Today, we have a meeting at DD8.5's school to evaluate how her IEP is working. I asked for her thoughts about how school is going and what her challenges are. She had four different things she wanted me to tell everyone for her, so decided to type them out. I thought that one thing she said was pretty profound and wanted to share it. On one hand it makes me very sad that she feels this way, but on the other, I think how lucky she is to be able to understand her struggles and articulate them.
�I see it like this... what the teacher is trying to teach us is like a nail and we learn by driving the nail into the wood. All the other kids in my class are like the handle on a hammer. They whack at the nail really hard, but they are just handles so it takes longer and it�s a lot more work for them to get that nail in. It is not the best way to hammer a nail, using the handle only, but if you are strong enough and try long enough, you can do it. I�m kind of like the heavy metal part (the mallet) of the hammer. I KNOW that I can drive that nail in with only one or two whacks, but I don�t have a handle so I just lay there and I don�t do anything. It is very frustrating for me because I know I can do it, but I just can�t until someone picks me up and swings me at the nail.�
