His teacher wrote to tell us that instead of eating lunch, for the past three days my kid has been crying uncontrollably. They take him to the nurse’s office and he just lays and cries. He continues crying off and on for the rest of the day.
He says he’s having headaches.
I’ll take him to the doctor but I’m not sure it’s really headaches. Shortly before the teacher had written us, I had noticed he didn’t eat his lunch, and I asked him why. He said “I was crying too much.” I asked him why he was crying, and he became stubbornly reticent to talk about it. He said things like “I just really don’t want to talk about it,” and “Come on, just forget about it” and things like that.
It doesn’t make sense to say that kind of thing if what was bothering him was a headache. It sounds like something is wrong.
I’ve asked him if he’s having problems with kids at school and he insists that’s not happening. He says, as he always has, that he’s “friends with everybody,” and though I haven’t seen him much in the classroom, I’ve seen him with the kids in his class and it really did seem as though he’s the kid that likes everybody and everybody likes him. I’ve seen him with groups of kids who are strangers to him and he’s perfectly social with them–actually, to an extent that seems unaccountable given his genetic heritage. So it doesn’t appear as though he’s either an outcast type or an accidental outcast in his particular classroom situation.
I’ve asked if he just doesn’t like what we’re giving him for lunch and he says that’s not the problem either. He doesn’t usually eat everything we give him, but he never asks for anything else either. I can think of no reason he’d be reluctant to ask about this–he’s typically got no problem making his strong opinions about what he should be given (read requests (read demands)) known in other contexts.
His teacher is always on the ball and proactive, so I’m sure she’d notice if there were some kind of bullying situation happening. And there again, my kid has never shown any reluctance to “tell on” other kids when he thinks they’re doing something wrong. So it surprises me if he’s keeping bullying a secret.
So wtf is going on here?
It might actually be headaches, I guess, but I can’t figure out the unwillingness to talk. He’s never unwilling to talk about sickness or injury in any other context that I know of. If he gets hurt, he tells us.
Anyone experienced anything like this?
He’s five. Five year olds aren’t old enough to be keeping sustained secrets from their parents, are they? 