A tough day

This has not been one of my best days. It is likely that I have H1N1, Horse Girl and I were exposed at school last week. Horse Girl was sick over the weekend and she is pretty much better. Now Fly Guy and I are sick. It came on very fast like a ton of bricks at one moment we felt fine then we felt like we were hit by a dump truck. Fly Guy is very sick and I am not up to par. Earlier today I was worried that we might have to take me to the urgent care clinic because I was having a ton of problems breathing, but I am more or less ok now.

This morning before we felt bad we went to a Teacher conference for History Girl. She is failing Language Arts and she is getting a C+ in Social Studies. For a girl who loves History and loves reading this is not acceptable. Her other classes she is doing fine in. Those other teachers actually looked a bit shocked that she was doing so poorly in Language Arts and Social Studies.

We have a PET meeting with the teachers in the beginning of December. We will have her eval done by then. The PDD specialists who examined her want to meet with her again on Monday because they aren't quite sure what to make of somethings so they want to interact with History Girl again. I am not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing or just a thing. I just want this report written so we can have something real to stand on for modifications and for special help History Girl needs.

So at this point I am just tired and want answers.

I really have enjoyed writing about Russia lately, but my brain is not functioning at 100%, so I hope to write more once I can think clearly again. :-P

taking a leap of faith

I just called and had Horse Girl removed from the Dyslexia Learning Center, she has been there two years and hasn't really made the progress that we expected to see. We had a consultant meet with Horse Girl and watched how she learns and how things are being taught to her. One of the things suggested is to remove Horse Girl from the learning center so she can have a consistent method between reading, speech and stuff at home. So it isn't a bit here and something different there and something different over there. This consultant has figured out a plan that she wants us to try for Horse Girl. I am nervous because making that call and saying Horse Girl isn't continuing there is like taking a leap of faith that this consultant is really truly right. I am so nervous about it, but I think it is the right thing for Horse Girl.

The plan is that Horse Girl will have special reading plan in the special ed room 5 days a week for at least an hour a day. Then she will also have speech which will tie into what she is doing in her special reading plan. Then they are going to have us have a program for us to do with her at home for 30 minutes a day after school. When they showed me the plan I looked at it and it made 100% sense to me and I wished when I was in school struggling with my dyslexia they offered this, that is how clear it was to me when the showed it to me.

I know in my heart it is the right thing, but I am so nervous at the same time. I just want to cry.

Teach Your Children Well

In the Tales From the Testosterone Zone she writes today about a quote from Tampa Mom.

"Why do we enable our children to mediocrity and/or coddle them into becoming emotional cripples? Our children are so smart and amazing, but so many times we’re caught up in our own emotions and make their challenges all about us instead of just handing them back and saying, “How are you going to handle this?”

We’d have a lot more motivated, capable young adults in this world if we didn’t solve our kids’ problems for them and instead gave them guidance to help them solve their own. That’s what I’m working on and it’s just awesome seeing exactly how capable and smart my kids are.

If you guide your children and allow them the freedom to make the choices, they learn from the good and the bad and are far more capable, decisive, sympathetic, and empathetic. Keeping them safe is one thing, keeping them smothered is something else entirely!"

I believe there are times to let children to have freedom to make choices and learn from the good and the bad. I let my girls have freedom to explore our town without my restraints and they have both learned a lot from it.

The problem I have with giving my girls the freedom to make their own choices when it comes to their education is having two kids with two very different learning differences, I need to teach both of them how to advocate for themselves and how to make sure they have the accommodations they need and stuff like that.

With Horse Girl it isn't a problem she has known she has a learning difference all her life. She didn't talk until she was three years old and with help of a speech therapist. So she is excepting and willing to learn what she needs to do so she can show what she knows. Horse Girl knows how to advocate for herself and the special services teachers and her regular teachers always tell me they have never seen a 9 year old advocate as well as Horse Girl does. I am very proud of that and I know I can step back and just guide her a bit at this point and help her where she needs help because of her learning differences.

History Girl on the other hand she is new to this whole learning differences thing. She goes between loving it and finding characters on TV that she looks up to or laugh with who have the same issues she has. Shelden from The Big Bang Theory, he makes her laugh often. Then there is Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan on Bones. History Girl is always amazed with Bones and sees herself in the character so much so she now doesn't know if she wants to be an Imagineer for Disney or an anthropologist.

