Bitter Pill

Notice the difference between what happens when a man says to himself, "I have failed three times," and what happens when he says, "I am a failure." ~S.I. Hayakawa

As parents, we all have our most challenging child. The one who frustrates us, pushes us, and makes us redefine our limits, our strengths, and ultimately plays on our weaknesses. We may love them all, but it's not easy to love them all the same.

Monkey is my most challenging. My enigma. Always changing and mercurial with her likes and her temperament. At times I think I can catch a glimpse of the little girl I knew and bonded with in the first 7 years, other times I think she's a changeling. But the hardest facet of her personality is that she will rarely ask for help. My Monkey will push ahead blindly, or hide and cry, but hardly ever will she ask for assistance. So most times it falls to me to judge when she has met her limit, and needs someone to step in. This can be met with resignation and acceptance, or it can be met with fierce denial and resentment. One can never tell. Whichever the case, I try to impress upon her that having help is an advantage, not something to be embarrassed about. But now what do I tell her when I can't get her the help she needs?

This school year has been a long and challenging uphill battle. We have tried tutoring, therapy, counseling, bribery, and punishment. Finally, in March, I thought we had scored by the school district agreeing to evaluate Monkey. But now it has all come to naught. Our request for an IEP was denied. Again. Instead of feeling relieved that my daughter will finally be able to get some individualized help in Math, I got a note at the bottom of the evaluation that read “We suggest flash cards or other methods of practice to help her retain basic concepts.” Really? My daughter has a 64 average in a subject, and you don’t think I’ve tried something as simple as flash cards?

I still can’t wrap my head around it. They promoted her to the next grade, but with an F. An F. Failure, flunkie, fan-freaking-tastic. I feel like I get an F for failing too. Because I failed my daughter. I told her all this year that she needs to learn to ask for help, because doing it solo while you’re struggling is not the way to do things. Yet, here I go asking for help, and we’re denied. I am at such a loss as to what to tell her. She already has internalized that her effort doesn’t matter because she “just fails it anyway.” What kind of example do I give her when my efforts fall short as well? What message is she left with?

We will be spending the summer blocking this entire episode out of our minds doing flash cards. And hoping for a miracle regarding her placement come September.

In Wonderland

“My dear, here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that.”

Most days, I still feel like Alice after she fell down the rabbit hole. It has been two long years to get to this point. Two years of doubting myself, second guessing myself, and losing every ounce of confidence I had about being a good mother. About being a mother who could help her kids, guide them in the right direction. Help them learn and grow. Its two years later and I feel that I have none of these qualities anymore. And still I have no answers.

After a personality change, a near complete withdrawal from extra curricular activities, and an academic freefall, my wish for an evaluation for Monkey was finally granted. But even if we get a diagnosis that deviates from simple ADHD, I still feel like it will get us nowhere. It's almost May already. The white rabbit would agree that we are late in every sense of the word. Even with an IEP, there is no magical cure that will create passing scores in her two suffering subjects before June. No magical drinks or edible mushrooms that will instantly make her ready to be promoted. I'm trying not to fixate on a future of summer school or a repeated grade, but the possibility looms over my head every day. And still no progress report from the school. I just get to sit and wonder what is going on in the otherwordly dimension of the Upper Elementary. It's frustrating to go from such open communication in her last school, to having none whatsoever in the next. My imagination does me no favors filling in the blanks in lieu of actual information.

So I drift in this stagnant ocean of helplessness and anxiety. Wanting to know, but dreading what they have to tell me. Fearful that I won't be strong enough to help my child navigate the next chapters of her life with my sanity intact. And on and on we cycle through the same repeated behaviors and conflicts, just like being stuck at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party with no escape. With the depression in the background calling me like a siren, trying to seduce me into its arms.

My only solace is to keep distracting myself with other things. Keep pushing, and living, and moving forward, to distance myself from my own mind. Doing anything I can not to go through the looking glass in my mind to the other side.

Gone Girl

“There are only seven days in the week and ‘someday’ isn’t one of them.” ~R. Chand

These past weeks may have been the hardest few months of my life. I am not, by nature, one who can sit back and let things just play out if there is a problem. And there have been so many problems.

Monkey was an Honor Roll Student last year. Four marking periods in a row, she came home with that bright piece of paper tucked in with her report card. And she was proud of herself. Glowing. So unafraid to try new things, or jump in headfirst. This September came and it was like we were given a changeling. Our bright, funny Monkey was sullen, and upset. Then brooding and depressed. We thought it was just back to school blues. Then we thought it might just be the fact that she was changing classes for the first time this year. Or that it was just the change in curriculum, the change in the class, the change in her peers. And we met with her teachers. We brought last year’s teachers in to commiserate with this year’s teachers to compare her behavior from year to year. We implemented some stopgaps to try and get her through the adjustment period. But nothing we did seemed to help her. Just like with Scootch, the refrain was just to wait and see. Someday she would come around. Eventually, in early December, she started to give up. And all the doubts I had been having, all the instances I kept listening to everyone else assuring me she was just adjusting to third grade, and all the insecurity I had about having her undergo testing to try to get to the bottom of what she was going through went right out the window at that point. It was my sign. ‘Someday’ was finally here.

