With the cliques and stereotypes in our society how do we expect our children to break this mold?Everywhere you look there is cliques.There are cliques in school,in work,in church,and even on this board.Some people get respect no matter what.They can bring up any topic and get a response.I have seen people on this board post and get no response.Stereotypes are even harder to break.The nice dressed person is automatically consirdered well of and intelligent.The poor consirdered lazy and not so bright.In school the gifted and athletic students are the stars who can do no wrong.The LD student or student with ED is automatically quilty when something happens at school.If a good student does not do a homework assignment they must of forgot but if a LD/ED student does not they are being defiant or lazy.They go for help and are just told to try harder.What is that suppose to mean?sorry having an unusually bad day.
Re: cliques it's all relative...
It’s tough not to fit in; my 6th grader is very well organized and hard working to compensate for his LD, and gets good grades…but as a 6th grade boy that’s NOT COOL at all! Sloppy, loose, careless is the “in ” thing in middle school, or you’re a nerd. But all you need is one or two other kids like you and you’ve got a peer group. Sometimes kids need our help finding someone like them.
Re: cliques it's all relative...
My daughter is in seventh grade and is not in the in group at all. And she is not LD either. She has one good friend and is very happy. So you are right—it only takes a few kids.
Beth
Re: cliques
Skeptic, sorry to hear you are having such a bad day. It is good to be able to come to these boards and just vent without feeling like we are going to be judged. I agree that our kids have a harder time but I don’t think things are impossible. My oldest son has a real good attitude about himself and he has been struggling with LD since Pre-school. He tells me stuff like mom I have an advantage over the kids who always do well because I have learned to deal with my short comings. He says he realizes he will always have to work hard to do what other find easy but it just means he knows how to put forth the effort. Sometimes, yes, he does get discouraged when he puts forth so much work to maybe get a C and sees someone else do an assigment or test say in 30 minutes and get an A. Luckily he has people who have confidence in him and knows he is capable of more then most people see. There are cliques in his school and he realizes he is not amongst the popular but to him being popular is very subjective and not something to worry about. What he worries about know a days is how is he going to complete high school well enough to go to college. To him this is a more important question. He knows what the colleges are looking for and feels he may have difficulty meeting that standard but he does not give up he just keeps on going. Hope your day improves.
I think you are feeling discouraged. It isn’t quite as bad as you are feeling today. I think that LD kids do often get the short end of things at school but this is not always true. Case in point: my son doesn’t turn in his work at school on a fairly regular basis. Thus, there was a long discussion about organization at his IEP meeting. Noone said he was lazy. Everyone was trying to figure out how to do things differently so he would be more successful.
On the boards, sometimes people ask things that noone knows anything about. Thus, no answers.
Betj