She then goes to hating it. Not wanting the extra help, viewing the extra help as making her stupid some how. This makes me want to scream. I think I finally got her to realize that is not the case. I explained to her that my IQ is in the 95th percentile (well depending on the test 93rd to 97th, so 95th is in the middle and a good number to go with), which means I am smart, but there is no way in this world that I would have been able to do half of the stuff I have done in my life without the extra help that I have received. We all need extra help once and awhile and knowing to except it makes a big difference in quality of life. So History Girl is finally somewhat willing to except some help which has made a big difference.

I have to admit I find helping Horse Girl a lot easier because I can understand her and I have been there done that. With History Girl her needs are very different then mine ever have been and it frustrates me. I wish I could understand stand her needs as well as I do Horse Girl's but I don't and it causes fights and stress because I just don't get it as well as I should.

The biggest academic issue History Girl has is getting school work from point A to point B to point C and then passed in. I have tried to teacher her difference organizational styles and nothing works. I also don't understand needing to be taught organization, I created my own system in 7th grade and modified it as needed through high school and college. Luckily there is a person at History Girl's school who is working with her on this because this has cause too much stress between us. I don't understand how she can finish a project and not turn it in I just don't get it. Fly Guy points out the rest of the world don't get Horse Girl and my issues, so I guess this is the feeling he has when he looking in on Horse Girl working on her homework and stuff.

I guess what I am trying to say is as much as I would like to let this all go and let the girls make and learn from their own mistakes, this isn't the time for it, not yet. History Girl's Social Worker and I have talked. Our goal is that when History Girl starts her Junior year in High School I should be hands off, but since this is such a late diagnoses and at such a hard time in a girl's life because she is figuring out who she is and tossing this new thing in doesn't make it easy for her.
So this is just another way life is different for a parent with kids with learning differences. Not that I would change things for anything in the world, I see the amazing gifts that my girls have gotten from their learning differences so they are worth the difficultly. Just it means I can't parent the way I would like 100% of the time, I need to guide more because the school as good as it is can't do everything and it is my job to take care of it.

Activities

There is one thing that Fly Guy and I disagree about when it comes to parenting. It is extracurricular activities. I would like to see History Girl do some because I very it as an important part of growing up, Fly Guy doesn't think it is important. I guess I am frustrated with the fact that History Girl tries something for awhile and then gives up on it. I would like her to find something that will bring her some sort of happiness for the rest of her life. Yeah, yeah, I know that is asking for a lot, but you have to remember that I started swimming competitively when I was 10 years old and since then I have always viewed myself as a swimmer. Even when I was on a break from swimming for one reason or another I stilled viewed myself as a swimmer. I used Middle School and High School as a time to try new things, Fly Guy thinks it was because I wanted to be away from home. I think I just wanted to try new things. I enjoyed the year I had with the model airplane club, I loved my few years with the Outing Club. I also took part in track (threw shot put and discus and ran the mile), cross-country and I was one of the first members of my High School's girls' lacrosse team. I was a member of SADD. I was a member of the Math Club, I won an honorable mention for the state wide Math Fair in eighth grade. I took Russian after school. Went to the Soviet Union my junior year of High School. I enjoyed trying all these new things and feel that they all made me a more interesting and knowledgeable person.

Thinking about it even in college I did activities. I joined the Fencing club. Pledged a sorority. Joined the ACM. I was a member of the pagan students association and a Russian Language club.

I always have enjoyed trying new things and it really frustrates me that History Girl has no interests in activities. Fly Guy says he wasn't involved in much and he turned out relatively normal, so I guess History Girl will be ok also.

You might have noticed I haven't said a word about Horse Girl. Well that is because when she picks up an activity, she picks it up for life. The only thing she has ever dropped out of is Girl Scouts and I was happy when she did that because it meant I no longer had to be a leader. :-)
She takes part in gymnastics, horse back riding, 4-H, piano lessons, and drum lessons. She also has her twice a week tutoring so she can't fit anything else in. So I have no worries about her. :-)

During your school years did you take part in activities and to what extent?

Nablopomo

Well it is November and my last post was sometime in April. Yes I am still alive, but I have been very busy. I am going to try to do Nablopomo, I can't guaranty anything since I work at a toy fund this time of year so November and December are even more crazy time wise than normal, but I will give it a shot rather than fold up shop here.

Things are rolling along with Horse Girl, she has a specialist that is very well known in the area who has been checking her out. So we are hoping to have new ideas to help her with her reading. Over all things are going really well for her. She is in a class with 13 students. She has a great teacher who really wants Horse Girl to do her best and also not stand out because in 4th grade it starts to be hard to be different. So that is all very good.

