The Meeting

Monday at 2:30 was the IEP meeting for Scott. Individualized Education Program. Present were the school psychologist, the learning specialist, speech therapist, briefly an occupational therapist, Billy, Gary, and myself.

There will be another meeting, to actually come up with goals and a plan for implementation. For the life of me I can't think of how we filled an hour and a half, but we were talking, listening, discussing the entire duration.

I'd received calls ahead of time from the school psychologist requesting that I bring a letter of diagnosis of adhd from the pediatrician. We actually connected on the phone voice-to-voice on Thursday last week. I'd been feeling a bit exasperated because I had some errands to do and Scott had been waiting pretty patiently (teacher planning day, out of school) to go and buy a reward for having behaved well in class that week. (Yeah, I've stooped to bribery. Short term goals and fairly immediate rewards seem to be most effective with him.) I was exasperated because I'd just finished listening to a message from her that went on and on and on. Clearly a long-winded sort that takes a long time to articulate a thought. The gist of the call was the request to bring the letter of diagnosis.

I had one question that I thought could be answered succinctly. Do I have to have the letter physically in my hand on Monday, or can it be in process, in the mail? If I had to have it in hand, this was going to be one of the stops on the errand run, the doctor's office. Friday I was going to the coast for my annual book retreat to choose our next year's reading list, so if the letter was mandatory then Thursday was the only day I could get it.

So that made it worth tracking her down. While on the phone at the Trillium school office with a student worker I concluded that I didn't want the letter faxed to that office. It's a good idea to give students the work experience, but I just didn't have faith that the letter would end up where it was supposed to be. It took a bit of prying to find out which school the psychologist was at that particular day but I finally got a phone number.

She seemed surprised that I'd found her. She couldn't talk long, she said, because she was supposed to be in a classroom doing an observation of an autistic student. She then proceeded to launch into an incredibly roundabout way of saying the letter had to be in hand. My question was answered long before she was finished and I was trying to be as crisp as possible. As we were about to hang up I said that I hoped there would be a lot of tissues at the meeting.

Perhaps that's what opened the way for what came next, which made my (impatient) patience with her worthwhile. She said, "I want you to know that we have six of those meetings scheduled at the school that day, and we intentionally scheduled his for last so that we'd have a full amount of time, and more if necessary to really talk about him."

She told me that as a child she herself had been 'tied to my chair' with a length of jump-rope, she was so hyperactive. I gasped and she said she was nearly 50 and it was a less enlightened time. I told her I remembered that time too. She had specialized in adhd in her career as a psychologist, and wanted to tell me her story as a means of encouragement about Scott's prospects. I told her I appreciated that she would have empathy for him and she said, "Oh! He's an adorable kid."

So that was very kind.

I spent all day Monday preparing for the meeting. I'd had a sort of plan to cry all day so there wouldn't be anything left for the meeting and I could conduct myself with some dignity, but it turns out there was no need. I've crossed a line somewhere from dread of what is to acceptance of what is. I realized the meeting wasn't so much about them giving me bad news about my child; it was about figuring out a plan to get him what he needs.

So, the short story is:

1) We had a meeting
2) It was non-adversarial, I felt solidly that these people were on Scott's side and in agreement that the school system was not serving his needs.
3) With diagnostic letter in hand, supported by various tests and evaluations more services were going to be requested and probably secured.
4) We would meet again in 2 weeks to discuss a plan for implementation
5) Resources are very limited. Welcome to the struggle millions of parents before me have engaged and engage now.

That's the condensed version. The learning specialist asked if we planned to try medication. I said that I wanted to see how he did with the special services first. She then told us that at best she was going to be able to serve him 60 minutes per week. To people who have been-there-done-that maybe that's a huge amount of service, but to me roughly 15 minutes a day in a 7 hour day seems shockingly inadequate. I think she was telling us this to illustrate the impact we could expect from special ed: kind of like trying to turn an ocean cruiser by pushing against it with a canoe and a paddle. The reality of this didn't hit me until yesterday, after the meeting.

I think she may have taken some personal risk in bringing up medications and with as clear a tilt as she did. She said, "I'm not advocating for medications. I'm advocating for him. He should be enjoying school. He should be at the top of his class, he's so smart. He is so consumed with being tortured by his adhd he just can't take in what he needs to engage him."

Wow.

I'd independently come to a notion that he is not getting the bigger picture, the underlying theme of school. In the same way he didn't get the underlying theme of baseball, was just being hit in the face over and over, neither does he comprehend there's a kind of grand design of school. Most of the other children absorb that by osmosis, that they are participating in something. And it has an underlying structure and meaning for them where they can begin to take satisfaction in mastery within that structure. Scott does not have this. So his behavior is at odds with the other children and with the classroom. In addition he has a serious communication disorder which keeps him from understanding what people are telling him. It really must be torture for him to be at school. It holds none of that secondary pleasure for him. It's an exercise in will power to keep himself reined in.

