8th grade

School has started and N seems to be doing fine. We met with his counselor prior to school and she agreed to "pull" N out of his health class during the week of questionable curriculum. She also gave him a pass that he can use if he is ever in a class and can tell that he needs to leave (because of how he is feeling or what they are talking about -- whatever).

N is taking a Foods class that we discovered may also cause some problems. I thought it was just a cooking class, but it turns out they do much more with calories and food analysis, etc. It looks like they will have one day on the problems of obesity and another which is just about fats/oils. I'm a little nervous about the class on fats/oils because the teacher was coming from the camp that these are "bad" foods only to be eaten occasionally. So that's two more classes that he will be missing.

I think P.E. will be fine. He has the same teacher that he had last year and there weren't any problems at all. I did opt him out of a scoliosis check (they have to remove their shirts to get checked). I knew that would be an issue for N. And on top of all of this, we had to give approvals for sex-education. But that's an entirely different issue.

Health Class

I met with N's health teacher last Wednesday. She provided worksheets for a 5-day portion of the curriculum, which included:

1) Fitness - flexibility, strength, endurance, BMI, pulse, workout principles.
2) Food Pyramid - a discussion of the nutrients and important aspects of all portions of all food groups.
3) Calories - how many do you need, burning calories, creating a menu within a calorie range, ideal percent of fat in a diet.
4) Nutrition - create menu using pyramid, self assessment profile that uses emoticon to asses amounts in each area including fat, oils, cholesterol, sodium; determining exercise needed; caloric intake and expenditure summary;
5) Eating Disorders - anorexia, bulimia, obesity, movie (Little Miss Perfect).

She was willing to excuse N from the entire unit.

I'm so glad that I met with her. I (and N) could see potential triggers on most of the days. I suspect that he would be fine on day 2 -- but that's borderline. And would we want him to be there for just one day of the unit anyway? N really wanted to be there for the discussion on day 5, but I can see huge issues with that! On day 5, not only do they discuss "potential problems" from being overweight, but the bulimia discussion includes "other" methods of losing weight like laxatives, etc. I've never seen the movie, but suspect that it wouldn't be healthy for N to indulge in seeing someone else's methods of losing weight.

N was concerned about his "smart" friends figuring out that he was missing for this whole unit (yet he was unconcerned about making comments during the anorexia discussion - go figure). We'll be meeting with his new school counselor this week to determine if she can pull him out (thus N can state that the counselor "made" him leave). I think she'll be willing.

I've known this class was coming and would be an issue. Hopefully we can handle this in the best way possible.