I feel quite certain that there is nothing about my experience as the parent of an L/D youngster that hasn’t been said here in this forum, or elsewhere. So the question is, why do I sit down to write these words anyway? The best answer I can come up with has to do with loving my child.
Actually he’s now a teenager- independent, loving, intelligent, compassionate, affectionate and curious about the world he takes for his own. He is the same as all teenagers and different in the way all teens are wont to be. He is also different in the way L/D kids are, in his case, a person with ears that hear and a mind that speaks in the way his circuitry allows. It’s his heart that’s just the same as everyone else’s, though the drumbeat in his soul is ‘off-beat’ only to those who equate difference with inequality, or laziness or maybe coming from a bad family.
I had been a social worker for more than ten years by the time my son was born, so I wasn’t a foreigner in the world of IEP’s, LD’s, theories of cognition and the practicalities of delivering education to huge numbers of kids. I knew that there were many children who just couldn’t, for a variety of reasons, be the material that will mold to familiar forms.
Judge me if you will, but the truth is that I didn’t realize what it is that drives the education system we ask our children to live in, until my son was diagnosed with a receptive and expressive language disorder in first grade. I thought most teachers were like the best plumbers I knew: people who are challenged to espy the myriad ways in which liquid is likely to flow and simultaneously how it must breach the usual barriers. I thought that teachers knew that learning occurs in predictable and inevitably unpredictable ways. Isn’t ‘education’ the science and art of how people learn?
What’s my excuse for the ignorance? Is it because the entire physical and metaphysical world is a set of recurrent themes inevitably contrasted by the variables which make human life a joy and a challenge? That idea’s too self inflationary. Maybe because I was too immature and grandoise to recognize that because I value difference, others do too? Maybe so. Maybe because my love for my son blinded me to the possibility that anyone would accuse my kid of indifference before he knew the meaning of the word; or before his nature was tempted to indifference by uncomprehending and inexcusably closed hearts? I must tend to my anger before I add to the breakage. No?
Re: my topic isn't new
Hi Elaine,
I think some teachers are too busy or unaware of learning differences that they concentrate on a curriculum they or the school has devised and have a difficult seeing and understanding the larger picture of a variety of learners.
I think overall, schools and teachers are becoming more aware of learning differences, but there’s still a LOOONG way to go.
Prior to having my son, I have to admit I was pretty ignorant of this concept of learning differences and if I had been a teacher I probably would have been attempting to get all my students along the same course of learning. Although I would have had empathy and would have been trying to help each student, my ignorance would have hidered my ability to help children with any type of LDs.
Having a child with a learning difference, living with it and coming to understand it makes a huge difference.
Re: my topic isn't new
Certainly this is a safe place to express the anger because so many of us share your situation.
I’m a special ed teacher and I always tried to be understanding. When my own son, now a teenager too, did not learn to read or write, I discovered a whole experience of school and related areas that I had never realized existed. I often wondered how kids got to me in 8th grade unable to read and with parents who seemed so distant to the whole educational process. Going through the frustrating process of dealing with the school, doctors, etc. gave me a whole new perspective.
Our children have the wonderful qualities you described because of the tremendous love we have for them. It overrides all the ignorance because it has the light of truth. Just as our lives are enriched by our children, so the world will benefit from their wonderful differences.
Re: my topic isn't new
Dear Angela,
Thank you so much for your note. I will cherish it because I understand exactly what you mean about the ‘light of truth’ and how one day our kids will contribute something important with their differences; but couldn’t have said it as well as you did.
Thank you and best wishes. Elaine
Re: my topic isn't new
No, but it is on on-going struggle for all of us with exceptional children.
The personnel at the school district don’t give you a handbook when they initially “diagnose” disabilities in your cherished child. Even the most educated among us (not only do my husband and I both hold college degrees, but my husband is a 28-year veteran school teacher in the very same district) do not intuitively know how to proceed, what opinions from district personnel to accept/reject, and just basically how to provide the best, most appropriate education for one’s child. It is the very beginning of a loooong road.
We have discovered that just is in any long journey, you must be “fit” to undertake it. You must quickly arm yourself with all the best information and knowledge, and you must be ready to be your child’s most stalwart advocate (even if “advocacy” is not in your nature). You have to sometimes be willing to square off with school personnel for your child’s sake; the child cannot fight this battle. His parents must. You must also quickly disavow yourself of all of your naivete of how the large bureaucracy of public education works. Although it is true that many educators truly care (my son had an exceptional teacher last year, thankfully, when this first came up, and this year’s teacher also appears to be wonderful), many are life-long educrats who have no business in the business of educating our children. Identify these people immediately, and circumvent them whenever possible (veterans in this arena refer to these folks as the “no-person”, the person or people in the system whose job appears to just say no to all reasonable requests, almost always citing some arcane district policy). When it is not possible to circumvent these individuals, you must be pleasantly armed with all the knowledge around which you can wrap your brain.
I attended a PTA-sponsored special education night recently in my district. The PTA, with great intentions, brought in folks from our local special education resource center to teach us ignorant parents how to be nice and pleasant and cooperative and submissive to school district personnel. Very enlightening, although not very helpful. We had already learned, the hard way, that while it is always important to be pleasant and cooperative (when possible), it is crucial to always keep one’s child’s needs in the very forefront of one’s mind, as the element that drives all endeavors on both the part of the parents and the school personnel (which sometimes involves holding the district’s feet to the proverbial fire).
Finally, you must undertake to “sell” your child (and your family) to these folks. The parents must somehow undertake to inspire the district personnel who are in decision-making positions (many of whom have never met your child) to care about said child. We took a great photo of our incredible boy, blew it up, and stuck it in the plastic sleeve on the front of the binder we carried to all meetings with school personnel. We tried very hard to make them understand he was more than “Pupil No. ____”, but a very real, flesh and blood boy, who possessed all the hopes of dreams of any other child. Tall order, but it can be done.
I apologize to those for whom the road has been so smooth, or are not far along enough down the road to experience any of the unpleasantness described above. I’m sure I seemed jaded and cynical. But for many of us, this is what’s called a “Realtity Check”!
Re: my topic isn't new
EDUCRATS…I LOVE IT! Great thread, but my own experiences frustrate me to the point of being unable to choose what to write…ah, in my son’s case I call this ‘blocking’, which is why I seem to be the only person in his world (other than his father!) who can understand what it means…luck to all who struggle up this road!
Hi. I don’t know how to address your post exactly but I do have a question for you. My son has also been addressed with a receptive and expressive language disorder (DX at age 5). He is now 8 and has made tremendous progress but certainly his language skills are not at age appropriate levels. As a teenager, how are you son’s language skills now? What did you do to help him make progress?
THanks,
Pat