My 5 year old is suddenly so sad about school

[khalloc]

I posted a few days ago about how DS was on antibiotics last week and now is having tummy troubles. He is pooping now, so thats good but everything is not back to "normal". We are doing a chewable pro-biotic and I did give him a tiny amount of those chocolate ex-lax squares. He's pooped the past 2 mornings on the potty, but this morning was more like diarrhea. I will stop the ex-lax now and just let him try to get better by eating fruits/veggies I think.

But at the same time that this tummy/antibiotic thing happened, he is suddenly so sad about school. He wakes up crying about not wanting to go and crying that he will miss me so much and I have no idea how much he will miss me. He says he cant survive the 2 more days until February vacation. He will then switch gears and talk about how he doesnt want to poop at school. then it will change into the bus ride home being too long, and can I please just pick him up at school? Can he be an early pick-up, etc...? I dont want to go down that road because he was 100% fine with riding the bus and going to school before last week. DD is at the same school and on the bus with him and she says no one is bothering him. He's not being picked on or anything like that.

He's always been sensative and a momma's boy. But he was also a huge jokester and pretty happy. But this is throwing me for a loop. Could it all just be related to his upset tummy? Its been 6 days since he had antibiotics. I'm hoping that once his tummy issues resolve and he is back to "normal" he will stop crying for me ALL.THE.TIME. He is waking up at 5am and immediately starts whining and crying about how he doesnt want to go to school and how he will miss me so much.

I even asked him if someone was bothering him at school and he said his teacher was. He said he was trying to cuddle his stuffed animal (which I put into his backpack to make him feel better) and he said she screamed at him "are you going to come back to meeting Liam?"). His teacher is very mellow and really nice. She is about 26 and so calm. I cant imagine her ever raising her voice. So I think he is just overly sensitive and I dont believe she really screamed at him. I can see her being firm though and matter-of-fact. But she is very soft-spoken.

Anyways, what gives? Do you think this little phase will pass once his stomach is back to normal? DD says he isn't sad the whole day at school. She seems him at lunch and recess (I think they sit together with their own friends at lunch). There has been 2 days in the past 8 days that either the school nurse called me because he was there and not feeling well, or because the teacher emailed me to tell me he had a "rough day". The teacher said he gets more upset and inconsolable if an adult tries to console him. They have an assistant teacher in their Kindergarten room full-time and she is an older lady, like 65ish or so and I guess she couldnt help but try to console him and it ended up making him cry more. So now the teacher is trying to let him take a little break, hug his stuffed animal and have a sip of water before he returns to his table to "work". She said that seems to work better for him.

I just want him to have fun and not be crying and missing me so much that he's miserable. I havent been giving in too much about picking him up at school.

Sorry this is so long...

[twowhat?]

It HAS to be the pooping! I have kids that are anxious about pooping at school so this immediately jumped out at me!!

The antibiotics gave him diarrhea - which is normal. He will have to (or had to) poop more often, and at school. He doesn't like pooping at school - he is anxious about it and holds it in - it's very uncomfortable to be holding in diarrhea, poor kid He is old enough now to make up all sorts of excuses for not going to school so he doesn't have to face the whole issue of needing to poop. Definitely stay away from laxatives (they are making him need to poop and he doesn't sound constipated so I think they're just contributing to the problem of making him need to poop more often) and just push the probiotics. Let him spend extra time on the potty at home - you don't want this to devolve into a withholding situation.

Maybe until his tummy is back to normal one of his teachers can take him more frequently to the bathroom and assure him that he may stay in there privately and take as much time as he needs without actually saying "let's go to the potty so you can poop" (that contributes to the anxiety) - sometimes just being allowed to sit on the toilet will result in a poop and he will feel so much better.

