Proud parent of an honor student

I guess just keep talking and helping her find her gifts. Honor roll grades are nice, but there are so many other ways people are special. Your dad and I love all these things about you.

I am thrilled with the new Sally Shaywitz book “Overcoming Dyslexia”. She devotes a chapter to perserving your childs soul (don’t have it in front of me to quote you the exact title). She talks about how our love for our children is so critical for their success. Our son is almost 16 and we just keep guiding and encouraging him. He has tremendous reading/writing difficulties, but we just keep putting things in perspectives. We help him try new things and we celebrate successes in our own way. Tell her you are the “proud parents of you”.

we have a bumper stickers on our car that says:
“it will be a great day when the military must hold a bake sale to buy their next tank”

“don’t hate me because I am dyslexic,can’t help being extremely intelligent!”

“the dust is the only thing holding it together!”

We started making our own sticker’s after my oldest son at 11 mentioned his only goal in life was to get one of those bumper sticker’s. We started making it a point to collect funny ones and make some of our own. Course we couldn’t put all of the ones we own on our car.Go together, you can make them right off of your PC,it can be a real stress reliever and a self esteem buster.

One we have says;
“got FAPE?”

I want to make a t-shirt for that one!

… and tell her bragging is tacky and that you’d be *glad* to make a whole slew of stickers for all the things you’re proud of her for.
The real bottom line is that the other kid getting honor roll doesn’t make her any smaller. No, she doesn’t happen to be able to have that achievement.
We had a rule in our family: “Don’t count food.” It started as a literal rule — don’t argue about what’s on your plate as long as you’ve got enough (though sometimes it would have been “but Ralph doesn’t have to eat as many peas as I do!!”). It evolved into not letting good things make you unhappy. Is getting on the honor roll a bad thing? No. Is bragging about it? Well, only if you *let* it make you feel small, instead of wanting to share someone else’s happiness. Granted, sometimes bragging is *intended* to make someone else feel small, not just share happiness, but who was it said “nobody can make you feel inferiour without your permission?”

…

I’d think about ordering the “Got FAPE” t-shirt too!

Thanks for the advice. I wish kids could see it that way.

Glad I stopped in tonight. You are guaranteed to give me a grin…I’d love a “Got FAPE?” bumpersticker and/or tee shirt.

Ironically, after seeing families go through many due process cases, I am still wondering what is FAPE? Certainly, the courts don’t seem to uphold my version of ‘appropriate.’ Mine requires progress…and I wonder about theirs.

Well, I don’t put bumper stickers on the car.

But I have seen some people elsewrhere (*not* blaming you, just talking about an extreme) become upset because their kid isn’t on the honour roll and doesn’t get a sticker, so they want the honour roll abolished because it makes other kids feel bad.

This kind of gets my goat. It’s OK for the football players to have their jackets. It’s OK for the rich kids to have the fancy clothes. It’s OK for the “in” clique to choose all the records at the dances so my kid never hears anything she likes. It’s OK for certain self-prolaimed social leaders to take the front row and tell everyone else what’s acceptable and what’s not. It’s OK for the kid with the violin lessons since babyhood to do a solo recital.
But the *one* thing that we have, that we are actually good at schoolwork even though we are klutzes and socially inept and poor, that *one* success of ours has to be taken away because other kids are jealous.

There was a time when some schools tried to ban all competition and elitism. Didn’t work, in this competiive society, but at least it was honest.
Being upset at honours students taking pride in their success while allowing every other form of elitism is not fairness.

whoa,hold on a minute.

don’t think anyone is saying make the kid who worked hard for the honor roll
sticker feel bad,but what can I do to help my kiddo, who might never be able to make honor roll, feel better.
BIG difference:-)

Just like me to visualize everything. Don’t you just see the IEP team with white mustaches?

Another one I thought up that makes me chuckle everytime:

“looking for FAPE in all the wrong places,looking for FAPE in too many faces,searching their eyes,looking for traces,of what I’m a looking forrrrr,hoping to find a friend and a partner,I blessed the day I discovered another one,ahhhhh looking for FAPE”.

I didn’t VISUALIZE the white mustaches untill you wrote it in text (I’m beginning to feel like I’m missing something by NOT being dyslexic :-) !)

Let’s do it. Socks, you’re one of the brains in this joint. Put on your thinking cap. Can we just go have these t-shirts custom made?

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There is a big difference. I’d also say that it is important for a child who might never excell at academics to find something else to excell at. Last night we had dinner with three children who were all convinced they were THE BEST. My LD 10 year son was carrying on about how good he was at kickball. My 7th grade daughter was talking about how she’d have a straight 4.0 if she went to the public school (her parochial school has a higher grading scale), and my K was telling me how he was now better than another kid (the best one) on his soccer team.

Now they are all good but the bragging……We told them how glad we were to live with such talented children but please stop.

Beth

Socks — I’m *not* blaming you or anyone here, but just pointing out the extreme that this often leads to. A while ago on the IDA board there was a whole bunch of people being very nasty about how bad the honour roll is and how it ought to be abolished and how it is cruel and unfair and so on.
Again, it is absolutely fine to be proud that you are on the football team, youucan have the jacket and the bumper sticker and put the trophies in the front hall and everyone admires you for it. But if you take pride in your academic abilities, then you are elitist and unfair and cruel to others.
This is a real double whammy to many of us. I had a very hard time for many years. I mean, you get made fun of for all the things you’re bad at, for being clumsy and awkward and not seeing things and for not knowing what to say in groups, and then on top of it, you get in trouble for what you’re good at! This is *really* unfair, to give someone a hard time for their successes. Want to find a recipe for turning a kid neurotic and withdrawn?
Next time you see that honour roll bumper sticker, try to stop and talk in a friendly way to the mother. I will bet you that nine times out of ten she is just as worried and concerned about her child as you are, trying to find an appropriate education, trying to deal with school boards that pigeonhole kids, trying to find appropriate social experiences for a kid whose mind doesn’t match his physical and social development, trying to prevent the kid from becoming withdrawn as he is constantly teased and put down.

I like “Got FAPE”. It’s much nicer than the “My kid can’t read and nobody gives a damn” that I wanted for so long.

god yes,Victoria. Actually mine are also gifted and it is just a rough as being LD.

nnn

Fape…It’s what’s for dinner!

Seriously, the administrator-types are whooping it up over the IDEA that passed the House. It ain’t pretty. I’d just love to stop that whole thing in it’s tracks. Time to find a rich Republican and tell him to fix what the House messed up. I don’t have enough money to get anyone to listen to me except a few forlorn parents—none of whom know any rich Senators.

Soon FAPE will be a memory. Not that it was ever more than an imaginative figment (my favorite Epcot guy).

FAPE: We’re worth it!

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It’s a long slow lesson to learn to set your standards for success internally — but it’s a really good lesson to learn, and a whole lot more important than the ones you get A’s for. Of course, there is the danger that she’d really learn to think for herself, too :-)

I feel that her school fosters so much competition that a child can’t help but to feel inferior when they constantly fall short and miss out on the accolades bestowed on the other children. This becomes a viscious cycle. Words can’t always make up for actions. She is smart enough to know that we will give her strokes but she needs strokes from other sources.