13 yrs. Grade 8

Our son became ill in the early spring of grade 6. He missed 3 weeks of school when we tried to send him back even though he wasn’t completely healthy. We kept getting phone calls to come and pick him up. We decided to just keep him home until the doctors could diagnose his illness. There was little communication from the school, no work sent home for us to complete with him, and no outreach from his class. He felt like no one at the school cared about him. After physical diagnosis and treatment during the summer, he began grade 7, but by Thanksgiving, we couldn’t get him to school at all. Despite the challenges from the year before, the teacher had placed him in a class separated from his two best friends. He complained that his brain didn’t work right and that he couldn’t remember anything. Math was a huge source of anxiety, which we attributed to missing 3 months of the previous year. We sought help from the youth counsellor and social worker, a child psychiatrist, a child psychologist, and several specialists. He was diagnosed with unexplained chronic pain, severe depression, and anxiety. Other than offering a modified day, the school offered no support. On the days I could get him to school, my son reported sitting at his desk, with no one talking to him, and trying to catch up on work he missed. The school refused to put an IEP in place. My son felt stupid and inadequate. I took a leave of absence from work to try to help him, to no avail. He has missed 13 months of school now, and we don’t know where to turn.