I’ve been getting a lot of questions asking how Ben is doing at his new school.

At first, I wasn’t sure how to answer that.

For the first two weeks, there was almost complete silence from the new school. It was an odd sensation to not get weekly or sometimes daily calls from school, a lot of them asking me to come pick him up. To not be confronted with a litany of complaints about his behavior at drop off and pick up.

At night I would grill him as unobtrusively as possible.

“Did you have a good day at school today, love?” I’d ask, trying to keep my voice from sounding to high, too anxious, too filled with emotion.

Each day he would come home and tell me he mostly did, then he would clearly explain any incidents that might have occurred. This was different from the other schools in the past. Before this school, Ben would come home and sometimes not even realized something bad had happened, or could not grasp why he was getting in trouble.

He seems happier, and calmer. But this is not to say we have stopped having good and bad days. He is still argumentative, stubborn and find transitions extremely upsetting.

About three weeks of attendance at his new school we were invited to meet the family councilor. I figured this was it, this was where we were finally going to get hit with the long list of complaints we were used to.

But when we met, we didn’t get any complaints. Instead it was like a meet and greet at a regular school, followed by offers and techniques to help us cope with Ben’s disorder.

Not long after that he was pulling his usual nighttime shenanigans, refusing to go to sleep. He voiced his frustrations with us then said, “I wish I was back at school.”

What? Said no kid, ever, I thought.

But still, it did make me realize that it really is going well for him at school. Hopeful that we finally found a fit for him.