"They're all out of step except my Johnny!"

That was the punchline to one of my grandmother's favourite jokes about an over-proud mother watching her son marching in the parade. I sometimes wonder what she would have made of T.K..

He came home with an assignment a few months ago, for science -- his favourite subject. The kids were to design and build a car (Lego was an allowed building material) which would be put on an inclined plane. The performance of the car would be tested with various materials added to the inclined plane, such as sand or oil.

T.K., owner of a very large bin full of Lego, was bursting with plans. He would add treads to his car. He would add a motor. He would add... "But T.K.," I said. "I think the idea is that the car will coast down the inclined plane, so it won't need a motor."

T.K. didn't miss a beat. "It doesn't say anywhere on there whether it has to go up or down." Blinking, I reviewed the form. Sonofagun, the kid was right.

"Sorry kiddo, but I still think we need to go back to the teacher on this one."

Mrs. E. was adamant. "The curriculum says it has to go DOWN the inclined plane." End of story. This seemed a bit of a waste of time to me, given that the kid is already pretty clear on the fact that gravity works, and that there would be nineteen other cars going DOWN, but that was the ruling. She grudgingly allowed that perhaps he could do an extra, bonus car that could go UP if they had the time, but the air was already out of T.K.'s metaphorical tires. He assembled a car in two minutes, took it to class, and it went DOWN. With all the others.

Later, I happened to relate the incident to T.K.'s grandfather, a highly intelligent man who also didn't have the most harmonious relationship with the elementary school system. A mischievous glitter came into his eye.

"If it's going DOWN, then it's not an inclined plane," he pointed out. "It's a DECLINED plane. T.K. was right. If it's an INCLINED plane, then the cars have to go UP, not down."

Well, I'll be.

They really ARE all out of step except my Johnny.

When good people with goodwill get poor results

This past year has been a real meat-grinder for T.K. and me. I think he's weathered it better than I did. It all started so well, with meetings and assessments and diagnosis and communication books and hey, new glasses thrown into the mix for good measure. And in spite of that, it was even worse than the year before.

I'd fallen off of the blog wagon, perhaps in subconscious hope that our truly difficult days were behind us. I guess that's the lesson of the day (year) for this edition. Don't make those assumptions.

As much as I would have loved it to be wonderful and harmonious and uplifting and all, I could see the seeds of frustration and disconnect even before the first pack of pencils was breached. I remember a bright, warm spring day in T.K.'s Grade 1 year, when I'd picked him up at nutrition/recess break (as requested by the school administration), and we'd spent 40 pleasant minutes having a picnic in the park and a bike ride to get T.K.'s ya-ya's out.

"I'm thirsty," he said, on the way back to school.

"No problem, bud," sez Mom. "You can get a drink at the school." T.K. locked up his bike out front, paused to pick up some litter and deposit it in the garbage can, and rattled on happily about his hopes to get one of the "caught ya" awards the school gives out for those who contribute to the school community. I signed him in and he zipped down the hall to his classroom.

I paused to tie my shoe. A fateful decision. T.K. hit his classroom and realized he'd forgotten to get his drink. With lunchtime ticking through its last minutes and no teacher to give permission, he turned around to zip back down the hall to the fountain. And ran up against Mrs. E, who was patrolling the halls.

"Get back to your classroom!" she snapped.

"But I want a drink," said T.K..

"Get back to your classroom!"

"But I want a drink!" wailed 6-year-old T.K..

"No you don't. Get back in your classroom!"

I was paralyzed. Mom can't countermand teachers on their home turf. Major faux pas. But it was like watching a train wreck in progress. T.K. panicking and getting "stuck", the teacher no less "stuck" on her insistence that he did not want a drink (um, whut? He just told you he does) and had to return to class RIGHT NOW.

Another teacher stepped out in the hallway. Mrs. N. Hooray -- calm, flexible Mrs. N. She'll help them resolve this.

"T.K., get back in your classroom!"

Sigh. Or... not. I hazarded a peek around the corner. T.K. was sitting on the floor in a miserable heap while two adults stood over him. Long gone was the cheery mood, the hopes for the kind of day that would earn him a reward. "I want a drink!" he wailed.

Then, rescue for the entire group arrived in the form of Miss T, his teacher. "Hi T.K.! Why don't we get you settled in class and you can have a drink as soon as we take attendance?"

