My oldest son is graduating high school (hopefully) in 10 days. There were more than a few moments of doubt that we would ever get to this place. Yeah, my kid has got some issues and I have more than a few issues with school, with expectations, and with life in general.
So, it is as a parent of this type of child, and as a person who hated and did not fare all that well in school, any school, that I look at these commencement exercises as not a beautiful stepping stone, but something to be done with, preferably quickly.
First of all, the ceremony is on my birthday. Name for me one person who wants to sit at a graduation ceremony on any day, much less their birthday. Seriously, please, tell me and I will call them up so that they can take my place. My kid will never know.
Second of all, I received in the mail a laundry list of rules of etiquette that irritatingly took the jam out of my doughnut. One of the bolded headlines is MARCHING INSTRUCTIONS. Is this a class of Hitler Youth, or just, you know, regular kids?
A few tasty excerpts that really get my blood boiling are:
" you have paid for your cap and gown so you can "keep it" as a souvenir"
Whoo, whoo, whoo! Effing really? How much did that cost? WHAT THE HELL DO YOU DO WITH A GRADUATION GOWN AFTER GRADUATION? And why is "keep it" in parentheses? Is it because you won't "keep it"? Your "parents" "will" in their "garage"?
What a total waste.
" boys should wear a dress shirt and tie, dress slacks with dark socks and dark dress shoes. Girls should wear a dress or a skirt and blouse "
a) Great. There goes another $150
b) What century is this? Why do girls have to wears skirts or dresses?
Gross.
" A professional photographer will be taking a picture of each graduate as he/she receives the diploma. (this part is inexplicably underlined) These pictures will be available for purchase on line on a secure website. "
Meaning: Cha ching
I will take my own shitty pictures, thanks.
Oh, and " the ceremony will be recorded and you will be able to order a copy."
Oh, goody. Nothing better I can think of than fast forwarding through two hours of yawn-tastic ceremony to watch three seconds of my kid NOT looking at the camera. And I get to pay for it? Where do I sign?!?
One last thing: "you will receive your diploma only if all financial obligations with the school have been cleared, and if you exhibit appropriate behavior during the entire ceremony."
I would love for them to try and tell me that my kid did not behave, so therefore, he does not get a diploma. Nice try. We are finally out of here, I think the kid is entitled to flip off the principal, no? I mean, NO. I don't want my kid to flip off the principal, but seriously? Way to try and scare us into being good little automatons one last time.
Maybe I am just an antisocial jerk. Maybe I just don't get it. I mean, I get (to a point) rules. I get (to a point) ceremony. I just don't get why my kid can't wear sneakers. I don't get why there is not an open bar for parents (they would clean up!) to make the ceremony more enjoyable. And I really don't get mortarboards.
Anyway, Happy Graduation, everyone! ***takes a shot***
If you have been following along with the saga of my middle son's IEP's, you will know that we have had our ups and downs. Mostly, luckily, thankfully, our experience with these meetings has been positive. Until last year, with the start of his transition to high school, we never really had any kind of problem that we could not solve.
I am feeling that those days are behind us. Even after a somewhat positive resolution to our last meeting before this school year started link here , we find ourselves baffled by school officials' lack of understanding of what inclusion looks like.
For instance, it does not look like a modified gym class for kids who are recovering from injuries. Seriously, it does not.
Charles is not injured. Down syndrome is NOT a reason to be left out of a typical gym class. In fact, Charles has ALWAYS been included in a typical gym class...until this year. They decided (unbeknownst to me) that it would be better (their word was safer) to put Charles in a class where three or four other kids were getting therapy for injuries, rather than with the "general population". I am using that term with no irony whatsoever.
The gym teacher, who, all in all, seems like a very nice person who is trying to get a handle on how to include and teach Charles, is completely overwhelmed by this task. I am not exactly sure why, but lack of understanding about what Down syndrome is and isn't seems to be a big piece of it.
I really didn't know what to say in the moment, because to me, it seems like a no-brainer that you would just assume he can do stuff until you see that he can't and then modify from there. In the case of gym, the only modifications Charles needs are the ones that address his AAI What? and those are minor. He can run, shoot hoops, play games, do bench press...pretty much everything that gym entails. Can we just for a second assume that he can do stuff before we decide (with no evidence other than ***whispering*** psst, he has Down syndrome ) that he can't?
The problem "they" say is that Charles once left the gym without permission and they are worried that it would be hard to watch him in a large group setting, such as a regular gym class. I get the need for safety, but let's break it down a bit. He left this gym class/therapy and went to the next class on his schedule; most likely because he was TOTALLY BORED! Who wants to sit around watching other people get therapy? Further, they decided this BEFORE he started school! They had it in their heads that he could not handle the larger class and put him in this poor excuse for a gym class instead, without consulting me (I would have laughed at them) or even trying out the regular class first.
Seriously?
So, I told them that we needed to get him into a regular class, like YESTERDAY and they brought out the standard, tired argument of who was going to "watch" him, since, you know, they are so understaffed and the district won't give them another aide and yada, yada, yada...
I'm sorry, what?