Monkey had announced to me when she was four years old that she wanted to be a ballerina. She loved the costumes, the tutus, and the pretty pink slippers. She was fascinated with pointe shoes, and loved watching her Barbie and the Twelve Dancing Princesses DVD over and over and over again. When I signed her up for her first dance class, she was so upset with me that she had to take tap lessons too. And resented the fact that every child at her age had to waste precious ballet time learning something else. I remember last year she had said she didn’t want to continue dance, but I triple and quadruple checked before signing her back up this year, and she assured me she still loved ballet. So, imagine my confusion and panic when she turned around one day and told me she hated dance and didn’t want to go anymore. It was a huge fight getting her to actually go to class that night (because she made the announcement only 1 hour before class started, of course). But I made her go and stick through the last class, and then tell her teacher directly that she wasn’t continuing and why. She told her instructor that dance “wasn’t fun anymore” and that she couldn’t do it “because it was just too hard.”

If that wasn’t disheartening enough, she has continued with the same trend in every other avenue of activity. My little girl who constantly sings around the house and in the car with me, decided she didn’t want to sing in chorus anymore. Last year she was so thrilled to participate in the chorus event at the local minor league baseball park, and this year she wasn’t even interested in signing up to learn the music. In September, she was so crushed to learn that street hockey practice was the same night as her ballet class, so she couldn’t play on the league like her brother. This month, now that sign ups for Spring session are here, she says she’s not the least bit interested in playing. Its scary, and sad, and quite frankly, put me in momma bear mode. Something was definitely wrong, and needed to be fixed. Now. Before she started to backslide somewhere else.

I finally got a meeting with the Child Study Team at her school. But the group that had been so helpful and proactive with Scootch, seemed more dismissive and challenging with my Monkey. The one team member even told me that she didn’t think my daughter had an issue, but that she was just jealous and manipulating me. Needless to say, they denied the proposal to give her an evaluation. Not really what I wanted to hear. So I set up an appointment with Scootch’s neurologist to have Monkey evaluated independently. We went in on Christmas Eve to have her tested, and it was the best Christmas present ever when the practitioner told me that number 1 - I wasn’t crazy, and number 2 - Monkey definitely met all the criteria for ADHD.

Not that it fixed anything. Diagnosis in hand, it has still been a long month of forms, and emails, and waiting, waiting, waiting. After submitting the paperwork there was the wait for them to review it. Then another wait while they forwarded it to the guidance counselor for her review. Then the counselor and Child Study Team had to meet with the teachers to discuss it. Meanwhile, I was given weekly emails that let me know what was going on, and asked additional questions when they needed clarifications. And I was getting nervous because the email correspondence wasn’t sounding promising. But finally, the day arrived when we got to meet with the school to have a determination hearing.

To say the meeting was suspenseful was an understatement. We went in there with the feeling that they were going to deny us accommodations for Monkey just from the feedback we were getting from the email replies. Then the actual meeting was another complete rehash of everything we had addressed and they had discussed. They left their findings and determination for the very end, but, ultimately, we prevailed. Monkey now has 504 Accommodations added to her education plan, and we can all take a deep breath and step back to see if this helps her thrive. I’m sure that there are still plenty of obstacles and adjustments to come, but we are halfway through the year and I’m finally feeling somewhat at peace with her school situation. Along with her counseling sessions, I’m hoping that the Monkey from last August will find her way back to us. I really miss seeing her glow.

Our Own Personal V-Day

The finish line is sometimes merely the symbol of victory. All sorts of personal triumphs take place before that point, 

and the outcome of the race may actually be decided long before the end. ~L. Malone

Today was the eligibility placement hearing for Scootch with his school - otherwise known as the culmination of our entire summer of testing. This poor kid has had a test almost every other week since May; speech testing, psychological testing, social skills testing, motor skills testing, learning evaluations, physicals, neurological exams....you name it, he probably had it. It was a pretty big test for Mommy too, having to weather all the stress and anxiety. Was I doing this for the right reasons? Would it be worth it subjecting him to all of this? It was hard not to over analyze everything he was doing now, or sit there and criticize myself for deciding to take this route instead of just leaving him back to repeat a year and trying to let him fend for himself. But over and over again, as the testing results were trickling in, they were reaffirming the same things we were worried about - lack of focus, poor impulse control, and immature fine motor skills.
The hearing today was with hubby and I, the child study team, and Scootch's Kindergarten teacher. They reviewed all of the evaluations that were done through the school and summarized the findings for us. Best part of the day was hearing three different evaluators tell us what a bright, wonderful boy Scootch was, and what a pleasure it was to meet with him. They also all agreed that he presented with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, a diagnosis that was likewise found by his private neurodevelopmental assessment we had done. So with the diagnosis comes his eligibility for special services. He is now qualified for an IEP - Individualized Education Program, and will be moving up to first grade with the help of an inclusion class, where there is an extra aide in the classroom to help keep him and a few other qualifying students with their weaknesses. He will also be attending Occupational Therapy twice a week during school hours to hopefully get his fine motor skills stronger and more up to par with his age level.
Overall, it sounds like he'll be getting everything we hoped for him! Hubby and I shared a high five on our way out of the school, and it truly felt so good to feel like we won a battle for our child. Hopefully this upcoming year of first grade will be just as rewarding for Scootch as today was for us. Even the fears I have of him having a stigma, or being labeled, were almost completely overridden by the relief I felt that he will be getting the extra assistance he needs to learn and grow. I know he is capable of great things, and hopefully this will set him up with the skills to achieve everything he sets his mind to!