How to adjust -- Long but I really need some input!

[Guest guest]

My son is 6 years old and in 1st grade. Previously he was in a self-contained

ESE class. This year the school deemed that their self-contained ESE class

wasn't the appropriate placement (it's mostly kids with behavior issues) for my

son and we hesitantly agreed to mainstream him into a regular ed 1st grade

class.

Although it took some doing, we finally have the school on board with all the

accommodations we believe he needs (and they were willing to provide to this

point) to address his sensory needs in this setting. We were struggling because

for my son the sensory overload is more of a cumulative issue than in the

moment, so the school wasn't seeing the overload behaviors. Finally we're not

seeing the affect of sensory overload at home because they have put some sensory

breaks into his day (in addition to other sensory diet elements but the breaks

were what we really had to fight for).

The other issue we struggled with for my son at school was that he wasn't being

held accountable for getting his work done because he wasn't being supervised

closely enough. We insisted that he be held to this standard because he is

extremely smart and academically capable of being at or above grade level. He

simply needs to do the work appropriately, and not be given the opportunity to

draw Batman or pirates instead of completing his reading worksheets, for

example.

So now that things are going better after school and at home, the school is

really starting to see my son struggle during the school day. He's blurting and

being disruptive more and more, and his behavior is just consistently poor.

Monday of this week he ran away during PE and then that afternoon he ran from

the teacher while on a sensory break and climbed a tree. The principal was on

the phone with the fire department to get help getting him out of the tree

(because 2 adults with 12-foot ladders wasn't working) when they finally got him

out. Tuesday he refused to go to lunch and then in the afternoon he refused to

do any work unless he was sitting under a table. Yesterday same thing with the

table, but it was all day. Thankfully the principal and his teachers know that

this isn't behavior that he can truly control (impulse control and reaction to

sensory overload) but I dread looking at the caller ID when the phone rings!

My son is going to a private school in the fall (his current school doesn't know

this yet). I appreciate all that his current school has done to help him, but

it's just not the right place for him. So we know that we just need to get

through the school year with him. I think that his recently behavior backslide

at school is because he is now required to do his work in this overwhelming

environment. I think that the reason the school wasn't seeing the behavior

problems before is because my son wasn't *as* overwhelmed because he didn't have

to also do his work as much.

So my question (thankfull we're at the question!!!) is do we reconvine with the

school to discuss a different placement, which at this point probably means a

different school, or do we back-off on our expectation that our son complete his

work to the level that we think he can. I don't want to lower our expectations

of his academic performance, but I'm not sure if our expectations are realistic

given his challenges with the environment he's in. In other words, I'm not sure

he's really capble of doing his work while battling the sensory overload he

seems to still experience being in this regular ed class all day.

I'm done rambling. I'd love your input!!!

Thanks,