School started this week so I have been busy. Busy making lunches, filling out forms (3 times each!), playing phone tag with the school nurse and buying last minute school supplies (and I still need to get Cars a clipboard and Dex a thesaurus that were not on the original class supply lists).

Cars is in 1st grade and two teachers - a job-share class. One of the teachers was the same teacher that Jax has in Grade 1 as well. She got married and had a baby and now she just works 3 days/week. The teacher she job shares with is the mom with whom I shared Art Start duties with in Dex's 2nd grade class. I really like her a lot and I know parents who had kids in their class last year and said that the job share worked really well so I was happy to guide Cars' kindergarten teacher to placing him in this class.

Dex is in 4th grade. He did not get No Joy teacher no Mean teacher. Crafty-teacher moved down to teach 3rd grade so he got the one that Spy said was a yeller. I don't mind. I think she has got to be better than the other two. As I mentioned earlier, Spy's son is in Dex's class and they are both very excited to finally be in the same class together since they were in 3 yr old preschool.

Jax is in 6th grade and his teacher is a man and fairly young. Jax says he seems nice. The first day when I picked him up I could tell that there was something wrong. He was withdrawn and sullen and when we got home, he went to his room for a while. I has asked him what was wrong and he said nothing. Finally he confessed to me that he felt like he had no friends and that this year was going to be horrible, "just like 4th grade!". My heart broke. He does have a couple of friends in his grade but they are not that close and neither of them are in his class this year. He is very close to Ash's son and two other boys who do not go to our school so that does not help at school. Jax is friendly and nice but very reserved.

I told him that he had to put himself out there and we came up with a couple of strategies to help make friends. First was to recognize that just because the two friends are not in his class this year does not mean that they are not friends. So, he has made an effort to talk to one of the kids in particular and hang out with him at recess (even if it means just watching that kid play soccer since Jax does not like to play it). The other is for him to take a look around and find someone he'd like to become friends with and start making an effort to talk to that kid.

I hope these things work. I don't want him to re-live 4th grade. He was friend-less due to his anxiety over his peanut allergy as he chose to keep a distance from kids and partly because he is a reserved kid who waits for others to approach him.

Any other tips or hints or suggestions would be most welcomed!