In a one-on-one setting he does quite well. It seems the chances for getting that are microscopic in the public school system. (Oh, what $10 billion per month going to Iraq could do...) Homeschooling is, and always will be an option. I don't think I am the best teacher for him, and to afford a tutor I would probably have to work full time. And since I'm the primary caregiver, when would I work, and/or who would take care of Scott while I do it? So if I keep him home he's stuck with me as teacher.

I'm beginning to grasp that he may be more profoundly affected than I'd realized. I would not withhold insulin from a child with diabetes. If his well-being is dependent on replacing some chemicals that are missing in his nervous system, then it's somewhat urgent to start soon, before he's entrenched in a negative posture toward school. And set in maladaptive behaviors.

More to think about. Waiting for a call from his pediatrician.

Sigh. My poor little boy.

Today

Today starts with yesterday when an option that hadn't seemed like an option suddenly seemed worth looking into. When we first moved from St. Louis Scott had attended a preschool that was housed in a K-12 charter school. The teachers had an educational philosophy that seemed very appropriate to that age group, with an emphasis on treating children with respect. In fact, that's part of the overall mission of the greater school, "democratic education": http://trilliumcharterschool.org/

The school seemed to be a haven for unconventional kids and families. I had thought that it would be a friendlier environment for Scott. For a long time he's seemed like he had his own drummer, and any beat outside of him had to be pretty insistent to penetrate. In a less-than tolerant atmosphere it could easily be framed as a problem. I worried about the decision to send him to our neighborhood school which seemed to have its kindergarten in flux (one of the classes had had quite a lot of teacher turnover). Furthermore, it seemed to operate on a more traditional model of expectations of students' behavior and I feared Scott might not thrive there.

In the end I crossed my fingers and sent him to the neighborhood school. Trillium is about a 20 minute drive on the other side of the river. In contrast there's a bus to the neighborhood school that picks them up and drops them in our driveway. (There are other obvious advantages to having siblings in the same school; on the other hand there are some hidden disadvantages to having an older sibling in the same school.) It was the prospect of a commute that had kept me from seriously considering Trillium as an option.

At one point when I was trying to think of what to do the idea of homeschooling seemed like the only option open (and I was dismayed about that.). It seemed it would be too disruptive and too late to transfer him in to a new classroom as the new kid. Connor's a child who fairly easily assimilates himself into a new setting, but Scott is different. Then it came to me yesterday that many of the children who had been in the preschool with him had continued in the elementary school. Scott wouldn't necessarily be a stranger there.

I called the school; this is the last week where they are enrolling new students and there is space for one student. I went over this morning to observe the classroom he would be in. The teacher is Billy.

My first impression was, "no". I got a feel for what the details of transplanting a child might be like and it seemed it could be truly disruptive to a point that would overrule the benefit. There are nearly as many children in this class as there are in the neighborhood school (but 6 of the kindergartners go home at lunch), and it's possible the room may be smaller . It's a school in an inner urban setting with graffiti on one of the walls. The children range in age from around 5 to 7 (K thru 2 grades). There's a lot of agitation in this classroom too, though the kids didn't seem particularly unhappy or irritable like in Scott's current classroom. There is carpet time here in an area that's pretty small, but I didn't see the children pushing each other or hitting. The playground is rudimentary and asphalt. In some ways it seemed a transfer here would be a sort of lateral move, if not a slight downgrade (our neighborhood school is a country school, up on a plateau that overlooks the Tualatin valley and the coast range mountains.), at least setting-wise.

So the setting and classroom structure alone aren't really worth a move. However, Billy seems like he's a teacher with the flexibility and curiosity and interest that could make a difference for Scott. He seemed quite tolerant of the children's various eccentricities and was always respectful even in fraught situations. I told him that what I had observed about Scott was that he seemed pretty calm and self-controlled during the Christmas break. When school re-started he had vision therapy the afternoon of the first day. His vision therapist remarked that he'd seemed silly and unable to focus. This was very different from how he had been during those 2 weeks at home and that's what started me wondering if school itself had an adverse effect on him. I wondered if it might be the overstimulating effect of children in a group...Billy replied that he wondered if Scott might be 'not getting what he needs'.

So what does Scott need? Does he need to be shielded a while from the over-stimulating effects of a group until he can develop a bit more skill in self-regulation? Or, does he need a teacher who is mindful of his different drum and is willing to find ways to reach it?

I'm taking him tomorrow to the school to see what kind of reaction he has to the teacher, the room, the children. It just seems like the thing to do, to see if this might open into a way, or rule it out as an option. It could be a viable compromise between leaving him in a situation I'd have a bad conscience about, and having him home full time. I guess a 20 minute drive isn't as much of a sacrifice as full-time homeschooling. It's worth a look-into.

As a bit of a P.S., Gary visited Scott's class today at the neighborhood school. He came home disgusted with the set-up, said it was a depressing atmosphere and he didn't see how anyone could learn anything there. He said it was a waste of time and there were still 4 and a half months left of the school year. I felt relief that he saw it too.