I think it will be allright!

I have a kind of sweet story for you- at least I was touched. My Daniel, 6 years old is in kindergarten. Daniel has auditory processing disorder and a few other ld’s as well. He also has a tiny speech impediment- like he will say “ankees” instead of “Yankees” In fact, that was the first problem we noticed- a speech delay. I had him tested and the district- wanted me to put him in a BOCES in a very restrictive setting. I just couldn’t do that so what I did do was bring him to speech and our whole family for over a year would take a word each day and bombard him with every aspect of the chosen word. He caught on so quickly there is barely any remnant of the speech issues that were once present. He is in a regular class of 13 now and he is adapting well to the classroom situation.
Anyway, today, there were about 5 boys standing in a group and they were speaking. I am not certain what my son said, but he butchered the pronunciation of a phrase. All of a sudden. The boys started to laugh at him and began to tease him about his speech. Well, having a really low threshold or tolerance for anyone being mean to him, My son went to the main aggressive boy and punched him hard. The boy was so angry then, he hit my son back. Finally, a teacher became involved and was called into the mix. I got a call from the teacher.She told me what happened and we tried to brainstorm our next step which is obviously adding speech to My guy’s IEP at my CSE next week. Anyway, My son came home with a friend for a play date, and then we had a birthday party to go to for one of the girls in his class. When we got to the party, my son tentatively went into the party room and I saw a little boy approach him with a note. About the same time, the boy’s mom, came over to me and asked me to speak with her. Her eyes were red and as she spoke, she cried and cried. She told me that her little boy was the one who my son hit- because he was being teased. She felt terrible and she feared that her boy would turn into a bully if she didn’t deal with this now so her husband came home from work and helped the little one draft an apology to Daniel. He also said he was sorry. I consoled the mom and told her that they would all learn something from this and it was OK. Daniel has a really short fuse and is always ready to defend himself when someone even looks at him the wrong way. The mom was feeling a bit better by the time we left the party.
When we got home, there was a message on my machine from another boy’s mom asking me to call her. When I returned her call, she said she had not been called by the teacher, but her son was involved- one of the kids who was laughing and teasing and she found out at the party from the other mom’s what had transpired during the day. She was mortified and asked me if her son could call my son with an apology tomorrow. I told her that it was not necessary, but if she was trying to teacher her child something, it would be fine. I tried to console her as best as I could and I when I got off of the phone, I was overwhelmed by the caring and the concern of these moms. I do not think I ever encountered such contrite, earnest parents when any of my other kids went through the teasing ritual. I know these two boys will be fine. They learned a valuable lesson today and they have amazing mom’s to show them the way.
My faith in humanity is once again, resurrected!
Anyway, sorry for the long winded email- I just had to share:o)