Poor kid I feel so bad for him! The few times my kids have had to poop at school and won't, they definitely have bad days - and they won't tell the teachers that they have to poop because they simply don't WANT to poop at school! I totally understand the whole "won't poop at school" issue! I remember when DD1 was 3 she was crying at pick-up and the teachers had no idea why - they couldn't console her or anything. She cried in the car on the way home and then as soon as we got home she went to the potty, pooped, and everything was fine! But - she refused to tell the teacher because she simply did not want to poop at school. My DD2 will not poop at school, and I don't blame her - the bathroom isn't exactly private. But she will come home VERY uncomfortable until she sits on the toilet and poops and it absolutely affects her mood.

[khalloc]

Thank you. I guess that has to be it. He is just so sad and it breaks my heart. I dont want to set a precedent by letting him stay home though. His kindergarten classroom has a bathroom attached to it that is private. But he is still worried about going poop there. Then he says he doesnt want to go poop at school and then he is afraid poop will come out on the bus! Poor kid. But when he comes home he is not running to the bathroom to poop or anything. I guess its definitely anxiety over having to poop at school. I really hope this resolves itself over the February vacation. He does drink Danimals drinkable yogurt and he will eat GoGurt. I would say he has at least 3 servings of yogurt a day. Plus now I am giving him that Curelle chewable probiotic.

[twowhat?]

Thank you. I guess that has to be it. He is just so sad and it breaks my heart. I dont want to set a precedent by letting him stay home though. His kindergarten classroom has a bathroom attached to it that is private. But he is still worried about going poop there. Then he says he doesnt want to go poop at school and then he is afraid poop will come out on the bus! Poor kid. But when he comes home he is not running to the bathroom to poop or anything. I guess its definitely anxiety over having to poop at school. I really hope this resolves itself over the February vacation. He does drink Danimals drinkable yogurt and he will eat GoGurt. I would say he has at least 3 servings of yogurt a day. Plus now I am giving him that Curelle chewable probiotic.

If you can work into the morning routine 5-10 min to sit on the potty after breakfast without telling him he has to do anything other than sit on the potty with a book, maybe he will produce and that will make a big difference in how he feels during the day.

Good luck! The whole pooping at school issue IS heartbreaking! It's fine on a normal basis with my girls when the regular routine is to poop at home after school and so the body feels like it needs to poop on that timeline - but illness, etc throws off that schedule and that's when it's hard so for your DS it probably really is just a matter of getting back into the regular routine.

eta: my girls are in a class with an attached bathroom as well, so while we adults may think of it as "private" - to them it is not because it's RIGHT there, where they can probably hear everyone else in the class. They can't lock the door, so someone could walk in as they are on the potty, etc.

[khalloc]

Thanks. He has complained that kids (mostly his closest friend) laugh when people go poop. And he said once someone walked in on him while he was peeing. He was so proud that he has never pooped at school before!

We do wake up early. He's usually up by 6am and lately its been even earlier, like 5am!! and the bus doesnt come until 8am. So he has time to poop. But he cries the whole time and is so anxious about how much time he has left. Even if its 45 minutes! Alot of times he wants me to sit in there with him and I try, but I need to leave for work (DH waits for the bus) and the entire time we are in there he just cries about how much he will miss me.

I guess I can hope that with the weekend coming up he will be home enough for everything to resolve itself and we're going away next week so he will have more time away from school to get back to normal.

Thanks for the reassurance! Who knew pooping could be so stressful?

[khalloc]

Well today was probably one of the worst mornings so far. My DH was back from traveling. He usually waits with the kids for the bus and I leave for work early. So DS last night kept going on and on about how he was going to miss me tomorrow. We spent a TON of time snuggling and then he caught me and DH in the act, but he didnt see anything, thank god! Then to get him back to bed I had to go lay down with him. And I was so tired I ended up falling asleep for a few hours in his bed. So he was asking if I could ask my boss if I could wait for the bus this one last day with him (so leave 1 hour later for work). So I said i would see, but I knew I wasnt going to. So he was OK this morning, playing iPad Minecraft. Then he kept asking me if I called my boss yet. So I said yes, and I could NOT wait for the bus. Well he completely lost it! He was screaming and crying about how he couldnt go on without me. And what was he going to do? He couldnt survive without me all day long! Then he turned to the pooping thing. And I said he should go sit on the potty (this is about 1 hour 15 minutes before he has to leave for the bus). Well the whole time he was sitting on the potty screaming for me and crying about how he couldnt take me leaving, etc...He did poop. Seemed fine.

