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My Son’s Not Graduating This Year, Be Gentle

The journey of a special needs parent is both stunningly beautiful and utterly heartbreaking. Often with one coming closely on the heels of the other or at the same time.

I have made my peace that our parenting journey doesn’t look like everyone else’s.

But it doesn’t mean this year is an easy one.

Be gentle with me.

This year my son should be in his senior year of high school with senior pictures, parties, and all the fun senior things to look forward to. It should be a year of celebration.

But our year isn’t going to look like that. Be gentle with me.

Instead, he started 10th grade over again because he didn’t quite have enough credits last year completed to finish it. He was already behind, but he was one point away from being able to pass his Pre-Algebra class after taking the class for the 4th time. The good news is that we switched tutors to one who specializes in learning difficulties and after taking it for a 5th time, he passed with an A.

We tried to get him a summer job last summer to start edging him into the adult world. But that didn’t happen between state funding being cut so they couldn’t do the job placement program we had been working toward, and mom only having spare minutes here and there to help him learn how to fill out applications. He got a call back from one, but when he called them and spoke to them, they brushed him off.

I have learned that I need to work at his pace, and his pace isn’t being a graduating senior this year. The fact that he has made it this far despite literally sleeping through his entire middle school experience is honestly a miracle.

But it doesn’t mean that I won’t be grieving what could have been this year.

Be gentle with me.

When I see the senior pictures, when I see the graduation invitations, my heart is going to hurt. He won’t be leaving for college in the fall or getting his first apartment.

Be gentle with me.

I’ll be over here cheering him on. Cheering that he FINALLY passed his pre-algebra class. Cheering because he finally had a semester where he passed every single class! Cheering he made it to 11th grade mid-year. Cheering that if he continues he should (fingers crossed) graduate next year.

Our journey isn’t the typical one, but it will make the celebration all the sweeter once it gets here.

*This previously appeared on Her View From Home.

Public Schools Think Parents Have Private School Money

Public schools think that parents have private school money.

I love what being on the dance team has taught my daughter. It has taught her to work hard and not give up even when it gets difficult. It is currently teaching her that you don’t have to like everyone but sometimes you do have to work with everyone for the benefit of the team. It has taught her confidence in herself and kept her in great shape. Those are valuable life lessons and that’s we’re here for. But something deeply concerns me about these school sports, marching bands, dance, and cheer teams and that is the amount of money it costs.

In many public schools, these activities are so expensive only families with two working parents with really good jobs can afford them.

When we went to the first meeting for the dance team, we were told that we needed to pay $1000 that month. No warnings, no payment plans. $1000 was due and if you couldn’t pay that, you were out of luck. We are in a situation where both my husband and I work, and while it was tight, it was something we could manage. Prior to me going back to work? We couldn’t have afforded it and our daughter would have had to drop out. Growing up, if I had wanted to do something like this? It would have been impossible. Our family never had that kind of disposable income.

Two cheerleaders mirroring each other with their hands in the air and one foot up.

This is a public school and in talking with other parents, these fees are not unusual. And it’s not just the dance team. I know a family who spent over $12,000 for their kids for band this year. Dance didn’t stop at the $1000 of course. It wasn’t unusual to have to pay $500 a month between the next round of uniforms, the next monthly coaching fees, and all the incidentals that kept coming up. Do we really need 3 sets of expensive practice uniforms? Then 2 sets of competition uniforms and a game day uniform, each set completed with their own $100+ pair of shoes and jewelry and hair bows?

The activities within public schools should be available to all. Band, football, cheer, and dance teams shouldn’t be exclusively available to those who can afford it. Not to the privileged few who are lucky enough to have come from families of economic means.

Blue background with orange overlay of a marching band cutout.

Fair play and opportunities for everyone have always been important to me. But then I started raising a child with special needs. A child who, if we did not demand that he be given the same opportunities as others, often wouldn’t be given them. This has made me look at situations and realize when we as a community, as a society are being unfair. Our 12 years of living off my husband’s income made me hyper-aware of the many times people just don’t have the money. Because we often didn’t have the money for things.