"Okay," said T.K. unsteadily. He climbed to his feet and walked towards the classroom without a glance at the fountain. That's all it took -- someone who could hear his problem and promise him that it would be solved. The other teachers, their faces saved and their total authority intact, disappeared in other directions.

I wanted to barf. I'd donated an hour of my time and income to getting T.K. into a positive, relaxed, hopeful state for school, and here it was shot to crap within twenty seconds of getting in the door. Over a drink of water. The message for T.K.? The adults in here don't like you, don't get you, aren't interested in your needs, and will deny that you even have them. It won't make any difference. What a great basis for a trust relationship.

Aaaaaand, guess who he had for his teacher this year? You got it. Mrs. E. I tried to have the placement changed, but the principal insisted that Mrs. E. was just the thing for him. She's kind, she told me. She's committed. She's got loads of experience with special education.

I tried to protest but got exactly nowhere. The die was cast. So I shelved my misgivings and got on board. We worked up an IEP. We brought in resource people. We set up a communication book. And we had many, many meetings. And you know what? This year sucked even worse than last year. T.K. and Mrs. E. might as well have been speaking different languages on separate planets. Oil, meet water.

Make no mistake -- she IS kind and committed and experienced and all the things she was advertised to be. But she didn't *get* T.K.. And wasn't interested in even making the effort.

Two lessons: even kind, committed, experienced teams of people can still get bad results. And seeing the train wreck coming doesn't necessarily mean you can prevent it, no matter how hard you try.

Letter to T.K.'s principal

I promise that things will get lighter next round. But right now, right here, you have a cri du coeur from someone who hasn't slept decently in weeks, thanks to a chronic pain issue. Sounds like the kind of thing that presages a bungled suicide attempt, but I think I shall confine myself to another glass of wine and leave it at that.

I'm publishing it here not as a "poor me" kinda thing, but more in hopes that future weeks will have me looking back and saying, "Wow, things were pretty bad there for a while. I'm so grateful they're better now." 'Cos they're gonna be... aren't they?

Dear Mrs. L:

It really has been a heckuva week. I know that you believe that T.K. is
doing far better this year than he did last year, but I still feel that
Mrs. B is finding having my kid in her class unrelentingly painful and
annoying. I got two of those wretched Incident Report things this week. On
one, T.K. stuck his face under the partition in the bathroom and joked, "I
can see your bum!" to the kid in the next stall. He thought it would be
funny. In the other, Simon pestered T.K. to shake his hand, and when he did,
said, "I wiped my bum with that hand!!!" So T.K. hit him once, then
subequently apologized.

So... Simon plays a silly potty joke on T.K., and there are no repercussions
for him. T.K. plays a silly potty joke, and now he apparently has to wait
for an EA to accompany him every time he goes to the bathroom, for the
forseeable future. Um, WHAT???? Seems a little over the top, doesn't
teach him a darned thing, and I also assume that the EAs have better ways to
spend their time. (I *hope* they do.) And what are we telling the class,
when T.K. has to go to the bathroom under armed guard? T.K. finds it
embarrassing and annoying -- what an effective way to fill his frustration
beaker and make negative incidents more likely!! Yay us!!

Meanwhile, the "consequences" for T.K.'s single whack of Simon are that T.K.
had to eat lunch in the LRT's office. Which sounds all important and
consequence-ey, but how does it teach the lagging skill (moderating
emotional response in the heat of the moment) or increase the odds that the
skill will be exercised successfully on the next occasion? I put in a note
questioning that and the EA bathroom thing; it's been forwarded to the LRT
(I am told) and I haven't heard back anything. She went ahead with the
"lunch-office-consequence" anyway, for all the good it will do ("Mom, she
said I shouldn't do bad things, ever"), and I'll be surprised if I ever get
any response at all. Meh, it's just the mother again. Who cares?

It's all starting to feel so very pointless. I wanted to run screaming from
the building when you said the other week that his relationship with his
next teacher was likely to be the same. I can't keep this up.

Just to keep things interesting, it appears that things are heating up
between Mr. A and T.K.'s sister Kira. He was threatening to call her parents
because she was reading books at inappropriate moments in class; when I
found out, I used CPS at home and we solved it, and he was happy again. But
now he's threatening to have her write punishment lines and embarrassing her
in front of her peers when he catches her attention faltering in class --
um, that's not okay (or remotely effective) with an ADHD kid. I've offered
to come in and we can CPS that too. Still waiting for him to get back to me
with a time to do that; in the meantime I hear that they had a showdown in
class about... do I have this right... his insistence that she needed to
wear a bandaid on the little zit on her wrist?

