He Says He's a Cat

Day 2 of school and I get a call from the elementary school principal.  It's about Miles.  Last spring, Miles said he had a stomach ache every day.  Overnight he decided he no longer wanted to attend school.  After missing a couple of days because he was "sick", I found out what the real problem was.  Miles is terrified of fire drills.  The thought of a fire drill caused his anxiety to skyrocket which, in turn, caused his stomach to ache.  I went and talked to his teacher about the issue.  I talked with the principal too.  We decided that the best course of action was to have the principal call me whenever a fire drill was scheduled.  Fortunately, last year, there were no more scheduled fire drills.

Fast forward to Back to School Night.  The fire drill fears resurfaced.  We went and found the principal, and Miles reminded Mr. Stubbs that fire drills are evil.  Mr. Stubbs reminded Miles that the purposed of the fire drill was to practice what would happen in the even of a real fire.  He told me that he'd be in touch when a fire drill was scheduled.  That call came today.

Tomorrow at 9:30 a.m., Miles gets to face his nemesis... the fire drill.  In preparation, I told Miles that there will be a fire drill tomorrow.  That didn't go over so well.  He immediately ran to his room and hid under the covers.  He then proceeded to tell me that he is a cat, and that cats sleep for 20 hours a day, so he can't go to school because he'll be asleep.  Nice try.

We're talking him through the upcoming event.  Dan brought him a pair of earplugs to use during the drill.  Coincidentally, Schlumberger had a fire drill today, so Dan has been taking him step by step through what happened at his work.  We'll see how it goes.

Oh, and now he just told me that he's going to sleep for 48 hours.