All evening I've been thinking it's Wednesday. Ugh. And I was looking forward to Grey's tomorrow!
I was woken up around 4:30am to the sound of Jacob screaming. Full on screaming. He feels like he's going to throw up. Great (of course I didn't say that). I give him a Pepto and stay with him for a few minutes before telling him that if he needs me again to come get me. 5:00am, more screaming. He acts as though it might happen, but doesn't. He says that he's going to try to go back to sleep. I stumble back to bed muttering something about the kids always being sick on MOPS days. 7:30am, I decide to be the kind of mom I hated when I was teaching. I'm pumping him full of Motrin and sending him to school (and he was full of energy when I picked him up from school at 3:35).
I cried my way through the MOPS meeting. It didn't help that the first person I ran into (other than the mentor moms at the door) was Shana. She asked me how I was and I told her that for whatever reason, this week's been hard. She said that it had been for her too. That was when we both lost it. Lots of talk about Mother's Day and that sort of thing. I really don't think I heard a word of what the speaker said. One of the girls announced that her son was just diagnosed with autism last Wednesday. This poor group has been hit hard this semester. Three of us have lost someone close to us (two parents and one sibling), one autism diagnosis, two miscarriages and one member's baby boy died 30 minutes after birth (they were expecting him to be stillborn so they were thankful for the 30 minutes). What kind of group did I join? Seriously, though, it's been nice to connect with people going through similar things.
Shana convinced me to join the summer Bible study at the church. She's so excited and already has it all planned that she's going to pick me up since I'm on her way. LOL! I've never done a Bible study before, so I'm really curious about it. Should be interesting.
I had a make up conference with Daniel's teacher today. And the two reading specialists. And the school psychologist. Because "we're a team," don't ya know. I felt like an idiot because I cried three times during the conference as well. Once because I was so proud of something Daniel did in class and twice because I really thought that they were going to suggest medication for Daniel. I have to give it to them...they never used the phrases "ADHD" or "medication" at all. The lead reading specialist informed me that she felt that Daniel is incredibly smart but just wants to do what he wants to do. She also feels that he is within all "normal" levels for reading but could still use the small group instruction. She said that academically, he's on target for reading and is above average in math. His teacher told me that he is the best artist in the class and uses detail that none (yes, I said none) of the other kids are using. Now, if we could just get him on task and keep him there.
We were going to try a new system that breaks his day up into 15 minute sections. He gets two "grades" (happy face/sad face) for being on task and following directions for each 15 minutes. I asked his teacher if this was too much work for her and her response to me was, "oh, no. We already do this for 3 other boys in the class." Hmmm. Do I see a pattern here? Oh well. Daniel and I went over the new system this evening and he says he gets it. We'll see how it goes tomorrow. So, my 30 minute conference turned into 60 and the only reason it broke up was because school was over.
We went outside to wait at the benches for Jacob. My mind was swimming (you would think that I'd be used to this kind of thing but it's different when it's your kid) and I didn't notice Jacob's teacher come and sit next to me. I don't know how long she'd been there but she scared me when she said my name. She wanted to set up a make up conference with Jacob. I was so disoriented that I actually agreed to meet her at 8am on Thursday. What was I thinking?
5 comments:
This week you get a single "Grey's", but next week, you get a double header!
(^_^)
Hmmm, can you say these kids aren't even in 1st grade yet? They are BEING KIDS!!! Okay, you already know how I feel about it.
Dad - there's two episodes next week? One must be the pilot for the spin-off that they've been talking about. They're going to run that as an epi of Grey's and if it works, they'll spin it and it'll become the pilot for the new show. If not, it'll stay an epi of Grey's.
Sue - You know how I've been feeling about all of this. I'm so tired of struggling with it. Although, I do have to say that I feel much better knowing that there are three others just like him in the class. I was having a hard time believing that all of the other kids were angels. He always seemed like the typical kindergarten boy to me. Well, maybe a little more "typical" than others...LOL...but you know what I mean. Part of the problem is that they are expecting these 5 and 6 year olds to sit and pay attention for 4 hours. The amount of knowledge they expect them to have is also crazy. I'm beginning to wonder how age appropriate it all is (and I know that the reading specialist feels the same because she told me back in January). For kids like Jacob, it's okay because he's one that can sit for hours researching stuff. He's always had an above average attention span and can sit for hours. But for kids like Daniel, who are more on the active side and prefer doing instead of listening, it's very hard.
Am I making any sense at all? LOL!
Yes, you are. It's these kids (being totally normal, mind you)that the schools love to label ADD/ADHD. Yeah, whatever. They expect them to be grownups at an age when they haven't even been potty trained that long.
I beg your pardon. I taught both Danial AND Jacob to pee on the ground behind the cars. I was ordered to.
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