Charlotte Observer

Jack Davis, in many ways, is a typical 7-year-old: he likes Minecraft, Legos, and painting at his grandmother’s house. He’s fascinated with the military and has framed pictures of airplanes on the walls of his Waxhaw bedroom. But in 2024 — the last year Davis attended public school in Union County – he was evaluated for suicidal thoughts around seven times in three weeks, his mother Anika Davis said. He was 5 years old. “He was in a really bad place, and it was autistic burnout,” Davis told The Charlotte Observer. It was the climax of what Jack’s mother, Anika, said was a prolonged struggle to get her son the accommodations he needed as a child with pathological demand avoidance, a variant of autism. With it, Jack’s nervous system shifts easily into fight-or-flight mode. When it does, Anika said, Jack often resorts to aggressive behavior. On his last day in Union County Public Schools two years ago, he left the playground and clambered up a fence, attempting to get into a pond adjacent to the school building. Afterward, a substitute teacher assigned to watch Jack that day said she could not continue working with him…