My boys...Proud dad's perspective

Two years ago, my eldest son was elected joint deputy Head Monitor in the final year of his Primary school. This was a major achievement, but in his case, almost expected. He's been a model pupil, academically and with sport. He never got into any trouble, and was almost the "blue eyed" boy (as we say here).

Thats him, bottom left hand corner, with the rest of the Monitors.

He has since moved on to high school, and continues to perform very well, achieving aggregates in the 80% and up, and cosistently placing in the top 20 in his grade, out of 260 plus pupils!!

My youngster, on the other hand, hasn't been such a model student. Although he places well academically, has a couple of academic achievement badges to show for it, and has done well in sports, as my previous posting about his swimming scroll proved, he has also been in trouble very often seems to be short tempered (like dad!) and stressed out quite a bit. I had many sessions with the headmistress about various incidents. I must point out that he was and is always respectful to his superiors (read teachers/headmistress, other parents) but seemed to have much conflict with the other kids in school.
Late last year I picked up on some issues, researched the net, and am now working on assisting him with these problems. Seems to be working.
Place yourself in the shoes of a 11 / 12 year old. Can you imaging the stress / fear he must have gone through, not understanding what was going on, too scared to talk about it. No wonder he had "anti-social" behavior at school!!

This is him, stuffing around during a school outing!!!

I started to discuss things with him, advising him in my limited way, and there seems to be an improvement.
Anyway, had him at a shrink for a couple of sessions, then for a brain scan / test / thing, which confirmed my suspicion / finding. So now he's on some kind of medication to even out the chemical imbalance in his brain which causes this problem.
He's been very brave, and I am proud to say that today he came home from school, and proudly displayed his MONITOR badge to my expectations, that his "anti-social" behavior would count against him, his peers, and teachers have seen that he does have leadership qualities. He is liked by most of them. He does go out of his way to be helpful.
He made it!!! I cannot begin to explain what this event will do to his confidence!!I will now have to do some lecturing with regards the value of this position, and how NOT to abuse it. But for now, I am a very, very proud dad!!!