History Girl just was given ADOS (Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule) and I really hope to get some answers that fit with our view of her. Teachers are realizing she learns different then other kids so they have changed things a bit for her. For example one teacher had a weekly word and the students had to do several little tasks with that word over the week. They got 10 points if they did all the things. Well History Girl doesn't deal with the minutia of educations and so she has a lot of problems getting a project from point A to point B to point C then handed in. So she was getting between 0 and 5 points on these words. The teacher decided to give the whole class a pretest on the words and if the student got an 95 or better they didn't have to do the word of the week at all. History Girl was one of two kids that got better than a 95 she got a 98. So that really helped that teacher realize that History Girl really did know her stuff just couldn't give it to her in the way the teacher was looking for.

Fly Guy is doing well. Nothing big going on there.

I am still doing the same stuff I have always been doing....trying to keep my family on track and that they all get what they need.

A challenge

A few weeks ago LSM issued me a challenge to state my "thoughts on the joys (or travails) of mothering."

Is it wrong that I had a lot of problems thinking up something to write about it? Then Fly Guy sent me a link to this blog. It is about postpartum depression.

I don't remember History Girl's newborn days that well. I remember wanting to hit my MIL after she asked me if I had bonded with History Girl and would I run in front of a bus to save her. I didn't say anything right away because it was such a far out question typical of my MIL. It just annoyed me. I am not sure when I bonded with History Girl, it didn't happen like it does on TV and in the movies when they hand you the baby and all you feel is love for that baby. I didn't have thoughts of hurting History Girl, just bonding didn't come quickly. I wrote it off as the fact that I had never been around babies. I never took care of babies. History Girl's diapers were the first diapers I ever changed. I never babysat, I made more money lifegaurding so babysitting never made sense to me. So I wrote bonding issues off as being very new to the baby thing and having problems breastfeeding. The bond was something that grew slowly. It was there sometime around the time History Girl was 13 months old when she broke her elbow.

Horse Girl was born when History Girl was 3.5 years old. I didn't expect the bonding to happen right away because it didn't with History Girl. I did expect breastfeeding to be a problem so I was ready for that. Breastfeeding was hard work and we had a lactation consultant come to the house to help and had a nurse come to the house to weigh Horse Girl every other day or so. It finally worked out and I thought since breastfeeding was working out I will bond quicker this time. Well that wasn't the case.

When Horse Girl was about a month or two old. I remember not being able to handle the girls any more. I was a failure as a mother and I had to get out of there. I left the house and went to the garage planning to leave the girls in the house a lone and run away. Once I got to the car I found I had a flat tire. So I couldn't go anywhere. When I look back at that situation, that is when I truly believe that there is some sort of higher power, because if there wasn't a flat tire who knows what I would have done, how long the girls would have been a lone, what I would have done to myself and stuff like that. I ended up going back inside and calling my OB/GYN and telling her what happened. She called in a prescription for an antidepressant. My father picked it up for me and brought it to me. Once I started taking the meds, I remember Horse Girl's smiles and how wonderful they were, I think I bonded with her with in a few weeks after starting the meds. I was on the medication for about 6 months to a year.

I rarely talk about the postpartum depression because that whole time of my life is so foggy to me that I just don't remember it. I think I suffered from postpartum depression on various levels from the time History Girl was born until I was on medication. I wish I had realized what was going on at the time. I feel like I missed History Girl's newborn and toddler years....I am glad I took a lot of photos and notes so I can look back on them.

I don't think this is what LSM was looking for when she issued the challenge, but this is my response. I hope that having another mother come out of the closet when it comes to PPD that it will make it easier for new mothers to realize it happens it is normal and get help.

OK, so I covered the travails, how about a few joys.

I love that at 9 years old Horse Girl still loves cuddles and she tells me that I am a good cuddler.
I love that History Girl feels she can share her private writing with me.
I love that History Girl's friends see me as a cool mom and like hanging out at our house.
I love watching both girls become more grown up every day and seeing glimpses of the adults they will be one day.

