Trying to find moral support - 01/16/09 06:28 PM
I finally gave up on trying to find moral support outside of message boards. I think it is not likely that I will find anyone in the small town that I live in who really understands the things we are going through. I could not talk to anyone in my town about twice exceptional issues except for a friend who is a special education teacher and mother of gifted sons, but even she thinks I should fight the school, have them test him and put him at the appropriate level at least part time, which the school told us is not possible. She thinks it would be good for him even though one of her gifted sons was bullied, both verbally and physically, and had to have stitches in his head after an incident on the school bus.
I know I have posted this before, but our school is known as the "sports school" and the smart kids, those kids who are in band instead of football or basketball, are targeted by the bullies. My son's best friends who are three and four years older tell me that he would definitely be targeted by bullies for the fact that he is smart, unable to do sports and is physically not as strong as most of the other kids, and he would also be called a gamer geek. Any one of these could cause him to be bullied so he has three strikes against him. But they also told me they thought the school would have to put him in a higher grade level than most kids his age and therefore he would be with them and they could somehow "protect" him from the bullies. One of his friends said he thought my son's older cousins who are very athletic might be able to protect him.
So is public school really an option when he would have to have protection? I think not. I have lived with the fear that something might happen and we would have to put him back in public school.
But sometimes it felt like homeschooling wasn't the perfect solution either because the sadness, anxiety, and social isolation I felt dragged me down and took away my energy. I couldn't talk to anyone about my mother's illness or the fear I constantly carried with me that the same thing that happened to my mother could happen to me if I ever had to have surgery and knowing that this would financially devastate my family, and any chance of an appropriate education or college for my son would be gone.
My son and I both know there is a stigma associated with dementia, especially in our small town. He knows that he can't talk to anyone outside of the family about her socially unacceptable behaviors or the fact that he can't hug his grandmother or get too close to her because she pinches and sometimes draws blood. He knows that there are people who might think there are other reasons for her behavior. He knows that she is not demon possessed and he remembers that she was a very kind and loving grandmother before the minor surgery that left her changed forever. He knows that her behavior is because of the brain damage that destroyed the area that controls inhibition. He has read a lot about the brain and neurological disorders and diseases, and anxiety so I guess the educational part of this is positive.
I felt sad that my son thought we were being shunned by the homeschool group we belonged to for a while. I later talked to a member of this group whose kids are in the same musical theatre group as my son and she confirmed that there were members of the group who disagreed with me about certain things that I was vocal about and she understood why we left the group.
I felt sad that my son felt that the community didn't really accept him because he wasn't the average kid, but this led to reading psychology and sociology textbooks so I guess this was educational in a way if I try to look at the positive and I am trying so hard to look at the positive.
Last week, I was mad at myself because I felt a little uncomfortable going into our (all white) small town restaurant with my son, my pretty, white adult daughter and her black fiance and I know I shouldn't be uncomfortable, but I grew up with older relatives making racial jokes and I just didn't know what would happen, and I didn't want my future son-in-law to be uncomfortable. When we entered the restaurant, an older man, I'm guessing about 80 years old, kept looking at us and took out his harmonica while we were in the restaurant and played "Dixie," a song that in the past might have been considered offensive but we just smiled at him and clapped when he was finished and he played a few more songs. The owner of the restaurant came out and was very nice and friendly and talked to us a while until the old guy with the harmonica left.
I felt really, really bad when I found out that I had lost thousands of dollars I had invested in a state college savings plan for my son's college education. My dad had given us money to invest and I thought I was playing it safe. My son had wanted to invest in Gamestop stock because he thought if there were ever a recession or depression people would still buy games because they would have to stay home more and it would be like women continuing to buy lipstick during the Great Depression. He was right. It hasn't been as negatively effected as other stocks. My dad tells me that nobody could have predicted this and tries to make me feel better about this, but it still bothers me. I have to make sure my son goes to college so that he doesn't end up like his highly-gifted half brother who dropped out of high school and college and worked at IT jobs that paid well for a while but now is barely able to pay his bills at an $8 an hour job. He is competing with people with college degrees. It doesn't matter how smart he is.
I kept wondering if I was doing the right things to help my son overcome the motor dyspraxia/dysgraphia that caused handwriting difficulties that were more of a problem in math when I didn't let him use a calculator because I was afraid if he suddenly had to go back to school they would not let him use one. I am finally letting him use a calculator so he doesn't hate it as much as he used to. I was worried that he wouldn't be able to take notes so I have had him work on finding a way that he could write quickly. He is using a mixture of cursive for the lower case letters and print capitals. It is working better for him but I worry that the color in the lines teachers would give him a hard time about it if he ever had to go back to school.
