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We adopted our son from Ukraine when he was 6 months old. He was 4 in April and we started him at a new private Catholic school in Pre-K 4 in September because we felt he needed a little more of an educational program than he was getting at his day care.He seems to be having several problems in his new setting and I am not sure what we can do to help him out. He was fine for a while, but over the last couple of weeks, he has had several "bad behaviour" notes from his teacher. We are going back to Ukraine for our second adoption on December 18th, so I am not sure whether a little of this is related to his anxiety that we are leaving him.First of all, he is a very exuberant child and finds it hard to sit down and pay attention. Several times, he just seems to get disruptive during circle time. I have seen him do similar things when I have taken him to gymnastics class, if anyone else is doing something, he just cannot sit still and wait.He also loves to play act characters, unfortunately usually the villains in Disney movies!!! He has the habit of getting in your face and putting spells on you or yelling. When he does this at school and the other kids tell him they don't like it, he just won't stop and he's had some incidents of hitting/biting/spitting at the other children.Although we get bad notes sent home with him, if I talk to the teachers about it, they seem to think it's no big deal. However, it's bad enough that he gets unacceptable or needs improvement on most days. This is giving us mixed messages as we're not sure exactly how concerned they are about it. However, my husband talked to his teacher on Friday and asked her if she'd be more specific in her notes to us. She wrote on Friday and told us that a couple of the parents have asked her to keep their children away from our son, so this must be serious.I am so worried about him right now, I feel like it's consuming my life. I think about this all day and it keeps me awake at night. Does anyone have any idea how we can help him or whether we maybe need to take him to see a behavioural specialist?I don't want him to get expelled from school while we are gone and most of all I want to help him get through this.Jane
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Hi, I'm a mom of 3 boys and I can tell you his behavior is totally normal. First of all, he's four - and no four year old boy can sit still and behave like a perfect angel. You may want to reconsider starting him so early in school. I waited until my boys were at least 5-1/2 to start Kindergarten. My oldest son had just turned 5 when I started him in school and he had to be held back in 3rd grade because he was not mature enough. Once I held him back, he did great in school.
Don't worry too much. If he's biting kids or being violent, then worry. But, I would seriously consider waiting a year to restart him in Kindergarten. He may be the oldest kid in his class, but the kids don't notice or care, plus he'll probably be one of the "biggest" in his class which is a plus.
Good luck. :D
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I totally disagree. It MAY NOT be normal.
Is there a way you can observe? Observe him in a classroom setting among other kids his age. If you notice that his is more active than the other kids, more vocal, loud than the other kids, just MORE than the other kids, I suggest that you have your school district evaluate him.
I took my son to pre-K orientation, the other kids colored, hung out near their parents. My son was everywhere, touching everything, fingers in the goldfish bowl, etc.
He has sensory delays. Some of what you describe could be sensory related. A good evaluation will determine if it is sensory or something else. And start a therapy plan.
Browse The Out of Sync Child. If you see your child on the pages of this book, probably a sensory issue.
Feel free to pm me for info as it relates to my son.
Thanks for your insights. Ben seems to be doing much better recently. Things just seemed to be getting worse and worse and built to such a crescendo right before Thanksgiving, that I was even in tears standing on the playground one morning. I can absolutely identify with dreading the phone ringing in case it was the school.Anyway, since Thanksgiving, things seem to have been much better, I think it's a combination of everything. I had a meeting with our parents-as-teachers lady who was pretty horrified that a 4 year old would be agonizing over getting a bad note or a good note at school. She also pointed out that on the two days that another teacher had filled out the notes, his behaviour had been pretty much the same, but he had a good note anyway. My husband and I decided that we were not going to make these notes into the focus of our evenings and we would just talk to our son about the good things he had done that day, even if he had a bad note. It worked a charm, whereas before we could punish or reward him and it didn't seem to matter, he was in tears one night as he had a bad note and we hadn't even really mentioned it. His teacher has been great through all of this (this is her first year and she's learning too), she has found ways to try to get Ben to channel his energy into more positive things and ways to keep him from interacting negatively with the other children (he gets to be the engine on the train when they are going anywhere!!). I have also found out a little more about his interactions with some of the other boys in the class, and it is not all him by any means. He is small and young for his school year (his birthday is in April) and there are boys in his class that are a head height taller than him. However, I don't think he's getting bullied by anyone, his asset is that he's got a great personality and everybody loves him.We still need to keep an eye on how he progresses, I think one of the hardest things in making an assessment on whether there is an underlying problem is the fact that so many of the signs are exactly the same as regular childhood behaviours. I have looked at several websites about sensory issues attachment and depression, but Ben does not seem to have any of these symptoms that would be out of the ordinarry. For now, we have decided to wait and see how things go while we are away in Ukraine (we leave on Sunday) and see how things are when we get back home. Once we have his little sister home, it will be a whole new can of worms anyway.
HiMy son is 6 years old and I adopted him from Russia when he was 18 months old. He has been diagnosed with ADHD and is on Metadate. He is very aggressive and has been in trouble repeatedly for hitting the other children. I have talked to him, read everybook ( I think) about ADHD, threatened him, privledges have been taken away, you name it I think I have tried it. He just cam home with another note today for hitting 3 children and if his behavior does not improve will be suspended. If he is by himself, he does all of his work and asks for more - if he is in a group setting, he is too concerned about what the other children are doing instead of doing his own work. He works great one on one but school is not one on one. Any suggestions anyone? Anyone had similiar problems?