I know there are other things I love, but can't think of them right now. :-)

Excited

History Girl has wanted to switch from French Horn to precusion for awhile now and today she had her try out to see if she could make the switch. The band director couldn't believe how far History Girl came in 3 months. History Girl is much happier on the drums then she was on the French Horn she plays the drums for fun, she played the French Horn because she was one of the few who could do it. So because she finds it fun, we are going to continue private drum lessons as well as lessons at school. If I can get her in we will try to send her to band camp again, she is excited about that because precussion had a lot more fun in her eyes then the brass secsion did.

Oh a quick update on the Asperger's...the school has already called in a person they use to get a clearer diagnous. We haven't even had the meeting and they are right on top of it.

History Girl

Well in the Fall we decided to have the school give History Girl a full battery of tests to see if we were missing something to cause her not to be able to preform to the level we know she should be doing.

Most of the academic tests came back saying that she was average, above average or well above average. We knew that and that is why we had the testing done because that is not how she is preforming at school.

Yesterday we got the psychological evaluation report back. Well we got that back and well there is where the problem lies. It seems she might have Asperger's or maybe high functioning autism, they want to do more testing to figure it out. We have a meeting on Friday.

Reading the report and knowing what I do about Asperger's it does fit. It actually fits really well, so well that I am feeling quite a bit of guilt for not picking it up earlier. I just thought she was quirky....she is a kid of two geeks, so quirky is normal, but knowing what we know about geeks and their tendency to Asperger's maybe I should have figured this out earlier.

I feel bad because with Horse Girl I could tell the signs right away. She was following in my footsteps with my learning differences, so I picked it up right away. She was in special services before she was 3 years old. I keep wondering what sort of dis-service did I do to History Girl for not being right on it like I was with Horse Girl.

Once again I love our school system. The school is already getting things in place for her. I have been exchanging emails with the Social Worker all week. We will be setting up an IEP on Friday. No arguing or fussing or demands or anything, they just do what is right, which is nice.

So that is what is going on right now and you most likely will be hearing from me again on Friday when I need

PS Before I got to post this the Social Worker at History Girl's school called me to make sure all is ok. She told me that she and History Girl had a great meeting this morning and things are on track. Isn't that just a wonderful thing for someone in the school system to do?

First week of school done

Well Horse Girl and History Girl completed their first week of 3rd and 7th grades.

History Girl got placed into advanced math, which is awesome because to me it is a sign that other people besides me have seen the change in her attitude with regards to school. What she loves about her schedule this year is that even though PE is more or less required every other day of school, her schedule was so they couldn't fit it in the first semester so she got a waiver out of it. Maybe some parents would be upset about that, but I find school PE to be a waste of time if you have an active kid. Both of my girls are active kids. History Girl does the swim team. She walks miles to see historical buildings. PE or at least the PE at History Girl's school doesn't teach her athletics that she can use her whole life. It is stupid games that force the kids to compete against each other. History Girl is like me...she is fairly good at swimming...a sport she can do until she is 127 years old. She won't be playing mush ball or flag football when she is that age. So I think it is great that they couldn't fit PE into her schedule....I wish that I could figure out how she could make it not work for the rest of her schooling.

Horse Girl has this great teacher. I have worked with her for the last two years. Since I work to cover recesses and the lunch room and do paperwork for teachers so they don't have to and she was working as an Ed Tech, we got to know each other well. She has two kids....her oldest is in 5th grade. She taught for 10 years and then became a stay at home mom for 8-9 years and came back to work as an Ed Tech, then this 3rd grade teaching spot opened up and she got it. So this is the first time having her own classroom in 11 or 12 years. She is so excited. I love her attitude it is just wonderful. She and I have talked about Horse Girl's needs and we have been exchanging email daily.

Horse Girl's teacher told me about how Horse Girl advocated for herself, which lets me take a deep breath and relax. I think the fear of all parents of kids with LDs is that they will never learn how to advocate for themselves. It is something they need to learn to do and earlier the better. I didn't get the hang of it until I was in 8th grade and one of my teachers kept refusing to let me have the support that I was suppose to have. This was long before ADA so things were different, but I had an awesome Special Ed teacher who helped me advocate for myself. I have been trying to teach Horse Girl how to do it herself, so I was just so happy when she was able to.

