The Crew - Miss Fabulous, Lil Bro, Big Sis and Mr. Man

Thursday, February 25, 2010

The Science of Mama Knowledge

As a parent of a child with RAD we get doubted, it’s just a fact. Family that have known and loved us all of our life will suddenly become critical of our parenting regarding this particular child. They abandon reason and become sucked in by the little charmer.

Over time we have learned to suck it up and accept this is our lot in life, it’s not a lot but it’s our life. Ba-dunt-da-chee! But on the flip side of that there are moments in raising our child with RAD where we get to go YES! I knew I was right and secretly do our happy dance and the take that gesture!

Miss has had poor performance in school off and on, up and down. At her personal best she is a C, D student and when something rocks her boat and or challenges her she falls behind that. Just about the time Dad and I get the school on board that she needs more resources she will take a benchmark test and score on grade level. The school will say how well she is going and that she is “responding to the interventions in place”. Her grades remain this up and down roller coaster ride and her progress reports continue to look the same but she did okay on a benchmark test and so all is well/ we don’t have to apply anymore funding to your child.

Dad and I have had numerous personal discussions on what the best option is for Miss but the fact is I can not pull her out of school at this point and home school her and remain sane. We have looked into a charter school in the area that may be a good option but to up root her in that way, things would need to become worse or less supportive than they are right now at her current school, because for Miss I no likey change that is most definitely a BIG change.

So when her current progress report came home last week with “Not demonstrated consistently” on it in Language Arts and some other things I did not sweat it. I did not check the box marked “meet with teacher” because what else is there to say? We have said it over and over, “she needs more resources”.

I mentioned a few post back with all the tantrum talk that I was sure something at school was upsetting Miss and was the reason for the ‘I don’t want to go to school’ thing. Last Friday Miss finally talked in a way that I could put the pieces together. She had been mentioning this teacher Ms. D but I misunderstood and thought that Ms. D was one of the inclusion teachers that works with Miss, in fact she is an intern who has been in the classroom for … the same number of weeks that Miss’ ‘I don’t want to go to school’ tantrum phase came about.

My guess was that the teacher was giving Miss to Ms. D to work with because of her demand for attention/help in the classroom. Because Ms. D is not Miss’ preferred person she is feeling abandoned by the teacher, lack of control, and and and.
I really considered discussing this with Mrs. Teacher but decided it would likely fall on deaf ears and once again I would be making a problem where there wasn’t one, in Mrs. Teacher’s eyes. Wednesday Mrs. Teacher e-mailed me that Miss’ work was falling behind in both the classroom and in speech/language therapy and that Mrs. Teacher and the ST had met and felt it was the fact that the intern had been working with Miss for weeks now.
They had put together a plan to give Miss more help from both the teacher and the ST and just needed parent’s approval. We gave the okay and viola Miss came bee-bopping in the house yesterday with her most pleasant attitude back on. We had no ‘I don’t want to go to school’ issues this morning and she was happy as a lark. Miss I no likey change has her universe back in order and Mama has the reassurance that yes indeed I know my kid and my intuitions are dead on.



In other Loo-Loo school news: Big Sis placed second in the Science Fair Environmental division for 5th grade. Booya! So all that grey-water collecting that I did from the washing machine rinse cycle was not in vain.  Go Big Sis!!!



Mr. had himself a tantrum yesterday and failed to earn Wii time. That went over like a led balloon. It was interesting what “triggered” this tantrum.

1. He scored an 88 on a test in school yesterday and his teacher sent word that he missed those questions because he was rushing through the test in order to be first to finish. He was upset that he did not get a 100 but did not seem capable to put two and two together to realize that his rushing and not reading the test carefully was the cause. Sigh.

2. He wanted to eat and it was between snack and dinnertime. I offered carrot sticks as a tide me over and that was not a hit.

3. Strike 3 was when he wanted to go into Big Sis’ room for comfort (I think) and she said no because she was doing homework.

Insert Wham-O! and using hands for hurting aka trying to break Mom’s fingers and no he did not earn Wii time. He did get himself back under control in a relatively short time frame, which is progress. Last week he earned all of his Wii time but unfortunately we cannot control all variables in the universe and so at times he is going to lose it.

And that’s the Loo-Loo Review for today!

2 comments:

GB's Mom said...

Watch out for that intuition- a power on to its self! I am glad Miss has evened out again.

The Accidental Mommy said...

Yep, school has been great for Genea but they mention these "little things". Like, an invisible scratch on her hand that she brings to their attention like her finger was broken and bone was protruding. Yep. Or when she was peeing on herself last year and I mentioned in passing that it was obviously deliberate to the teacher who then looked at me as if I had horns on my head and suddenly sprouted a forked tail. Yep.