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.