Horse Girl's teacher requires the kids to record all reading that the kids do at home. I explained to her that Horse Girl does three different types of reading at home and what ones qualified as recordable reading. Horse Girl reads stuff at her reading level to work on her reading skills. We read to her and have her help us read and that reading is between her reading level and her comprehension level. The last type of reading Horse Girl does is at her comprehension level and we do that by buying books from Audible. The books from Audible are audiobooks that we download and put it on her iPod so she can "read" them. The benefit of the audiobooks is several she is able to improve her comprehension level, which for kids with reading LDs can be nearly impossible and can cause a kid to permanently get stuck at a level much lower then they should be at. Also the audiobooks help improve her vocabulary, there gets to be a point that a kid slows down their increasing vocabulary though what they hear around them and they increase their vocabulary through the written word and for a kid who has trouble reading means a small vocabulary. Lastly it lets Horse Girl know and be able to talk to her friends about the books that are popular in her peer group. Last year it was the Magic Tree House series, which are too hard for Horse Girl to read herself, but on audiobooks she "read" nearly all of them. This let her be able to talk to her peers about the books....sort of what people do at boring cocktail parties. :-) So audiobooks helps Horse Girl with those things. I was so pleased that Horse Girl's teacher agreed that Horse Girl can count all three type of reading on her reading record.

So I have been pleased with how well this first week has gone. My fingers and toes are crossed that things continue to go well.

History Girl

I need to post this about History Girl. This happened last week, but I have been too busy to post. This explains why she is called History Girl and not something else.

Well one day last week History Girl and her best friend were hanging out and asked if they could go wander around. I said yes as long as she took her cell phone. We live in Maine and non-custodial child abdution is unheard of so History Girl has a lot of freedom. It is the major reason we live in Maine rather then some other place. I get a call from History Girl at about 2:30pm saying that her friend's mom will drive her home at 4:30 or so. I asked her where she was. I hear in the background her friend trying to get her to lie. She tells me the truth that she was in Portland....less then 5 miles from our house. I tell her no problem I am glad she told me the truth, but I rather she had told me before she went across the bridge. Now...what do you think might cause two 12 year olds to walk that far. If you said shopping....you would be wrong. History Girl wanted to go to Victoria Mansion. It is a historical house in Downtown Portland.....Portland has a lot of historical houses, but Victoria Mansion stands apart in that it has all the original furniture also, so it is very much like stepping back in time. So any 12 year old who wanders off to go tour a historical house....deserves the name History Girl.

Duck, duck, goose

I took Horse Girl to feed the ducks this afternoon. I have always felt that Horse Girl has a way with animals that most people don't., but this is her biased mother talking. I have been to this pond many times before and the ducks are friendly, but not overly so. These ducks would walk right up to Horse Girl sitting on the ground and head butt her and look like they wanted her to pet them and walk right up to her...they all but walked onto her lap. She would sit and talk to the ducks making sure they all got some bread making sure none of them went without. It was very cute and I wish I had my camera.

Horse Girl

I don't know what to do about Horse Girl. She is clearly having problems and has been for a few weeks. I think it is related to her sensory issues, but I am not sure. I think she is sensory seeking right now, but our normal way of dealing with that with brushing and mini trampoline don't seem to be working. She is fidgeting and leaning on people all the time. This is causing her not to be able to get her work done at the Dyslexia Center or during the extended year services at the school. I have had three of her teachers talk to me about it and I have no idea what to do.
She even has been having nightmares lately. She is tossing all over her bed and crying out. I have no idea what is going on with her.
We are taking her out of the EYS and the Dyslexia Center next week so she can go to Horse Camp. I am hoping doing something more physical will clear up whatever is going on with her. Then she will go back for one more week at the Dyslexia Center. Then 3 weeks before school starting. Those weeks we will do a few thing at home in hopes that she doesn't lose ground, but trying not to over work her.
I think part of the problem is the fact Horse Girl is a bit of a perfectionist....which is something she gets from Fly Guy. Being a person with learning differences and a perfectionist is a hard combo to live with. She so wants figure things out and she gets really frustrated about it. She started crying today at the Dyslexia Center today because she feeling wriggly and that and having trouble keeping her mind on her work and it wasn't working for her today. This all made her cry. Her teacher felt bad because she hates it when Horse Girl cries because Horse Girl only cries at the Dyslexia Center when she is upset with herself.
I don't know. I need to figure out what to do to help Horse Girl. I hope a week at Horse Camp does the trick.

Drums

Horse Girl told me this morning during our driving around this morning that she wants to take up drums. This isn't the first time she has asked to do this. My response has always been the same. The school offers drum lessons in 6th grade so she could take lessons then. Then she said to me she was going to have Pop-Pop (Fly Guy's Stepfather) buy her a set of drums because he promised her a First Communion gift the next time they saw each other. My mind started whirling with thoughts.