We as a society need to do better.

We need to invest in schools so that not only those who can afford tutors, extra training, and all the extras can participate and succeed. We also need to take a hard look at our programs and determine what is necessary to have a good program and what really isn’t so that everyone can participate.

A version of this first appeared on Her View From Home.

Advocacy Is Imperative for a Special Needs Parent

What does it take to awaken the advocacy mama bear in me?

When we lived in Alaska and Washington State, I spent a lot of time advocating for those with special needs. I testified before a state committee, appeared on television, picketed the state disability offices, provided help to families with Individual Education plans (IEPs), and formed a group that worked on helping those with disabilities be heard and get what they needed, and getting a special needs PTA up and running. We moved to Mississippi and 6 months later COVID started. I haven’t been involved with advocacy here at all. It wasn’t that there weren’t things that needed advocating for. It was more that with going back to school, working, and the shutdown of COVID I didn’t have the time or things were so influx due to COVID no one knew what was going on. No one knew how IDEA and FAPE applied in a COVID world.

Why did the advocacy mama bear awaken again?

A school saying that despite my son finally passing pre-algebra after taking it 5 times, it will not count as a math credit. Because the class was not passed while my son was in 9th grade, they are saying that the state is it cannot count as a math credit. It will count instead as an elective credit. What this means is that my son is starting from scratch on his math credits and in his final semester of school he will have to take 2 math classes at once, and take a harder math class than he would need to graduate because he has no math credits currently. This is my child who has dyscalculia- a math disability.

Dear state legislatures and educators-

It shouldn’t matter which grade a child passes a math class as long as they pass it.

Calleen Petersen

Mississippi ranks at the bottom on many measures of education. Why are we making it harder for children to graduate for nonsensical reasons? Have you heard of IDEA? How about IEPs? Do you need a refresher course?

This is what it took to wake me up. In social work, advocacy is part of the job on a macro and micro level. I will not stop until this policy is changed, not just for my son, but for everyone else. And then I may turn my efforts to their “graduation track” policy that has been struck down in other states.

Mississippi, you don’t know what you just unleashed.

I Have A Dream

In 2018 I took hold of my dream of finishing school and becoming a therapist, despite my not being sure of being able to pull it off. In 2021 I graduated with my Bachelors in Psychology and started my Masters in Social Work. Now I’m currently working on my first of two internships.

As time as gone on and my knowledge has grown, this vision of becoming a mental health therapist, this dream, has continued to grow.

I have a dream of owning my own therapy practice.

But that is only the beginning. I dream of working with a psychiatrist who uses alternative forms of healing as well as psychiatric medication. I want a massage therapist and a acupuncturist on staff. I have found a huge benefit in those forms of treatment both in my physical and mental health and I believe they could be an important part of healing for many people.

I don’t want to be in a strip mall in a nondescript building. I want a small building in the middle of trees surrounded by a therapy garden. Somewhere where clients can go to heal and meditate and find peace. Where they can work in the ground and watch things grow. Where the things that grow there can feed their bodies and souls. A place where yoga classes can take place on a grassy knoll. A big gazebo where group therapy sessions can be held. To help support the garden, it could be a place for small baby showers, weddings, bridal showers, garden and book clubs when it isn’t in use by the clinic.

I want healing to happen. Strength and resilience to build. A place where everyone feels safe, welcome, and accepted.

It started with a small dream of becoming a therapist. And it keeps growing.

You Never Thought You’d Deal With Truancy

“Having a special needs child often means that our kids miss a lot of school. So to prevent entanglements with the truancy officer, learn from my experiences and make sure you get every single doctor’s note turned in.”
Read more…

What Going Back To Work Has Taught Me

“It has been good for me to relearn my shortcomings and learn to let things go. It’s been good for my family to learn the world (or Mom) doesn’t revolve around them all the time. Reaching for my dreams has sparked a fire in me that makes me happy. “
Read more…

My Greatest Hope and My Greatest Fear

“Two and one half years.

That’s the amount of time I have left until my son turns 18. Every time I think about it, terror grips my heart.”

