How do I help my kid? School anxiety and other struggles

amother

Tue, Sep 13 2022, 6:36 am

I have a daughter who is 11 and after a good first week of school, started saying she doesn't want to go, refusing to get out of bed...

It turns out that there is a lot of group work in her school this year (seems like some sort of organized push, all the classes have the desks set up in groups instead of individually and lots of teamwork instead of tests) and she is extremely stressed out by it. She always had a stressful time in school in terms of keeping track of assignments but she finds these group projects especially stressful.

I'm going to just post kind of all over the place in the hopes that someone can advise, being that I'm not exactly sure what the core of the problem is.

In the past I thought she had ADHD (and I still think she might) but she's extremely bright and academically capable, and also very quiet and reserved in school, so her teachers never saw any problems and as such she did not merit a diagnosis (which I don't know if that matters, I wanted her to receive help and therapy but not meds per se).

(We are going to pursue some sort of therapy for her--but I am still looking into what our options are... In the past when we got her a therapist through her school she mostly tried to teach her breathing exercises and it was a big waste of time and money since she really didn't seem to "get" my kid.)

Since the group work seems like a big trigger for my daughter, it got me thinking about how she is socially. She doesn't seem engaged socially at all--or maybe very little. The other kids seem like her well enough and nobody bullies her, but she is either really shy or has very low social needs. She is very quiet in school although she does talk, and unlike my other kids she never goes out after school, doesn't try to do any after-school socializing or phone calls. Every now and then she says something positive about an interaction like she had "C. says I'm her best friend!" and always seems a bit surprised by that (C. has since left town unfortunately) but it's very rare. She just seems very disengaged. And I am starting to wonder whether this is a more significant "clue" than we previously thought to what is causing her to struggle so much. Maybe a kind of high functioning autism thing?

I would welcome any help or advice! I want her to have a good year and discover her strengths. And I want her to have the experience of having good friends and a sense of social support...