Hello
Sorry for the long delay in replying. Thank you so much to the people who have sent me private messages: I will get around to replying to them. Dealing with this, heavy workload and some other family issues is leaving me very little to update!
Again, I really appreciate your advice and care. It's really touching.
The homesickness seems to have lessened, although we saw DS this weekend and it started to creep back in towards the time we had to leave him. But we had a fairly cheerful call home last night which was reassuring. His mind seems to be fairly made up that he's not wanting to pursue dance as a career, and that, for us and him, seems to take away any need for him to remain at vocational school. He's got siblings and the house doesn't feel right without him - I'm willing to sacrifice that to help him try to achieve his dream, but if this isn't his dream anymore, why would we lose that?! Family comes first and life is short.
I have no issues with him walking away from the dance world. There is more to life than dancing and there are so many other wonderful things he can do. In fact, to be honest, I'm a little relieved. The odds are so small, and even if you succeed, it's a precarious existence.
We have not yet told his school. We are waiting to get through the Christmas performances (which mean less time at home although I do think / hope they will be a magical experience for him) and will then assess the position. There is a place for him at a school here thank goodness - we just need to tell them a date. He may stay until the end of year 7 if we feel it's simply too disruptive to move midway through a year, but I've told him if there's another dreadful episode of homesickness we will likely pull him straight out. Something someone said on this (another?) forum struck me about children who board learning to cope with their situation: I don't want him to learn how to deal with intense homesickness if, as I said above, there's no need to. My child sobbing down the phone to me and begging me to drive to collect them at 10pm at night is not how I want things to be.
So a bit of a wait and see. Christmas isn't far now, and then we will look at things again once performances are over.