High school is... different

Transitions are always hard, so maybe this one to high school isn't all that unique. To know if that's true would require more perspective than what I've got down here in the trenches. From here it feels like I've thrown the HSS (high school student) out on their own into a vast unknown. I have absolutely no idea what high school is like beyond the fuzzy memories I have of about 30 years ago. I think we qualify as involved parents, but in high school involved parents don't seem to be wanted in the school so much. Being in the school was how I got my glimpses of what it was like in elementary and middle school years. Now...I've got no glimpses at all.

I know that they're not little kids anymore - which is a refrain I've heard for probably 10 years. Given their level of physical maturity I guess I have to agree to some extent. School is now something I support from more of a distance. I suspect I'll have few, if any, first hand impressions of what the school day is like. I've tried discussing it with the HSS and have heard that it's scary, harder then middle school, exciting...but no real picture has formed in my head.

So, I'll meet some teachers at the back to school activities and I'll keep asking questions. Slowly the HSS will become a mature and independent being. I suppose that's the big goal in the parenting job description, but I think we're not quite there yet.

A "Touching Story" about an autistic boy ...?

Being as intimately involved with autism as I am, I follow most of the news. In the stories that have to do with life (as opposed to scientific or often pseudo-scientific studies), the main thing that draws me is how they portray the lives of those with autism and their families - to see how they match what we have experienced, either first or second hand.

This brings me to the story that made headlines in TV and newspapers a few days ago. You can find it here. Basically, a father and son are swept out to sea after going for a swim at the beach. The father tried to stay with the boy, but after many hours they got separated. A lucky find by some fishermen and the dad was rescued. A few hours later the boy was picked up in the area by the coastguard. It's a story of good fortune and two people's determination to survive.

What gets me is the gratuitous nature of the emphasis the press has put on the boy's autism. That's always in the headline. But, I've yet to see any way that has been tied to the story, in a positive or negative way. Was the boy a better swimmer because his autism let him focus on swimming for 15 hours? No. Was the dad unable to stay with his son because his autism kept him from allowing him to make contact? No. Had the rescuers said it would have been easier to locate him if he had been more verbal? No. There was nothing in the story that made his autism even remotely relevant.

Let's try replacing autism with national origin. An Italian-American father and son were swimming at the beach... how absurd. Look, I'm all in favor of autism awareness, but I'm not sure that just saying a kid is autistic really raises awareness in any meaningful way. Meaningful awareness requires understanding of ways that we are the same or ways that we are different. This story was all about touching your heart. Is it more or less touching because the boy had autism?

The honeymoon…it is over

With a crash, the veneer of optimism has fallen off to reveal yet another year of hard work and challenges.

It started with an assignment that the special one just wasn’t up for. What would be a no-brainer for the neuro-typical crowd was a brick wall for my kid. We just don’t have that level of expressive language. You can ask questions and get simple answers, but the blank slate of "what-questions" was too much. Much frustration ensued on all sides with a lack of understanding about how something that seems so simple, for a kid that is obviously so smart, can be so hard. Then I saw a general level of frustration and I started to wonder about the choice to push for an inclusive education instead of staying in a segregated special ed school.

A few minutes later, with a different kid, and I found out that the no melt-down streak was over. I started wondering what was going on when frustration with homework seemed out of line. After a little detective work I found out that at school there had been a misunderstanding about a homework assignment, leading to a frustrated teacher and said kid being singled out in the class with threats of detention. That in turn led to the shame of tears in the classroom. I was left trying to calm a once again crying kid that was groaning “What the hell is the matter with me…”

Then, the cherry on top – the 3rd kid was too sick to go to school the next morning. I gave the “tough it out” response to “my stomach doesn’t feel good” until vomit was involved. I guess I should have pushed for phone contacts in each class to get homework assignments earlier.

All I have to say is BLAH!

Parental school year resolutions

OK, so we've had a fairly successful first week of school, which turned out to be stress-relieving after I had been worrying all summer. We've had our glorious 3 day weekend where I could catch up on housework and laundry (3 kids wearing tan pants every school day for like...forever). Eight million forms and handouts have been examined and signed and filled out. So far, so good.