You see I love drums...when I listen to music I hear the drums and everything else is extra. One of the reasons I love The Police is because Stewart Copeland has no equal when it comes to playing drums.

I took drum lessons in school, but my parents being who they are and not knowing what they doing with regards to helping their LD kid get what she needed in school...listened to the music teacher who said that I couldn't possibly play drums because of my LD. I kept fighting them on it and a year later then all my peers started drum lessons at school. I had no support at home. My parents would only pay for my sticks...I didn't even have a practice pad I had to fake it with a Frisbee. I had to push myself to practice...with my brother they had him sit down 30-45 mins everyday at the piano and they watched over his practice. My drum instructor clearly didn't think I would make it...plus I was older then the other kids in the lesson so I got pulled out of a different part of class rather then quiet study time...I got pulled out of math and when they did word problems I got a D- because a dyslexic and word problems just sucks and I wasn't in the class for them. So my parents said I had to give up drumming because clearly it was affecting my school work. Ever since then I have wanted to take up drumming again and get a teacher who doesn't give a damn about my LD or even better doesn't even know I have it.

So the idea of Horse Girl getting a set of drums just makes my heart sing. It would be a step closer to what I would like to do. Horse Girl said that maybe she could get Pop-Pop buy a whole set of drums. I told her you only really need one drum to start with and that way you can get a better quality drum and slowly build up a drum kit. She said that makes sense, but she would want a cymbal also. I told her we might be able to work that out. :-)

Horse Girl and I were stuck in traffic with me and I put on some Police and she air drummed with me. I will have to see about lessons for her. She has the benefit of a mom who knows what she is going through and knows the words to say to tell the doubters to just shut-up. So maybe she will go farther with drums then I did. That would make me happy.

BTW a couple weeks ago my mother told me she was sorry that she didn't stick up for me in school more or in a better way. She said she always wanted to believe what the teachers told her and she just followed along. She sees me question the Horse Girl's teachers all the time and check to see how Horse Girl is doing, so she feels like she didn't do as good a job as she could have. I told her she didn't know any better, she was doing what seemed right at the time, just as I am doing what seems right at this time. I am not sure what I would do if I didn't have the Internet and could research things deeply at home. I don't have time to spend a lot of time at a library doing research. Plus I have the benefit that my mother never had, I have traveled this road that Horse Girl has traveled and I know the words that made me feel better when I was discouraged and I can talk to Horse Girl about how it took me forever to read and now I am reading all the time. So that is a major thing my mother just never had and never will have, so my relationship with Horse Girl, her school and her teachers will always be different then my mother's relationship with me, my school and my teachers.

Ramblings

I really have a hard time with Summer. Yes I don't like the heat...for Pete's sake I have lived in Maine for most of my life so of course anything over 75 is a bit toasty for my tastes. What I don't like is the craziness and all the driving I need to do....here is the schedule for most days with some small changes on some like Speech is only Monday and Tuesday so the rest of the week we can leave the house 30 minutes later:
7:30am - 8am Speech Therapy
8am-9am Learning Center which is about 15 minutes away from where speech therapy is
9am-2pm Camp which is 20 mins from where the learning center is.

So I really feel the need to invent teloportation, but I don't even have the vaguest clue where to start.

Today when I was in the waiting room at the Learning Center I got to talking to another mom. Since the learning center is just for kids with dyslexia we have a lot in common to talk about. I am so glad Horse Girl doesn't go to the school district this person's kid goes to.

First of all one of the teachers told her that dyslexia doesn't really exists. Then a few weeks later tells her to have her son tested for ADHD. Ok...so dyslexia does not exists and ADHD does?!?!?! Huh? Is it because a kid can be medicated with ADHD? What is the difference between the two in this teacher's mind....inquiring minds would like to know.

Second of all this school department that this boy goes to denied him special ed saying he didn't qualify. Ok....so some schools can be really hard to deal with to get kids the services that they need. Well months later she gets a letter from the state wanting her to review the quality of the special ed. that her son was getting at the school. Turns out that the school told the state they were giving the boy special ed services when they denied them. I really hope this mom does something to this school department....of all the way to get extra money this has to be one of the lowest. I hope it was just an honest mistake, but with all the horror stories I have heard who know what the case is.

Hearing stories like that sometimes makes me feel guilty about how easy we have it when it comes to services. At our school I really feel like we are a team that works together well to get Horse Girl what she needs and we bounce ideas off of each other and try new things and we really work together. I really wish that more schools dealt with special needs like our school. Well we can always dream.

