from that class and moved to a different connections class, but hate to do that after just one week and one uncomfortable incident. I told her to try it one more week and we will see how she feels about it. The thing is that I think this could potentially be one of her favorite classes. It is a home-ec type of class and she just loves to cook. But if she is constantly feeling rushed, she won't enjoy it at all and that just saddens me.

This morning was a little bit harder. She was sad and moving at a slow pace getting ready for school. She was even a little teary when I dropped her off. Thankfully she had one of her best friends there to encourage her. She told me when she got home that she was really depressed this morning and very tired. She seemed to be better this afternoon. I am hoping that a good night's sleep tonight will make tomorrow morning easier.

An update on the medication front... We did decide to put Mary back on the anti-anxiety medication. It became very obvious after being off of the medicine for a week that the anxiety was returning big time. She was having trouble making decisions, beginning to worry about little things, and very "on-edge" about everything. She was having separation anxiety and I could not even go to the store without her calling every few minutes asking when I was going to be home. The tears were coming much more frequently and she was also starting to feel the suicidal thinking creep back in. The final straw came when she went out on the lake with some friends of ours for the day. Later that evening, the dad (who also happens to be our family doctor) emailed me to tell me that Mary just did not seem right. He confirmed all the things that I had been seeing at home. She has been back on it now for just over 3 weeks and it has definitely eased the anxiety of starting middle school. I am really glad we caught it before it became a huge issue and that it had enough time to get back to therapeutic levels before school started.