So it finally all got to me. My blood pressure was way too high and I felt like I was stuck in a panic attack. The doctor immediately put me on blood pressure and anxiety medication, so I should be able to handle it all now and not worry about having a stroke.
I know I have posted this before, but our school is known as the "sports school" and the smart kids, those kids who are in band instead of football or basketball, are targeted by the bullies. My son's best friends who are three and four years older tell me that he would definitely be targeted by bullies for the fact that he is smart, unable to do sports and is physically not as strong as most of the other kids, and he would also be called a gamer geek. Any one of these could cause him to be bullied so he has three strikes against him. But they also told me they thought the school would have to put him in a higher grade level than most kids his age and therefore he would be with them and they could somehow "protect" him from the bullies. One of his friends said he thought my son's older cousins who are very athletic might be able to protect him.
So is public school really an option when he would have to have protection? I think not. I have lived with the fear that something might happen and we would have to put him back in public school.
But sometimes it felt like homeschooling wasn't the perfect solution either because the sadness, anxiety, and social isolation I felt dragged me down and took away my energy. I couldn't talk to anyone about my mother's illness or the fear I constantly carried with me that the same thing that happened to my mother could happen to me if I ever had to have surgery and knowing that this would financially devastate my family, and any chance of an appropriate education or college for my son would be gone.
My son and I both know there is a stigma associated with dementia, especially in our small town. He knows that he can't talk to anyone outside of the family about her socially unacceptable behaviors or the fact that he can't hug his grandmother or get too close to her because she pinches and sometimes draws blood. He knows that there are people who might think there are other reasons for her behavior. He knows that she is not demon possessed and he remembers that she was a very kind and loving grandmother before the minor surgery that left her changed forever. He knows that her behavior is because of the brain damage that destroyed the area that controls inhibition. He has read a lot about the brain and neurological disorders and diseases, and anxiety so I guess the educational part of this is positive.
I felt sad that my son thought we were being shunned by the homeschool group we belonged to for a while. I later talked to a member of this group whose kids are in the same musical theatre group as my son and she confirmed that there were members of the group who disagreed with me about certain things that I was vocal about and she understood why we left the group.
I felt sad that my son felt that the community didn't really accept him because he wasn't the average kid, but this led to reading psychology and sociology textbooks so I guess this was educational in a way if I try to look at the positive and I am trying so hard to look at the positive.
Last week, I was mad at myself because I felt a little uncomfortable going into our (all white) small town restaurant with my son, my pretty, white adult daughter and her black fiance and I know I shouldn't be uncomfortable, but I grew up with older relatives making racial jokes and I just didn't know what would happen, and I didn't want my future son-in-law to be uncomfortable. When we entered the restaurant, an older man, I'm guessing about 80 years old, kept looking at us and took out his harmonica while we were in the restaurant and played "Dixie," a song that in the past might have been considered offensive but we just smiled at him and clapped when he was finished and he played a few more songs. The owner of the restaurant came out and was very nice and friendly and talked to us a while until the old guy with the harmonica left.
I felt really, really bad when I found out that I had lost thousands of dollars I had invested in a state college savings plan for my son's college education. My dad had given us money to invest and I thought I was playing it safe. My son had wanted to invest in Gamestop stock because he thought if there were ever a recession or depression people would still buy games because they would have to stay home more and it would be like women continuing to buy lipstick during the Great Depression. He was right. It hasn't been as negatively effected as other stocks. My dad tells me that nobody could have predicted this and tries to make me feel better about this, but it still bothers me. I have to make sure my son goes to college so that he doesn't end up like his highly-gifted half brother who dropped out of high school and college and worked at IT jobs that paid well for a while but now is barely able to pay his bills at an $8 an hour job. He is competing with people with college degrees. It doesn't matter how smart he is.
I kept wondering if I was doing the right things to help my son overcome the motor dyspraxia/dysgraphia that caused handwriting difficulties that were more of a problem in math when I didn't let him use a calculator because I was afraid if he suddenly had to go back to school they would not let him use one. I am finally letting him use a calculator so he doesn't hate it as much as he used to. I was worried that he wouldn't be able to take notes so I have had him work on finding a way that he could write quickly. He is using a mixture of cursive for the lower case letters and print capitals. It is working better for him but I worry that the color in the lines teachers would give him a hard time about it if he ever had to go back to school.
So it finally all got to me. My blood pressure was way too high and I felt like I was stuck in a panic attack. The doctor immediately put me on blood pressure and anxiety medication, so I should be able to handle it all now and not worry about having a stroke.