I asked him to take his inhaler though and he stopped crying right away to do his Flovent. So I feel like that points to this being more of an anxiety thing? I dunno. He has me convinced that he loves me. DH tried to tell him that he was really excited to wait for the bus, but that didnt work. I guess he went back and sat on the potty for the next hour after I left and continued to cry for me and say things like "I am so scared of riding the bus mommy". I feel so bad for him! But at the same time he hasnt had to poop at school and when he comes home he doesnt mention having to poop.

I hope the vacation break next week makes this better and not worse. But its been my experience with him that the longer he is home, the less likely he wants to leave me.

[123LuckyMom]

This is hard, isn't it? My DS has been in a phase for a couple of weeks of wanting to stay home every morning and crying that he misses me too much at school. Once he's at school, he has a fantastic time, and he gets angry if I come early to pick him up, but he's having a hard time getting to school and parting in the morning. He went from being a kid who was dressed and ready to go before I ever got out of bed to being a kid who's constantly dragging his feet and whining that he wants to stay home.

At first I did try letting him stay home for a mental health day. That did NOT help! The thing that has worked the best is that he's super competitive, so I started to bet him each morning that he was going to have an awful, terrible, no good, very bad day in school, and if he did, I would win! If he had a good day, he would win. This helped put the focus on the bet every morning. I would show him the victory dance I was going to do when I won, that kind of thing. I didn't win once, go figure . I also decided to wake up a bit earlier in the morning so I would have time to help him get dressed to give him that little extra bit of attention and baby him a little like he felt he needed. That helped. I also told him if he was ready by a certain time, I would cook him a big breakfast-- eggs, toast with cream cheese, hot chocolate, fresh fruit, the works! That helped. Then I made a star chart for me, but he had to be my helper. I only got a star if I never once complained in the morning. I couldn't complain that we had to hurry. I couldn't complain that he wasn't dressed yet. I couldn't complain AT ALL, or I wouldn't get a star. He had to make sure both he and his sister behaved so I could get my star. If I got the star, I would sing my star song and do my star dance in the hallway of his school. That REALLY helped, and the teachers and his classmates LOVED it! I don't know what will work for your son, but try being a little creative, using humor, and playing on the things that motivate him. Also, I always tell my son that being brave doesn't mean you're not afraid. Being brave means you're afraid but you do it anyway, because it's the right thing to do. He can feel one way and still take action another way. That helps him a lot. He knows it's okay for him to feel that he will miss me and also choose to go to school without complaining.

[ahisma]

I'm sorry. It is hard.

One thing to think about, my DS2 is a classic anxiety kid. 90% of the time we can manage it, and have a great therapist to help navigate the other 10%. That said, he is off the rails when he's on antibiotics. Meds in general are a stressor, but it's intensified 50x with antibiotics. He doesn't know the difference between antibiotics and any other med (he's 5). I really think that the antibiotics impact his body in a way that intensifies the anxiety issues. There is some research out there that backs it up, but I haven't spent enough time with it to assess its credibility.

[mackmama]

Could he be nervous about having a poop accident at school or on the bus? That's what jumped out at me. Poor thing. I'm so sorry your DC is so sad. That's so hard to see I know. My DC is recovering from an illness and is SUPER clingy too - so maybe it's just part of the recovery process when still not feeling back to normal.

[Tondi G]

I'm sorry you're going through this. Poor little guy. Anxiety is so hard. I wonder if something like rescue remedy would help calm him a little? It might be worth a try. They make the drops specifically for kids
http://bachflower4kids.com/rescue-remedy-kids/

I've always used the spray which has been safely taken by children but it is preserved in Brandy so some people don't want to use it with children. They also make pastilles
http://www.directlyfromnature.com/Re...r_p/rr-002.htm