Am I Allowed to Fail As A Mother?

As a mother,

As a person,

Am I allowed to fail?

Just once?

Only in one area?

Only on Tuesdays?

What are the rules?

Can someone please tell me?

I thought when we made it successfully through a school year last year, we were okay, despite the masks. This year, we made it 2 weeks into the school year before the High School shut down to quarantine all students.

Meanwhile, I’m back at work for the first time in 12 years and I’m getting emails from teachers complaining because my child isn’t logging on to the Zoom classes. He hasn’t had access to the internet except for school all week, but he doesn’t seem to care.

This week I have failed as a mother.

My child hasn’t gotten dressed and showered on time. Some days, I’m not sure he showered. His version of an essay is one sentence with zero punctuation this week. I’ve only looked at his work a couple times to check that he has done it. I work all day and have been working overtime to deal with our company’s response to COVID, and that is taxing. I’m single parenting because my husband’s away for a few months with this job undergoing training that is extremely stressful for him.

And so, I failed as a mother this week.

My kids have raided the fridge, wandered around in clothes that I’m not sure when they were last washed, with my son skipping school assignments he will have to make up later. Meanwhile, I’m getting upset texts from teachers and I might have bought all the Snickers bars from the vending machine at work.

This week, I failed as a mother.

But there’s always next week.

Just In: My Child Still Has Special Needs

“Big surprise, I know, but for some, it is. Children with special needs grow up to be adults with special needs. They aren’t as cute. The differences between them and other adults are sometimes more evident but they get less grace because they are considered “old enough to know better.”
Read more. . .

Love or Hate the Autism Puzzle Piece?

Recently I posted this picture to social media. I was thrilled to find two of these wreaths at my son’s high school on the entrance doors. I appreciated that someone in the school would care enough to make sure this message was displayed to the minority of students in the building who experience autism. But also to bring awareness to all the neurotypical students.

I asked my son if he had noticed the big wreaths on the doors. He doesn’t always notice things right in front of his face. He hadn’t. But he enthusiastically told me about posters he had seen on the hallway walls that were about autism that he really liked. It may not seem like a big thing to most people, but for him, and to me, it meant that he was being seen and heard.

When I posted this picture on my personal Facebook page, a friend asked what I thought about the puzzle piece debate with autism.

For those of you who aren’t aware, a puzzle piece has been used to represent autism. This puzzle piece was made into a logo by Autism Speaks, an organization that many people with autism have strong feelings against. A puzzle piece signifies that a piece of the puzzle to unlock the autism mystery is missing. A puzzle piece is also used for other brain-related diagnoses like Alzheimer’s. The autism puzzle piece is usually multi-colored, whereas the Alzheimer’s puzzle piece is blue.

Some in the autism community who have autism themselves, object to the use of a puzzle piece. They feel they have no pieces missing. They feel they are whole and complete. This also usually ties in with their objection to finding a “cure” for autism. This view of the puzzle piece it should be noted is not held by all of the autism community, however. I recently read a few posts of people with autism responding to this controversy. Some feel like getting the diagnosis of autism caused the last piece to fall into place. Others agreed with there being a missing piece. The opinions seemed to be pretty evenly divided.

Where do I stand on the subject of a puzzle piece representing autism?

My first thought, is that my life is consumed with so many other things, I’m not that worried about whether a puzzzle piece should or should not represent something.

But my real thoughts on the matter?

For those with severe autism, I think that a puzzle piece or a key makes an excellent representation of the issue. We want to find the missing piece. The world needs to unlock the mystery to figure out how to better help these individuals more fully participate in life, in whatever manner they choose. We want them to be able to communicate, stop self-harming, and enable them to live to their full potential. But right now, we don’t have these answers.

For those who have milder autism, those who would have been diagnosed as having Aspbergers in the previous DSM, I think that the puzzle piece doesn’t apply as well. There is nothing wrong with neurodiversity. People with autism, think and process things differently. Yet they have made amazing contributions to humankind. What more could we want from them?

Where do you stand on the puzzle piece debate? What are your thoughts?