You and your child have been dealt a lousy hand but worse than that the game is rigged and if you play by the rules you will most likely lose.
School is a postponement for the reality that awaits. Vocational planning should be considered sooner for the LD student than for the rest of his peers.
His job choices will be limited. His income will be low most likely so as you dwell on the mundane trvial challenges of an inept and cruel school system consider this. What do you know now that you needed to go to K-12 to learn?
Childhood is short. The challenges/roadblocks that your kids will face vocationally will make school seem like fun. For those of you who don’t know it OVR is a joke and a cruel one at that. That will be your child’s only resource when he leaves school. Fighting your school is admirable but OVR is the real enemy. Those sadists make the most incompetant uncaring teacher look like teacher of the year material. Join the discussions on the adults with LD and read about our trials and tribulations. It may put some stuff into perspective.
I understand what you are saying, and agree with you in many ways.
One thing I would like to point out is that our understanding of the big picture (living with profound challenges outside of the school arena) is based upon our historical experience, which has been greatly influenced by the schools and their ability/willingness to provide appropriate services. Many times I think the school’s interpretation of appropriate has not been based upon the needs of the children served, but on the budgets of the LEAs and the training/experience of the current tenured staff.
So it has become a vicious circle, self-fulfilling the notion of why fight them, my child is a loser anyway…
While you are absolutely correct that some children have a definite plateau, and helping them evolve proper vocation skills early is best for them, for a great many other children what is needed is intensive and specific therapies and educational formats to overcome the worst of the limitations of their condition/disability. There is no reason that has a moral leg to stand on in NOT trying to recover as many children possible. Besides being the right thing to do, and being within the spirit if not the letter of the Federal IDEA laws, it is actually cost effective for society on the whole. Even spending $30,000 per year on children for several years to bring them closer to par can avert the need for costly residential placement for many profoundly autistic kids for example. Another good example is the much higher rate of men with dyslexia in prison (estimates of 40% or more of the prison population has dyslexia of some sort) than in the general population (best estimates are 4-8%). Why do we not offer OG or comparable reading interventions to ALL children identified as dyslexic?
Ball, I understand fully your pragmtic stance on helping our children maximize what they get out of the schools as it will translate into their adult (post education) years. At the same time however, I will also remain steadfast in my assertion that the system nbeeds improved, turning it from a reactive and often atagonistic service provider into a proactive, “first-strike” model.
Never give up on your child!