It’s Week Three of 5th Grade and We Switched Schools

Parenting – I knew it would come with a lot of hard decisions and hard days. I knew it would involve little sleep and sometimes little patience. 

What I didn’t know was how it would make me doubt my intuition. 

My son had a really rough 4th grade; in fact my daughter did too. Her’s was much more a personality difference with the teacher – but my son’s had him self doubting his abilities. We as his parents tried to help him, we tried to show him over and over again what we saw in him. We had conversations with the principal, we had conversations with the teacher, we had conversations with parents – but it didn’t matter. In his eyes, he had been made to feel worthless. Worthless in the classroom, worthless on the playground. 

As a mom, you never want your son to see himself that way. 

He began to get preoccupied with what was happening on the playground; it began to interfere with his class work. 

He began coming home telling us how much he hated school. 

It broke my heart! 

Over the summer, I sought out recommendations from friends for therapists who worked with kids who had been bullied, had developed anxiety and had a hard time working through anger. 

He wasn’t very excited about it, but after every time he met with him he came out walking lighter, smiling more. We had even discussed over the summer if switching schools for 5th grade would be something we should consider. We decided to let him try and finish his last year of elementary school at the school he started at. We had hoped with his new coping skills that this would turn out to be better. 

It wasn’t. 

I got a call from his dad on Monday of the third week of school concerned that maybe we did make the wrong decision to keep him at his school. We decided then and there that we were done. We both talked to our spouses – the four of us co-parent together. It wasn’t an easy decision. We felt like we had failed him by pulling him from the only school he’s known. 

BUT, we were over him coming home every day exhausted because he had spent the whole day worrying about what had or was going to happen on the playground. He felt alone on the playground, standing up for himself and others when no one else would. I was proud of him for standing up and I love his sensitivity. We say we want sensitive men, but the moment they start to show any type of emotion we start to make fun of them. 

LISTEN up, we can’t have it both ways. We can’t say we want our men to be sensitive but then criticize them when they are out playing and expressing their feelings. And we need to teach our boys that it is ok to express your feelings and its not ok to pick up on someone who is. 

And then something changed in him – it was like the stress he had been carrying around was lifted. Once we had made the decision and he was able to see the new school it was all it took for him to get excited. He was joining a classroom of kids he knew – he knew from the ice rink and the ball field. 

I called him right after his first day at the new school and I heard joy in his voice. Now, he rushes home to grab his book and head to our neighbor’s so they can get their reading done. When I ask him how his day was, he talks about the good things. He no longer worries about what is going to happen outside of the classroom. Relief washes over me every time I reflect on the choice we made as a family. 

Parents, we have to make tough decisions for our kids and we worry if we are doing the right thing. Seeing your child happy is all it takes to know that you did. We have an obligation to teach our children to be kind to each other, to accept each other’s differences and to stand up to those who aren’t doing that! If your gut tells you, you need to make a change on behalf of your child DO IT! Switching schools three weeks into 5th grade was one of the best parenting decisions I’ve made.