<p>To the OP-- wow. I share your pain. It must be awful to see your kid work hard and get so frustrated.</p>
<p>Can you help us understand if the problem is purely math related? How has he done in his non-math classes? What kind of feedback has he gotten from his professor’s and TA’s, and has he sought them out for some mid-course correction? </p>
<p>Nobody wants to see their kid struggle, but if he’s been happy otherwise, you’ve obviously got a kid who belongs in college even if this one isn’t a great fit academically. I think you need to work quickly to get your son to talk to a dean to assess his options-- leave permanently? take a leave of absence to return once he’s made up the work someplace else? stay enrolled for one more semester, perhaps taking a light load to boost his gpa and then apply to transfer? Unlike so many cases where the kid is miserable socially so that packing up and going home is the preferred way to end the kids suffering, your son actually has options here if you can get him to tell you or find out what they are.</p>
<p>In general-- once you’ve dropped out, getting back on the horse is harder. If there is any way to turn his “asked to leave” status into a temporary sabbatical while he figures out his next step, that’s going to make things easier for him. You also haven’t mentioned the finances… is it a struggle for you to keep him there, is he working on top of his classes for a huge amount of time? Also, is he preoccupied with other stuff (girlfriend trouble, roommate with a substance abuse issue, etc.)</p>
<p>There are dozens of things your son can study which will capitalize on his obvious quantitative skills without being as taxing and dread-invoking as what he’s studying now. I don’t think that a person who has been a high-achiever in high school and then gets to college and discovers that they’re not as good at something as they thought they were sounds like someone with an undiagnosed learning disability. Your son was at the extreme end of the math curve in high school… but now he’s in a place where ALL those kids were at the extreme end, so another curve forms, and this time, he’s not quite up there. Not a crime, doesn’t mean he’s disabled, just means he needs to figure out how to tap his strong quant skills in another field.</p>