Today

I knew today was going to be a bad day when I left Lion this morning.  His time on the playground was short and he was not happy with me.

While on line he called one of his classmates an idiot and stupid and told the poor kid to shut up. He then kicked another innocent student.

I warned his teacher it wasn't going to be a good day. As I left him, I thought about just coming home to sit by the phone but decided I cannot live like that and so I went and did the 9am and 10am Boot Camps.

At the end of the 10am I checked my phone to see an unfamiliar number on it and my heart sank. I listened to the message and got a knot in my stomach.

Lion had been removed from the classroom for creating an unsafe environment. He apparently kicked two students and three teachers. One teacher he kicked hard enough that she had to go to the nurse and fill out an incident report.

I needed to come and get him and take him home.

The school psychologist Dr. Allgaier met me in the office as I was waiting for them to get him.

She gave me a little more detail as to what had happened. She told me that the principal agreed to not count this as a suspension but that it would be in his record as a removal.

She also suggested that perhaps I look into enrolling him in an anger management course that she knows about here in Hoboken.

The next time this happens it will be counted as a suspension.

As an added bonus, the parents of the two kids he kicked are getting phone calls about the incidents letting them know what happened.

Did I mention that tonight is back to school night and both those parents will be there?

Total icing on the shit cake.

They suggested that perhaps if I bring him to school 10 minutes late tomorrow and bring him right to the classroom he won't be so overwhelmed by all the noise.

The fact that the words suspension and anger management classes have been used in a conversation about my 6 1/2 year old child is so absurd I'm finding it hard to wrap my head around.

I'm truly at a total loss and feeling very overwhelmed right now.

This cannot continue. The school wants to keep trying to find ways to make it work for him but I know him and I know that we can try standing on our heads and dancing the chacha with a hippo but without Lion as a willing participant nothing we try is going to work.

Positive reinforcement doesn't work. Classroom removal doesn't work. 

In my meeting with his team on Monday we discussed the possibility of returning him to a special needs classroom. His case manager isn't crazy about that idea because she's afraid of behavior regression and him not being challenged enough.

That's what's so frustrating about this whole thing. He's totally got all the smarts to be in the classroom he's in now. Academically he's right where he should be. Socially and for behavior he isn't. If we put him back in a special needs classroom and have him on the schedule for a few mainstream classes we are all concerned that he's going to be completely overwhelmed with all the changes and the moving from class to class that it's going to take us back even further and his behavior will deteriorate more.

I am so afraid that the bag of tricks and ideas to make this all work for Brian is going to run dry and then what? What if he doesn't change? What if this behavior continues?
I don't want to spend this whole school year sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring. I don't want to have to continue to apologize to other parents. I don't want him labeled as a bad kid or a bully.

I need to remember to breathe and take one day at a time. We will get through this as a family and as long as the school is willing to work with him and try to solve this, I am too.

I just honestly wish I wasn't going through this with him.