I pay taxes and ridiculous school fees for this "free" education and my kid will get what he needs; and if you put him in a class that actually has activities to keep him engaged, I am pretty sure that he won't feel the need to wander off to the math lab for some excitement. Besides, my kid is LEGALLY entitled to receive a free, public education in the least restrictive environment; in this case, the high school that his brothers also attend, five blocks from our house. This is not special treatment. It is legally protected and socially just inclusion.
His case manager actually started complaining that there were so many kids "like mine" coming down the pike that they didn't know how they were going to handle it. And I said (trying to restrain myself from rolling my eyeballs out of my head) "Yes, you had better believe they are all coming!" The insinuation was that "we" were the problem. We. Us pesky parents and our stupid kids.
Are you freaking kidding me?!?! These creative, bright individuals can't think of a way to revamp the system to accommodate children AT THEIR HOME SCHOOLS IN REGULAR CLASSES?!?!? How about take 75% of the teachers and aides in the segregated classes and put them in the others? Co-teaching? Extra hands? Spending less money busing kids to other schools also means more money for extra teachers. For the other 25%, we can have some smaller classes for those kids that really, really need it and even those could go away in time, in my opinion. We are finding out that our kids learn better together. ALL our kids learn better together; no matter where they are on the continuum. Read This, this, and this.
I am SO TIRED of having to educate the educators. I am tired of getting beaten down to the point where I feel like my only choices are to pull him out altogether or leave him to rot in "life skills".
I have more to say, but right now, I am just so freaking tired.
When most people see the word processing, they most likely think of what a computer does. It transforms information into readable text, pictures, kitty cat memes, etc. It processes computer jibberish into a medium that our brain recognizes, quickly.
What I want to talk about is the way people interpret information. Specifically, how me and my youngest son see and hear things.
When I was a child, before I began school, I was a genius. I read whole books way before I entered Kindergarten. I had a grasp of the English language that probably rivaled that of an average ten or twelve year old when I was five and my use of sarcasm and humor made adults weep with glee.
It was universally accepted (okay, my mom WAS my universe when I was five) that I would get straight A's all through my school years, that I would graduate from Princeton and become a successful brain surgeon/astrophysicist, or at the very least, a writer that used correct grammar.
It didn't turn out that way; far from it, in fact.
By the time I hit second grade, I was already "not working up to my potential". I fidgeted. I lost my homework. I didn't DO my homework. My desk and bookbag were overflowing with crap and my mother and my teacher were both shaking their heads (at best) and screaming (at worst) at me over my laziness.
"If you would only APPLY yourself!"
If I had a nickel for every time I heard that throughout my school years, I'd at least have a couple, two, t'ree bucks.
I carried on believing that I had just been a lazy student until I had my own children and I started seeing my struggles in theirs; especially, in my youngest son's.
Like me, he talked and read very early. My mom often recounts a story of E, sitting on her lap, at about eighteen months old, reading her Scrabble letters out loud while we played. He was and is a very bright boy.
Within the first few months of Kindergarten, we realized that he was having trouble, though. It turns out, this trouble had a name: Processing Disorder.
There are three basic types of processing disorders: Auditory, Visual and Sensory. Sound, Sight and Touch/Feel or Tactile.
E and I both have trouble with the way we interpret what we read. Often, our brains are on the next paragraph, while our eyes are still on the one before. It leads to confusion.
We are also not very good at following spoken directions, which is part of the reason for my doing so poorly in school, when nearly every class relied on lots of talking by the teacher and lots of note taking by the students. I would invariably get lost at some point, quit trying to figure out what I was supposed to be writing and would start daydreaming and doodling.
When the time came to turn in the homework that was assigned during the drone, I would usually have missed it, taking the parking break off the steamroller at the top of the hill of crap that was my missed assignments.
In classes that I had a good grasp of: History or English, I could usually make it up and get by; but math, especially Algebra, was another story. If I missed one thing, I was lost for days and weeks, often never to get back on top of things. It didn't help that my Algebra teacher was the same one for three years in a row and that she was a psychotic, polyester pantsuit wearing, drunk. I was afraid to approach her for help and when I did, she repeated the tired old line about being lazy and not applying myself, instead of understanding that I was having trouble. Needless to say, I didn't ask for her help very often, except under threat of bodily harm or house arrest carried out by my mother.
I was grounded for approximately 742 days of my high school career.
So, when I got an email from my youngest's teacher about some writing assignments he had missed, I responded quickly that I would talk to him about it and we would get things straightened out as soon as possible. Only, I read it wrong...
And mixed up the assignments she was talking about...
And confused the whole situation further...
And had to ask her for more time, because I had made things worse...
And it hit me that as much as I have learned to compensate for my struggles with processing, it is a lifelong challenge.
I have to remind myself to slow down, to re-read, to clarify things that I am not quite sure about.
And sometimes, I forget.
And I think of all the times that I have felt totally lost, when it seemed everyone around me knew what they were doing, even now, still, today.
When everyone else brings the paperwork to the meeting and is on time; I wonder why it is so hard for me. Why am I such a scatterbrain?
And I look at my kid's desk and backpack and have a flashback of my own.
And I feel for my kid.
And I am thankful that I "get" it.
And I hope I can help him.
And I think that he will probably always struggle, as I have.
And then, the ray of light: I have a life. I have held on to jobs. I have made something of myself, though it is miles short of the goals I have set. I have SURVIVED.
He will, too.