Now it's time to hunker down and get ready for the long haul of this school year. As a parent, I have a fair number of things I'm responsible for. Some of these I've done every year since I've been a parent of a kid in school (or pre-school for that matter), and some are new goals based on new situations or past problem areas.

• Become a member, pay dues and make a donation to all of the schools' parent organization groups.
• Go to all the back to school nights and make sure all teachers involved with my kids understand there are involved parents that can help out. Usually there's no time for interaction at these things and generally they seem to just go over the class rules hand-outs that I've already seen, but all the same, one or both of us will be there.
• Find out policies on 504/IEPs at new schools and make sure communication is open and in a positive tone.
• Get a calendar with all school, extra-curricular, holiday, BSO tickets etc marked and keep it accurate through the year as activities get added.
• Make sure kids have phone numbers for classmates to get homework or arrange social activities.
• Establish some sort of order for at home school supplies. Throw out dried out markers and broken crayons. Make it so everybody involved knows where the hole-punch, stapler, scissors etc are located and keep them put away.
• Touch base every day with each child about how school is going. Find out favorite and least favorite teachers and why, who the kids they pal around with are, how they feel they are doing grade-wise, what interaction are they having with school administrators, what's the vibe like in the hallways...
• Have a folder for each kid to collect all the handouts, announcements, newsletters, printed out emails that are sent home. Make copies of major assignment and keep them here as well. We've had way to much stress finding papers in the morning before going to school.
• Do notebook checks, including looking at homework logs to make sure they're in order and getting filled out. I'll take a look every day, but I'm going to enforce cleaning out and ordering every week. This might be a stretch goal since I have trouble keeping my own files in order.
• Although not directly tied to school, get some sort of physical activities going regularly for me and the kids. Between the membership at the league, the trampoline and other stuff in the backyard, the park and the dog in need of walks and the new favorite - the wii fit - this shouldn't be that difficult. It's just a matter of making a commitment.

There's probably more, but that's what comes to mind at the moment.

Week one

Well, we made it through the week and I, for one, am fairly psyched. We've avoided any melt-downs this time. I'm thinking this is a combination of little ones toughening up a bit, preparation for the transition of the special one, and this set of teachers not feeling the need to start of the year with the harshness that has started some years with tears. I'm not sure if this is a new philosophy or just good luck on our part, but I'd like to think it bodes well for the year to come. Maybe something related to the training about establishing a good atmosphere in the classroom? You never know for sure, but I choose optimism about BCPSS as a starting point for the year.

Again and again and again and again...

Not to be a jerk, but can someone please tell me why I have to fill out 3 duplicates of emergency contact/medical information every year for each kid? And certainly not electronically so that I can just hit print three times, no it has to be on the stupid card stock index card thing. Every year, even though the information has never changed. Every year, even when they are staying at the same school. It's a small thing I guess, but it bugs me. I pretty much do everything on PCs and I have gotten used to copy and paste operations. It would seem to be bad for the school as well - can they really read every one's handwriting? Do they toss out all the cards from every year? That's a lot of paper that they could be putting to better use I would think. Sorry...I'll stop whining now.

I'm guessing that some of this frustration is more about the level of stress that we're all under at the beginning of this school year. There are big transitions and a lot of things that you can't help with as kids get bigger. You stand back, you watch and you hope like crazy. Oh, and being that's how I'm wired, I worry and have flashes of all sorts of worst case scenarios.

Twas the night before the first day of school...

OK, so 2 out of 3 start tomorrow. Got the backpacks together, check. Uniforms together, check. Stuff to pack lunches, check. So, somehow two different schools that start and end at the exact same time, and one parent doing the drop-off/pick-up. Well... somehow everything works out in the end. I know life would be easier if they were doing the MTA thing, but I'm just not comfortable with that. I remember the rowdiness on the bus when I was in school about 25 years ago. I have a hard time imagining that things would be better these days. So... rushing around in the morning and the evening is a given. No use over-thinking it I guess. Anyway, time for bed and setting the alarm for the first time in several months. Ughhhhh. Wish us all luck.

