Looking below the surface

Sorry we've been absent, I spent my birthday weekend sick (boo!) and I'm just starting to feel better. Just a bad cold (cross my fingers) that I'm hoping will go away eventually.

Anyway ... life goes on even when we are sick, doesn't it? Last evening was a rough one for Evan. I should have immediately figured out that his anger was attributable to something below the emotional surface as it so often is with an AS kid, but I wasn't feeling well and didn't connect it on my own.

After an hour or two of angry and just plain rude behavior, Evan ended up coming to me and crying, saying he was sorry, and telling me that his class had a hard day at school. Not him specifically, just the whole class. And that he feels "dumb" because he hasn't passed his "9s" test in multiplication. And that (here's where the real issue surfaces) he's sad because it's almost summer break - and he realized yesterday that it starts in May and it's almost May.

I'd like to point out the great irony in this admission. Here's a kid who we often have to focus 30 to 60 minutes on in the morning just to get him to go to school. And he's bawling his eyes out, nearly inconsolable, because he's going to miss his teacher and his class so much over the summer. *Sigh*

It's always emotional when your child cries like that, but I know he'll be okay. We've done this school thing enough years that we know the transition from year to year is always emotional and challenging, but that it will eventually pass and he'll have another teacher to visit and say hi to in the hallway.

In the meantime, it was a good lesson (again!) in the need to dig below the surface to what's really going on and not just take Evan's negative behavior at face value.