History Girl heads to overnight band camp this weekend. She is every excited. I am excited because it is easier to pack for then Girl Scout camp. She will be staying in a college dorm, so no sleeping bag, no mess kit, no dunk bag, no packing each outfit in a ziplock bag to keep them dry.....sheets, French Horn, music stand, alarm clock and clothes....much easier to pack for.

Horse Girl and Camp

Well it seems that this happens once a Summer and this Summer it happened early, so I hope this doesn't mean it will happen again this Summer.

Well Horse Girl was teased about her speech. As I said this happens about once a year. Though it has never happened at this camp before. This is a camp that I tell all the other families with LD kids about, because it is a town run (so fairly cheap) camp that is very well organized and breaks the large camp into very small well run groups, so it is perfect for kids with learning differences. So I was surprised when Horse Girl told us about the teasing.

I went to the Assistant Camp Director this morning and talked to her about it. She said that they would have a camp wide talk about respecting each other's differences and stuff like that. So it seems she is taking it seriously. We also talked about how this is the first time we have had this sort of trouble at this camp and that I have recommended it to many families with kids with learning differences. She was pleased to hear I was so happy with the camp and it seemed that made her want to take care of this issue as quickly as she could.

I hate it when Horse Girl gets teased. Not only from the Mother Bear angle, but the fact that every times she gets teased she becomes unsure about her skills. Last night and today She was _VERY_ unsure about her reading skills. Her Extended Year Services reading teacher told me that Horse Girl was being very clingy this morning with regards to her reading and didn't want to take risks. Which is a shame because Horse Girl has been making great strides with her reading over the last few month. She is only a year behind her classmates now so that is great for her. I hope she can shake off these negative thoughts about herself and keep going because she has really been doing a great job and I have been so proud of her.

Here's to hoping that this was the one and only teasing situation this Summer and we can get it behind us quickly.

Panic

Today it hit me....Horse Girl will be in Third Grade in the Fall. To me Third Grade is where they start to use the reading, writing and math skills they have been working on since Kindergarten to learn other things. This caused me panic a bit. Normally I am the one who feels that everything will be ok with Horse Girl and things will be fine it will just take time. I am able to draw from my experience of being a kid with dyslexia. Though every once and awhile I worry. I am guessing it is what Fly Guy feels most of the time about Horse Girl...he listens to me and my experience and that makes him feel better, but he has no personal experience.

I told Horse Girl's resource room teacher I needed to talk and she was able to reassure me that we have support in place for her and she has placed Horse Girl in a classroom with other kids who also have learning issues and they will share an Ed Tech. I am glad to hear that she is sharing an Ed Tech with kids with learning issues...this year she shared one with a student with behavioral issues and I expressed concern at one point that I was worried how she would be preseaved by the teachers if she is always with this kid with behavioral issues. She also told me that Horse Girl could always come down to the resource room in the afternoon to work on homework or projects, if we were having trouble supporting her at home.

I realize I have high hopes for next year, because third grade is when I started reading. I didn't read at grade level until 7th grade. So I hope Horse Girl will follow in my footsteps and I am also scared that I have put too much hope into next year and I am going to be disappointed because things don't work out.

I am so glad the Resource Room teacher is always so wiling to make me feel better when I worry. It isn't often, but it happens and today was a big worry. She calmed me down and got me back to my normal state of being being sure everything will work out if given enough time.

Reading time with Horse Girl

Every night before bedtime I read to Horse Girl. Tonight we read one chapter out of "Little Town on the Prarie" by Laura Ingalls Wilder and then we read "Thank You, Mr. Falker" by Patricia Polacco.



After I was done with "Thank You, Mr. Falker" Horse Girl told me she likes that book a lot because it is like her. I told her I like it a lot too, but it makes me cry every time I read it. She asked me why. I told her that Mr. Falker is a lot like a teacher I had and the story reminds me of me and that teacher. She understood.

"Thank You, Mr. Falker" is about a little girl's journey though the school system with kids teasing her because she can't read and feeling dumb because she can't read. She starts hating school because of all this. Then she meets Mr. Falker when she enters 5th grade. Mr. Falker sees her as the bright kid she is. Asks the kids who teased her which one of them is so perfect that they can tease someone else. Mr. Falker ends up helping the little girl to read in the end.

