My son is in grade 6 and today I learned that his math is at a grade 3 level. This combined with his grade 2 reading is devastating news and has sent me into a frenzy of what to do next?
When a woman gets pregnant, her thoughts are "will my baby be healthy?" "What can I do to be sure of this?" Well those were my thoughts anyway. I did everything I thought was right when I was pregnant. I didn't even gain as much weight with my son as I did my daughter, hmmm maybe that was it? I didn't even have a sip of alcohol, or eat sushi I don't smoke so that isn't an issue but as I sit here and write I am desperately searching my memory as to what I did while I was pregnant to cause my son to be the way he is.
ADHD aside, all the experts say that's a hereditary trait, and being that my sister was ADHD for sure and possible my son's dad was too, he was never diagnosed. My son also faces LD (learning disability) He can barely read, and no matter how much we read with him he doesn't seem to progress beyond a grade 2 level at best. His spelling is phonetic still, and half the time even he can't figure out what he has written. Now, today I find out his math is at a grade 3 level and he's in grade 6. This is news to me because for the past two years he has done fine in math, in fact we were under the impression that math was his strongest subject. Boy were we wrong.
I blame myself for all this, why didn't I do something sooner? But what? We couldn't afford for me to quit work to home school, not to mention I don't know if that's even something I could have done. We were told places like Silvan and Kumon will not take LD kids, and private tutoring just wasn't within our means. It still isn't. So we rely on the public school system. Some years are better than others depending on funding. My son was also chosen to attend the Teaching and Education Centre which is an intensive 12 week 1/2 day every day learning centre provided by the school district. This helped him tremendously with language arts, he loved it and was happy to learn there. School, well not so much.
This year is his first year in middle school, and he does go to the resource room for most all his subjects for extra help. He has an extensive IEP (individual education plan) for reading writing, spelling and today added to it is math. He is exempt from having to take french, because that's just far too confusing to him and frankly I would rather he focus on his first language. He gets upset because he believes he should have the full one on one attention of the resource teacher, and when she has to help other kids he becomes incensed that they are even in the room. I have tried to explain that she is not there solely for him but for all the kids who need help.
My son seems to think he's entitled, why I'm not sure but this tends to cause friction between him and his teacher not to mention his teacher and his parents. While I try to be understanding it is quite disturbing to hear that his teacher yelled at him, however I can totally understand how he can bring out the worst in people. The problem is he's the one who gets hurt in the long run because anyone who might have had an interest in his success will quickly loose that interest when he behaves this way.
Sometimes I wonder if there isn't more going on with him than just ADHD and LD. Sometimes I wonder if he's mentally handicapped. They way he acts sometimes I would swear that's his true problem. He acts inappropriately around his sister and her friends doing stupid things that only he sees as funny, we, his family, are used to it. Then there are times were he is behaving quite normally and maturely as fleeting as this is it gives me hope, until he acts like an idiot again. Why can I not have a normal son? What the hell did I do to cause this? What did I do to deserve this? What did he do? I didn't drop him on his head, I know that for sure. I breast fed and really he was a good baby, really easy. But now.
His maturity level as at about a nine year old, however sometimes he acts like a two year old. If he doesn't get his way, or if he thinks people don't like him it puts him in such depressed state it's scary to witness, and it leaves me feeling utterly helpless because he will not respond to anything I suggest. If I leave him be, sometimes he will snap out of it, and all is well again. However there are times where he has threatened to run away or worse kill himself. His self esteem is so low that he tends to act and say things so far fetched and grandiose that it makes no sense at all. For example he thinks he can fight a bear by poking it in the eye with a stick. Or he can fight a shark by punching it in the nose. And it's not just that he thinks this the way he conveys it makes you truly think he's lost his mind. Considering this is the same kid whose deathly afraid of spiders.
I am at a loss, I feel truly lost with this. It's like he got to a certain age, and stopped. His body is continuing to age but his mind isn't. He has retained as much as he is ever going to and anything new is held for such a brief amount of time that we have likened him to "10 second Tom" from the movie 50 First Dates because sometimes that's as long as he can retain information. He will ask me what we are doing, I will tell him and not 10 seconds later he's asking again, and this can happen 3 or 4 times before it sinks in, and at that I usually have to get upset with him for not listening. He's hearing it but it's not sinking in, why is that?
I have unlimited love for this child and my heart cries for his success, but I also feel at times like throwing in the towel and saying "well this is the best we can expect" and leave it at that. That's not fair to him, but convincing him that learning and school are important becomes futile year after year when you find out nothing has sunk in. If only I could wave my magic wand, if only I had a magic wand.
I don't know where to go from here, his dad is just as worried about this as I am but he looks at it from a different angle, the "just do it, because I said so" angle which is just as lost on our son. Two weeks ago when my son was at his dad's for the week, they studied every night for an upcoming science test. He go 23 out of 30 which to us was amazing, we are unbelievably proud of him for this accomplishment and he's proud of himself too. If he were to take the test again it's highly unlikely he would do as well. But then we don't know that for sure because they don't tend to retest to see if it has sunk in.
That's the thing, if it's not important to him it doesn't stick. He is a wiz at putting Bionicles or Lego together, he is very visual and has a great memory for that which he holds important, school isn't one of those things, I don't know if it ever will be. I pray for his success today and in the future, I don't know what his future holds, if he will be successful, he is handed the tools but doesn't know how to use them. Fortunately for him he has two parents who worry day and night about this and who are working diligently to try to figure out what steps to take next. What path to take when faced with a dead end. I just can not let him be stuck in any dead end if it means knocking down the wall myself.
So now a new search begins, what more can we do to ensure his success? I would love to have all this explained in simple terms that we can not only understand but be able to work with. Yes, we know all about ADHD and LD and ODD and OCD and on and on and on, but that has gotten us no where. I want someone to tell me "if you do this, he will be ok" By GOD! I will do it! Just tell me, help me fix my son. I know there are no answers, we just keep grasping at straws hoping for the long ones, getting the short ones.
Just as I was typing this last paragraph my son called me to ask if I had told his dad about his math being at grade 3 and I said yes, and he said "It's not your fault, I'm mad at myself" it's times like this that I see there is hope, and it comes right from him. He's not giving up on himself so neither am I. He wants to be a success he knows he needs to work harder than the other kids his age, he understands that he is "stuck" What can I do to help him? I can't crawl inside his head and fix the broken parts. I wish I could. I have to have faith that he will be ok, because he has faith that he will be ok. So ok, one step forward.
With much love, light and hope,
Tammy.
No comments:
Post a Comment