And yes, as you know, it's hard to keep generating courteous, supportive,
problem-solving response when I'm in a state of sleep deprivation that's
outlawed under several UN anti-torture statutes. Can't work, can't think,
crying all the time but still there every G**D**N day, warming that bench
because I'm in detention as much as my kid. I don't know what to do. I
really don't. I hate that front walk. I hate that hallway. I want to grab
my weird mutant school-system-incompatible children and run away and be a
wild granola homeschooler or something. Burn the f****** communication book
with all its daily tallies of failures-to-conform, and sprinkle the ashes on
an organic vegetable garden. Except that I stink at gardening and I vax my
kids and eat meat so we wouldn't fit in with that crowd either.

I believe in the school system, I really do. I've turned myself inside out
to try to make this relationship go well. Showed up compliantly, week after
week, as the system helped itself to thousands of dollars' worth of my
working time (and hence my income.) Paid for evaluations. Taken kids to
therapy appointments. Taken courses. Gone on field trips. Contributed
books, materials, volunteer time, everything.

I wish I felt like it was making any difference.

It liiiiiiives!!!!

Boy do I have a lot of catching up to do. I was thinking, hoping, that T.K.'s path was smoothing out, and we were in for some less complicated parent-teacher conferences.

Um. Not.

I guess I'm finally out of denial, and crazy-busy or not, I need blog-therapy again. Time to bring this thing back to life.

Sigh.

Public Service Announcement

Did you know that if you write an email to a teacher that contains the word "penis" in it, the email will be deleted by the Board's net-nanny software? This can cause much comedy later, when you allude to the email and the teacher has no idea what you're talking about.

Just sayin'.

And I leave it to your collective imagination to speculate on precisely *why* I am writing emails to the teacher with the word "penis" in them...

A new record

2.5 hours into new school year before first trip to principal's office. Librarian didn't know that he has been allowed (for two years now) to have unobtrusive "fidget" toys to keep his fingers busy and help him sit still during circle time. She confiscated it as contraband; he yelled at her, and then took himself to the principal's office to cool down and get it back together. Which is progress, of a sort, albeit under unfortunate circumstances.

Meanwhile, the students' backpacks are stuffed with inspirational start-of-year screeds from the teachers; one parent was cooing over the one from T.K.'s former kindergarten teacher, a heart-stoppingly sugary little poem about how her job was to take our little stars and lovingly buff them and put them up in the sky. Gaaak. How many hours did my little star spend in her time-out -- excuse me, "magic" -- chair? Two days in, and he was begging me not to take him there again.

"I can't do it, Mom, I can't be a proper student!" When questioned, the teacher coyly denied the term.

"Oh, I NEVER say that. I just point to someone else and say that SHE'S being a proper student."

"Oh," sez I. "So if I point to someone else and say, "Now SHE'S a PROPER TEACHER," then what am I saying to you??" No answer to that. But apparently she's still in the business of buffing stars and putting them in the sky. And getting the rest started on their careers of marginalization and incarceration... Sigh.

You know that moment when the roller coaster is pulling away from the platform, and you're all strapped in, and it doesn't really matter whether you are screaming or not because what's coming is coming and you might as well just hunker down and hang on for the ride? Yeah. That.

Things That Work #6: Professional Edu-Psych Assessment

Hold your hats, folks, this one's expensive. Or, it is if you do it right. But I promise you it'll be the best darned investment you'll make in the next ten years, both for you and your kid.

Yes, we are talking an Educational/Psychological assessment for your child. Why? There's a lot of reasons.

See, there's assessments and there's assessments. The basic ones that the folks in the schools and the front-lines educational support staff do are, well, kinda like walking around the car, counting the tires and kicking them, maybe taking it for a quick spin around the block. It really only catches the BIG stuff (car doesn't start, or brakes don't work) and it doesn't do anything for telling you WHY there are problems (car pulls to the right at highway speeds, for some reason, that's all we know from this evaluation).

But if you're seeking assessment, you already know that stuff is not working right. You want the mechanic who is going to pop the hood, crawl underneath it, test the individual systems, and tell you EXACTLY which part is contributing to the problems, and EXACTLY how that is going to affect the car's performance when you're trying to drive on the highway, parallel park, go up hills, all the stuff of which everyday driving is made.

