So Here We Are Now (with addendum)

It’s morning. An hour before I am supposed to get my 8-year-old off to his second to last day of real work in the second grade. You would think that if a kid is having trouble dealing with school, he could hang on for 2 more days. You would think that he could just bite the bullet and deal with it. You would think that because it’s my day to go in to school for the morning, he could make it through.

Well you think wrong. The plan to supposedly “de-stress” my son, so he doesn’t get overwhelmed in school, sits on someone’s desk (at school). It is unsigned, not implemented, and not approved by mom. It might as well be kindling at this point.

I haven’t been able to get him to do so much as one minute of school reading since last week. Because he lost recesses yesterday to complete work, I can’t even get him out of bed today to come and eat some breakfast; nevermind actually go to school.

They don’t get it!!!!

I needed this plan to have been put into place a month ago. I needed this plan to address more issues than it currently does. (Still waiting to be asked to sign the thing- so I can critique the hell out of it). At this point, I have a kid who won’t go to school, and an accommodation plan I may or may not even see or sign before school lets out for summer.

This sucks.

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Fast forward several hours. Barely got the kid to school, and as I was signing in at the office (to volunteer), the school’s secretary asked me how it was going. Unlike the usual PC answer of “fine”, I told her that I could barely get the kid out of bed, and I was not happy that his 504 plan was not in place, and was missing some info that I had wanted to be on it. Well, what I didn’t realize about this secretary, is that when a parent is having trouble, she has great insight into pointing them in the direction of getting it.

She said that if I wasn’t satisfied with what was happening, to go up the chain of command. The next thing I knew, she grabbed the principal and put us together so I could voice my dissatisfaction to him. (I don’t know why I didn’t realize that he was the next person to go to in this case). He jumped on the phone to the person who has been writing up this plan, and arranged that I would be able to voice my dissatisfaction directly to her in an attempt to clear up any possible miscommunications.

When we sat down, I mentioned to her that although I liked the accommodations she had on the plan so far, I was worried about one more issue, that wasn’t addressed. I have told her several times about this missing issue. In fact a few weeks ago when I very specifically said that my son has this particular problem in the classroom, and that this and this are accommodations that can be created to help him, she found every excuse in the book why the accommodations couldn’t be put into the plan. Too much work for the teacher. If my son knows he’ll always have this sort of help, he’ll become dependent on it and won’t progress on his own (WTF?).

For some reason, when I brought up the very same issue today, a real solution that helps my son with his issue, and will help him to be able to work past it, was put on the table and will be presented to his teacher in the fall, outside of the official 504 plan. I didn’t think up the solution, but I love it. He will know that he can get the extra help when he’s lost so he won’t shut down. He will learn steps to figure out where he became lost, so that, over time, he will have a new skill that will serve him well. This will be huge for him.

We have communication success!! So, I guess, my lesson learned is to not give up quite so quickly. To not get defeated (like my son) before I’ve given it one more go. And when you’re not satisfied, go up the chain of command. (The plan is signed and will be in effect for the first day of school in the fall).

On a higher level, I see this as the universe coming to bat for me just when I’ve given up the struggle. I had recently given up and decided to go with the flow. From some amazing teachers I have recently become acquainted with, Abraham-Hicks, I am learning that the more you struggle and push, the more the universe pushes back at you. Putting it out there and then going with the flow yields much more positive results.