There are many times throughout parenting when we hurt for our children. It definitely isn’t the fun part of parenting, it’s the reality and the nitty gritty part.
Some of the heart breaks will be from your children’s actions toward you. Sorry, I know it isn’t a great thought, but how many of us have been stunned and even brought to tears by an unthoughtful word or gesture from our children. Often though, especially as they are younger, they didn’t even realize what they said would hurt us and they feel bad.
Then there are the times that your heart breaks simply by association. Because your child is hurting, you are hurting. This is the type of hurt we’ve been experiencing….ever since CJ was in 3rd grade. Yes, that IS a long time!
The crazy thing for us is that even though hubby and I have experienced a great deal of stress over CJ and his education, and I have spent time in my knees in tears…CJ doesn’t look at it the same way we do. This is simply how it is for him. He doesn’t know different. He’s been told he’s smart, but nothing proves that, so he’s fallen into a “this is just how it’s going to be” reality where he just goes through the motions, but knows he can’t learn.
Of course CJ’s view of it is entirely wrong, in fact he is quite intelligent and we have the tests to prove it. Yup, remember those tests…we did it in January. We took him to an outside evaluator who spent half a day evaluating our son and found that CJ has working memory and processing issues.
I’m not going to bore you with the details of how we got here, it’s been an EXTREMELY long and trying road, but suffice it to say we are here and have the information in hand. So now what?
We asked that too. At the beginning of the year we were told that he didn’t qualify to be tested for an IEP simply because of the way he was “exited” from it last year. So even though we knew he was struggling (and that it wasn’t going to change) they weren’t going to take action…until I handed them the report from the evaluator.
Suddenly the process began … again. Problem is, we’re done! They’ve had since 3rd grade to figure out the exact same diagnosis as the evaluator we paid. They have the same resources the evaluator has, but they did nothing. Once they did decide to test him, lo and behold, guess what they found? Yup, he has working memory and processing issues. [do you sense the sarcasm? sorry]
Oh, but it gets even better…the one difference with the school district is that since that same 3rd grade year, they have been trying to have us test him for attention problems (ha). We consistently get “He’s such a nice kid”, “never a behavior or attitude problem”, “works wonderfully with me during testing”.
So why do they keep focusing on attention? A couple of his teachers through the years have said that he doesn’t pay attention to them for any length of time, will get distracted, etc. Our problem with this all along is that NO child will just sit there and pay attention to something they don’t understand, or they will only do it for so long. Our son is no exception.
What exactly do they expect us to do with that information? What are we testing him for? We’ve discussed this with his pediatrician for years and she thinks it’s insane! Bottom line…would we medicate him either way just to make him “fit” into their box when he is a delightful and normal kid ALL the time? Duh, NO!
I know this post is getting very long, and for those of you who have stuck with me, thank you! It took saying all that to explain that this year has been especially heartbreaking for me as I watch him struggle through, enduring the frustration of teachers who can not or will not understand what he’s dealing with inside.
We have also decided that it would be best if he is homeschooled next year. One of two reasons we said we’d pull our children out of public school is is they are no longer being educated. I think we can all agree that he falls into that criteria! Plus having several people tell us he learns perfectly one on one (including the school psychologist), just confirms the wisdom in that.
So my bloggy friends, I would great appreciate any and all prayer! At this moment, we feel a little lost and have a lot of questions, so we’re definitely praying for answers.
You may have a heartbreaking reality right now with one of your children too…if so, I pray that you will take it to God and pray for direction as well! Wishing you many blessings!!!