Bad blogger, bad

Apologies for being so bad about posting lately. Somehow this end part of the summer is tough. Right now we're in the gap - camps, goodbye to old schools, getting through the summer assignments, getting out of the city and the yearly amusement park trip. I'm trying to relax, but I keep on picturing the coming school year. I'm pretty nervous about it, actually. Three kids in three schools leads to logistical nightmares. We were there two years ago, but last year it was just two schools. Don't forget extra-curricular activities and homework when you picture the chaos.

Then there's the concept of having a kid in high school that's just about killing me. I don't know if I'm ready for dates and college applications. I remember being in high school. And my mom? She was old, really, really old. And what does that make me? Plus the special one is going back into general education. That's a tremendous transition for everyone involved. And it was only a few years ago we were transitioning the other way. Learning together to live together sounds right to me, but that doesn't keep me from being anxious.

It would be a lot more comfortable if everybody could just stay put for a few years. Alas, that's not the way it goes in the parenting business. That reminds me of a joke I heard about fourteen years ago (new babe in arms): Ask a parent about what's great right now in their kid's development. After they tell you respond, "Don't worry, they'll grow out of it." So there you have it - kids grow, schools change, teachers change, PTAs change. Love it or hate it, it will change. I've got a few weeks, but then it's time to keep plodding through and learning on the job.

Kids play a part too

MSA test score gains are something we can all feel good about, but let's remember everybody chips in. And where the graphite hits the paper is in the students' hands. When you look at extraordinary scores, you can see them travel with the group of students. That shows that individual kids can make a difference.

Certainly individual teachers and principals can make a difference as well, and since they have an impact on many students they can make a big difference. Principals get recognition (and bonuses in some cases I believe) when test scores make AYP for their schools. I think that teachers get recognition for MSA tests results, though I'm not sure. Hopefully, if a teacher consistently has classes with good MSA grades they would be told and would be asked to share what they are doing with other teachers. If I've got that wrong, let me know.

But the students get no recognition. Test results are sent home and parents may or may not make a big deal over the results, but there are no school awards. In my experience, when kids get good grades or have good attendance they get recognized in assemblies and with certificates. When they do well on the MSA, there are no such recognitions. I suppose there are some kids that this recognition could back-fire with (they don't want to be labeled as geeks or something), but for most I would think this would be positive. Maybe there would even be some surprises if MSA scores were acknowledged. I've seen awards for taking the MSA, but nothing for the results. Why?

Being a Special Parent

When you've got a special needs child I think the parenting you need to do, to advocate for that child, makes you pretty special too. So after some heavy-duty stress on that front, I have decided, I'm a special parent. Not necessarily better or worse, or even harder working. My job description is just different from the general population's parents.

So here's my special education rant. I'll work hard to keep it general and refrain from any attacks, but it's been frustrating.

We special parents (and I haven't been elected spokesperson, but I think these are generally held opinions) don't want anything all that different for our kids than what typical parents want. We want happy kids that are in learning environments, reaching towards their potential to become contributing members of society. We don't want our kids isolated from the world, but we want them to be safe and happy. Optimistically, we want our schools to show us that they will care for our kids academically, socially and emotionally in the least restrictive setting we can find.

Here comes the rant...Why when we go to this less restrictive setting are our kids penalized? When a child (and their parents) takes a risk to go to a less restrictive, more challenging setting, the government needs to give them extra support. What I see is an attitude on the order of "if you think you can make it in a less restrictive setting you don't need our support." It's an absolute Catch-22. In a restrictive setting we don't need extra services. The school day is filled with as much of that as can be tolerated. We could have supplemental services, but we didn't need them. In a less restrictive setting there aren't as many services during the day. To be able to make it in that situation we need to supplement services, but now that we need them we can't have them.

Let me try to state this more generally because I'm talking about a mindset and not a specific problem. Growth requires risks and the occasional failure. Special needs kids need to be encouraged to take these risks. If we set it up so that they are punished, by losing supports when they take a risk, the result is going to be stagnation.