seablue, I totally share your frustration.

Originally Posted by seablue
I wish there was a nice, big door with a TWICE EXCEPTIONAL STUDENT SERVICES written over it, where we could go to discuss best practices, share success stories and disseminate material. I would volunteer there. I'd bring muffins and multi-colored paper clips.

So start it. One person can do amazing things, even if you feel very small and unable to effect change. I haven't felt called to do exactly what you wish you had in your district, but I have something else that I've been wishing for for years that I realized, if I don't do it, no one else will start it. It's not easy to start and it probably won't be finished until my kids are graduated, but I'm still doing it. It gives me a one small thing that I've done to hopefully help at least one other parent somewhere someday, kwim?


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Do most parents here throw up their arms, and choose one of these options:

1. home school
2. private schools
3. public school with privately paid tutoring

As much as I would have liked to change the public school system, and as hard as I advocated and attempted to make change for my ds, we are parents who dropped out to private school. That was recommended to us at our very first neuropsych, at diagnosis end of 2nd grade, and we didn't drop out - I truly believed I could advocate and make a difference for my ds. It simply took too much of a toll, and by the time ds was about to enter middle school we realized public school was not going to work out. Making the change was tough (for me to consider doing - ds had made the decision and leaped out happy as a clam)… but once we were there not only was ds' life so much easier… *my* life was so much easier. And ds grew in ways I'd never dreamed he could, and he had the chance to finally work experience both challenge (intellectual challenge, not "I can't do that because of my LD challenge" while also getting help with his LD. We had to also pay for private SLP therapy for several years. We're heading back to SLP therapy again. It's brutal. I can't imagine how tough it would have been if we weren't fortunate to have the resources we have as a family, and the reality is - we've put resources toward all of that that we'd planned to save for a different period in our lives. We're not rich and making the change to paying for so much out of our pocketbook was tough.. yet I feel like we gave ds the fighting chance he needed to become a self-confident person.

And advocating isn't anywhere near over for us - our ds is in his first year of high school now, back in public school, and after making tremendous gains in middle school we're seeing once again the impact on his psyche that those early years of struggling and not receiving help at school. Growing up with an LD isn't easy - in addition to the extra work students have to do just to overcome the straight-up challenge of the impact of their LD on academics, they can also struggle a lot with self-understanding and acceptance.

I think one of the things that would make all the difference in the world in terms o teachers understanding (or anyone understanding) would simply be to spend a day in the shoes of a kid who has an LD. And I wish the opposite to - that my ds had just one day to spend in the shoes of a person who doesn't have DCD ad dysgraphia. I think it would help him understand his own LD so much better. Not sure that makes sense.

Thanks for the rant - I hope if feels better to get it out. I find that posting here where I can find other parents of 2e kids really does help keep me sane!

polarbear





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