Yes it could be a corny feel-good story, but the thing is the little girl in the story is Patricia Polacco who grows up to write these wonderful children's books. So it is really a very moving true story.

I like it also because it shows how important good teachers are for kids. I believe people have a calling to be teachers. You can tell the ones who are following their calling as soon as you walk into their classroom. Everyone has a teacher they know that they can say that about. To me if being a teacher is a calling, being a special ed teacher is something even more. It is something that a person really needs to be born to do. Yes you can study it and learn about it, but working one on one with this gentle soul who may already be hurting because they can't do what their peers can, takes a very special person. I had three special ed teachers growing up. Each and everyone of them would have done anything to help me become the best student I could be. I owe everything to them. When I see Horse Girl's special ed teacher I see the same traits in her as I did in my special ed teachers. I know because of what this teacher does for Horse Girl, that Horse Girl will remember her for the rest of her life.

I once tried to tell Horse Girl's special ed teacher about how highly I value special ed teachers and she started to tear up, so I stopped. I am not suprised because I know I tear up when I think about her and how she helps Horse Girl and when I think of the teachers who helped me.

Thank you, all the teachers who really make a difference.

History Girl's First Swim Practice

History Girl had her first swim practice this evening. Maybe I should change her name to Swim Chick here....maybe, but not yet. I am so proud of her I could burst. History Girl is known for not really working hard at anything. She coasts, she is very smart, and because of that she can do well and not really apply herself. It is something that she gets from Fly Guy....I am not being mean or anything if you asked him he would tell you the same thing. Any how back to History Girl and her swim practice. They were working on stroke drills to prefect their swimming form. Drills can be hard to do because you really have to think about what you are doing, but History Girl did it all and without a fuss. She listened well, she took criticism well and the coach was very good at complementing her when she did do what he wanted her to do. She swam about 500 yards in the hour practice, which is a fraction of what I do, but for a kid who is just starting that is pretty good. She does have a natural breaststroke...with a little refining she really will do well at it. I am so proud of the fact that she really worked hard at something and she did an amazing job. I told her how proud I was of her and how she did a great job.

Fly Guy is out this evening so I can't even share with him how proud I am of History Girl. I tried to call him on his cell phone, but he didn't pick up, so I am stuck gushing here. :-) Can I say again how proud I am of her? :-)

Swimming and History Girl

Yesurday History Girl got a chance to try out for a swim club. The coach really liked her. History Girl is going to try it for a week before I am willing to sign her up for it. Not only it is expencive, but it takes a lot of time and effort.

I have been swimming competively since I was a little younger then History Girl. My mother expected me to get myself to swim practice on my own. Which I did without a problem. My mother only made it to one of my swim meets and that was only because my Grandfather (her dad) wanted to see me swim, since he was a swimmer. My dad made it to the meets he could because he worked nights at the time. If you work for a morning paper then you work nights to get it ready in time.

Ever since I became a Mom I wanted a daughter who would be a swimmer. Even though I wanted that, I never said anything about it because I never wanted them to feel like they had to do it. I told them both they had to learn how to swim. A child of mine doesn't grow up on the coast without learning how to swim. If they didn't learn how to swim I wouldn't let them go on boats/ships/etc. So they learned how to swim.

So I am so excited about this. I hope she likes it, but I needto make sure that I stay the suppoter and not become her coach, because having swum competively off and on for 25+ years, I have coached many of my teammates. I shouldn't coach my own daughter because it would hurt our relationship.

We are already having one minor problem. The swim club has a parent/child meet. History Girl has already told me that if I swim agaist her and win, she will be upset. I reminded her that she won't always win there will always be someone better then she is. She said that she understands it just would hurt if I beat her. Well I am one of the top backstrokers in the state in my age group, so if we swim backstroke I will beat her and a good number of the younger kids in the club...I am not delusional...I know the senior swimmers would beat me to a pulp. :-) Maybe I will do an event that History Girl isn't doing and then have Fly Guy swim agaist History Girl. ;-)

A call from horse camp

I just got a call from Horse Girl's horse camp. The councilor who is in charge at the barn called to tell me that she is sorry Horse Girl had such a hard day yesterday and that this group of girls aren't meshing as well as some of the other groups she has dealt with. There were some that were picking on other so badly this morning that they made them all sit down and talk about how you are suppose to treat people and things like that. So I might have called, but seems like they were going to have this meeting with the kids no matter what so it really turns out that it wasn't just Horse Girl having problems and all seems good now.