But it's not just about the problems. A really systematic under-the-hood assessment can spot the strengths that are not immediately apparent either. "Ohmigod," says the expert assessor, "Did you know that there's a Ferrari engine installed in your car? And I have never seen fuel efficiency like you're getting. There are some fantastic things about this car!!"

Okay, enough comparing your kid to a car. But you get my basic point. You want the most experienced, in-depth, fine-grained, detailed assessment you can get, if you're going to actually fix, or at the very least compensate for, the things that make your child different.

Enter the Psychologist. One who specializes in pediatric assessments. But they're not all the same. You want one who is going to GET your child, who will work well with them and bring out the best in them (chances are the system already knows about the worst). I asked a bunch of people. I asked the principal of our school who she'd encountered in her work. I asked my family doctor. I asked friends who worked in social and educational services if they knew anyone. Before long, I had two names that were coming up regularly. Talked to both of them on the phone and quickly chose Dr. A (not her real initial).

She spent three one-hour sessions with T.K., gently and engagingly putting him through a wide assortment of tasks, and winding up the session promptly when his attention and motivation began to flag in a serious way. "We want his best," she said. She observed him in the classroom, collected input from his teacher and from me, and when the dust settled, rendered us a detailed 11-page report on our son, including recommendations on how to structure his school and learning experience for the best fit and most positive experience for everyone. Reviewed it with us, then scheduled a sit-down with the school personnel (us included).

It was fantastic. When the words, "He's a smart monkey, and I'm afraid he's getting bored," come out of MY mouth, nobody really registers that as something to do anything about. When the words, "He scores in the 99th percentile for abstract reasoning," come out of the psychologist's mouth, suddenly everyone's talking about enrichment, and gifted programming, and alternative approaches to conventional learning paths. When I say, "He stinks at handwriting, it's hard and annoying for him and he hates it," the immediate response is that he just needs to work harder and get used to it. When the psych says, "His fine-motor co-ordination scores at the 1st percentile and it's dragging down his performance and making school a miserable experience for him," suddenly everyone sits up and talks about alternative testing methods and occupational therapy and minimization of unneccessary busy-work writing while he builds his skills. His typically T.K. combination of extreme assets and extreme weaknesses has got the principal slinging around the phrase, "Gifted LD" (Learning Disabled) as if he's a jewel in the school's crown and not a burr under its saddle, and we've been propelled into this magical alternate universe where people actually stop and think a moment about what school must be like for a kid like T.K. Incredible.

The price for all this incredibleness? $1800 (Canadian). Yeah. Not cheap. But this document has magically transformed us from a difficult, noncompliant child and an annoyingly persistent mother to a highly-intelligent special-needs child and a member of his educational team. Plus the professional identification of his high intelligence puts us into the group of recognized exceptionalities for our school system (where the doctor's offhanded diagnosis of ADHD would not). So now we get an IEP (Individualized Education Plan), which is a formalized, specific, legal commitment by the school to work with T.K.'s particular learning needs. Worth it at twice the price.

"But," I hear you say, "Isn't it the school board's job to provide that kind of assessment service?" Well, yes and no. The lineups are long, the budget is limited, and the kids who get assessed tend to be the ones with super-heavy-duty challenges, with a side of assaultiveness or self-harm or we're-working-on-railroading-this-one-into-another-teaching-environment. If you aren't one of those, you'll wait a long time for a school-funded assessment. Like, forever. Forever's good for us, is it good for you? No?

And if you pay for the assessment, you can choose the assessor. I canvassed around, chose sources I respected, and then talked to two psychologists. Both were competent and well-spoken of, but one really lit up when talking about her work with brain-injured kids and kids with various chromosomal syndromes, where the other talked knowledgeably about kids with uneven development (like mine) and how their stuff played out in a classroom, plus she had a warm, humourous manner that I knew T.K. would take to. It was an easy pick.

And if you pay for it, you own it. They can't hold their meeting without you, since you are the custodian of that document, and you can choose who to share it with, and how much. There's more power in that than you think.

And it can help YOU. On the days when you are ripping your hair out wondering WHY this kid is not acting like the others, why childrearing is not the cakewalk for you that it is for your neighbour who has the typically-developing kid, well... on those days, it's good to know WHY. And cherish the undeniable strengths that go with the weaknesses.