Fuming

Re: Hi Shiela, Though not

Submitted by gretchen1 on Mon, 2006-08-14 - 23:45

Hi Sheila - Not trying to be discouraging to you but if your experiences with your child were like my now, thank God, adult son's? Fortify yourself. I swear when my son graduated from high school I leaped for joy - because all the battles were over. To start with he's very bright but he has severe ADHD, IOW didn't fit the mold, but if given hands on teaching/learning experiences he did wonderfully. Too bad, didn't fit the mold. They have now declared this illegal or whatever but in our very advanced public school system that was rated when he was 5 as the 17th best school system in the US, how I don't know, your child HAD to go to an academic preschool before entering kindergarten. He has epilepsy, ADHD, severe asthma and allergies, Tourettes. He was immediately kicked out of 3 preschools and I have a LOT of children and worked nights. I was wondering how in the world he was going to enter public school. What we wound up having to do was I was an unpaid "teaching assistant". IOW I had to go to preschool with him for a year, or no preschool would take him. Then we bumbled through grade and middle school, he developed severe school phobia. I think I did too. He gets to high school and because of his Tourettes he spends 1/2 of his time sitting in the hallway, or the vice principal's office and was smacked and I mean hard, broke the skin on his knuckles by a teacher three times. His neuro every single year had a sit down talk with those involved in this terrific school system about his Tourettes and seizures. They all understood, no questions. He still wound up spending most of his time in the hallway or the VP office. It was SO maddening. I had to spend a fortune on tutors just so he could graduate. A bunch of us with challenged children but bright children finally got a great program called Class within a Class where he was mainstreamed as he should have been but there were two teachers: the regular one and a teacher specially trained for these children's health problems. He went literally from flunking school to all A's. The last 3 semesters of HS he made the honor roll because at last a school system was responsive to his problems. In Tourettes you can have facial tics and sudden uncontrollable vocalizations. Stress makes it a lot worse. My mother had the facial tics only. My son had the vocalizations only. A lot of people think the vocalizations are only swearing. That's common but that's not what he had. He did uncontrollable dog barks and war whoops and no one was more embarassed or humiliated then him. He will always have Tourettes but once he got out of the high stress of school? It's no longer apparent or very rarely. It was always seen though as him "acting up", "disrupting class" which I'm sure it did but the other kids were used to it. I sat in and observed some of his classes and in general the kids would glance at him and continue what they were doing. His seizures were another story. I felt like at times I could have driven to the school in my sleep I went there so often to explain he had a growth spurt, he seized, we'll up his medication, no one was harmed but maybe him, it looks scarey, in fact it is because of A,B,C and good grief - GET EDUCATED. I had this weird thought once when I was trying to educate about epilepsy that every time I said the words epilepsy or seizure all listening to me had a short absence seizure - didn't hear it. But we were paying taxes for that blasted school and by golly he was going. And they gave him severe and I do mean severe school phobia. That infuriated me, still does. Life was hard enough for him, he didn't need others making it worse. Lastly we did try a private school with low student/teacher ratio - a school of our faith. It was worse. Good luck. Hopefully you can enlighten people. I finally did but it took until his junior year and in honesty my sister was a teacher in that school system and she helped me ram this great program thru. Gretchen