<p>I think he’s homesick. The problem with finding a dream school, in my experience, is that the dream is just that–something he built in his head for nearly a year while he was still at home. Look at all the surface level stuff that’s bugging him–the preppiness, the shirts and ties (those do become second nature after a while, but not this soon! I remember a poem my kid wrote spring of freshman year about the snake he coiled around his neck each morning!). In his head too, he probably had deep friendships formed already. The reality is now clashing with the vision, and getting a D is the last straw that caused the whole thing to collapse. </p>
<p>The thing that makes this difficult is that it sounds like he’s got good options at home. Still, if he puts one foot out the door now, it’s going to make it harder to find his place at school. </p>
<p>My kid is now a senior. We were looking at pics of his prep. year a few nights ago, startled by how much he’d changed, how different that kid was from the kid before us now in terms of friends, interests, academic skill. His whole first year was rocky; though he crashed sooner, Christmas was still really hard. I remember reading posts by parents at the time saying things along the lines of “My kid was horribly homesick, but now school is like home and he never wants to come back” and thinking, “Yeah right…that’ll never happen”…until it did.</p>
<p>My heart goes out to you. That period was so hard for all of us. We at least knew that he was better off at school than at home; you’re somewhat disadvantaged by those good day school option in that way! I do think he’ll recover though. Your job at this point is just to remind him of the things (below the surface!) that are great about the school. </p>
<p>One of the hardest things can be trading out those old comfortable deep friendships for new ones. My kid, who is also an athlete, made most of his good friends through sports, but in retrospect says the one thing he wishes he’d done his prep year was join a club or two with a more diverse group of students (by which he means girls(!), but you could substitute international students!). So you might encourage him to do that too–maybe even join a club outside his comfort zone just because kids he’d like to get to know are part of it. I think, out of all the many good friends my son has made at bs, only two really good friends are guys he knew prep year. The nice thing about prep school, too, is that an entirely new crew of students comes in every year–not just to fill out the class, but younger students as well (my son’s best friend is in the class below his)</p>
<p>And let his adviser know what’s happening, with or without your son knowing you’re doing it. They’ve seen this before, and a good adviser (sounds like your kid has one) knows exactly how to handle stuff like this. </p>
<p>Keep us updated!</p>