Melodrama or insecurity?

I had 2 incidents with Ben that have reminded me once again that he may not always be doing as well as we think. I believe that in comparison to Daniel & Maggie, Ben is doing very well. I forget that Ben had a hard start in life, alcoholism is common in Ukraine and he spent the first six months of his life neglected and starved. He does well in school, but I forget that he has remedial reading and math every day. I think he's doing well until I see his peers doing something that is way beyond him. Still, he's so melodramatic that it's hard to tell sometimes if he's faking or if something is really bothering him.

On Wednesday night, I was talking to him about his toad and said we'd spent a fortune on crickets for him already and we'd only had him for a week. I said we're going to be broke trying to feed him. Of course, I was not taking any of this seriously until Ben started saying we have to take the toad back to the pet store because we cannot keep him, he is costing us too much money, etc. He insisted on this for several minutes and then finished the conversation with "we can't keep him, he's costing us too much money and I'm going to end up back in an orphanage because you can't keep me". What? Where on earth did that come from? I vacillated between telling him he was being ridiculous and reassuring him that the cricket thing is nothing and he will never be in an orphanage again. Is he just being melodramatic or is that dread at the back of his mind the whole time?

Last night, I picked him up from school and a couple of his friends wanted him to go to the library with them. One of his other friends wanted another boy to come over & play and they were waiting for his Dad to pick him up to ask if it was OK. Ben wanted to go too and everyone had said that was fine. As it was raining, I said we'd sit in the car. Ben started worrying that they would leave without him and before I knew it, he started to cry. I told him they were not going to leave without him, but he was inconsolable and would not even leave with them. We sat in the school parking lot and he cried for 30 minutes. I could not find out what was wrong with him. Surely, this wasn't brought on just by the possibility of missing a play date. He comes up with some really melodramatic statements like "They said I could go, they didn't say they wanted me to go" which make me wonder if it's genuine. However, at the back of my mind I wonder if he's anxious about school being over and changes in the Summer. Ben is really a complicated child and even after 8 years, I still can't tell what's going on with him.