Melt down!

Last year we had a student on our team we called Meltdown Boy. Meltdown Boy would, and did, have meltdowns at the slightest provocation. Someone picked on him on the bus? Meltdown? He forgot his band instrument? Meltdown. You put a "did not have homework" stamp in his agenda? Meltdown.

Meltdowns could range from grabbing onto his hair and wailing "I can't remember!!!" followed by laying his head down on his desk in dispair after he's been called on to answer a question, that, I might add, he volunteered for, (we learned really quick to call on him really fast, before he forgot what he wanted to say) to laying down on the floor in the middle of the classroom and sobbing his eyes out.

When he first landed in our classrooms we thought he might be special ed, possibly midly autistic. However, according to his mother, he's simply depressed, lacks social skills and is ADD. he's also brilliant. However, when she says he lacks social skills, she is not kidding. This kid has absolutely no social skills to speak of, which, in the world of middle school monsters, is certain to get you teased and abused to no end. And apparently one of the biggest abusers his his little brother who, we hear, is a holy terror. Meltdown Boy is, in the words of our Star Football Jock, the "only kid who really scares me because he's so crazy." That's saying something.

In any case, the other day we're walking by the guidance office on the way to meet with a parent up in the office when Miss Reading says, "Look who's sitting in Guidance, sobbing his eyes out,". We look (the entire front of the office is glass - there is NO privacy whatsoever), and there he is in all his Boo-Hoo Glory. Meltdown boy, another year older, and he's still just sobbing his heart out.

I honestly wonder if this kid will survive his first week of high school.