No One Said Special Needs & Smart Can’t Go Together

Last Wednesday was Cordy’s first day of school, and while she had a lot of anxiety over it – like she does about anything new – I was feeling just as much anxiety as I stood next to her waiting for her bus. She tried her best to be calm about the whole thing as she tried to hold still while I took a million photos.

My thoughts, though, went something like this: Would she throw a fit about riding the bus? Would she melt down when she got to school and couldn’t go to the room she was in last year? Would kindergarten be too hard for her? Would her new teacher treat her well? Would I be able to stop asking myself questions long enough to notice she’s getting on the bus?

Oh. Well, uh, that was easy.

I went to sleep for the day, expecting to hear the phone ring at some point with some question or complaint about Cordy’s behavior. But there was no call.

When the bus brought her home, she was clearly tired but full of smiles. She said her first day had been great, and when asked if she wanted to go back again the next day, she replied with her usual, “Well, uh, yeah, that would be OK.”

The note from her teacher gave me a lot of hope. The teacher said she had a good day, and she mentioned Cordy seemed to have good reading skills when they were assessing her abilities.

The next day was much the same. The note home was even more promising, stating that Cordy was asked to read a 1st grade level book and had no trouble with it.

Friday was even better. The teacher was both surprised and delighted to report that Cordy read another 1st grade level book and answered the comprehension questions perfectly. She mentioned that Cordy is still whining whenever she’s asked to do something, but other than that she’s adjusting to the new routine with no trouble.

Of course, I have no idea if the teacher is glossing over any actual behavior problems or not. But I don’t doubt that Cordy is impressing her with her reading skills. We’ve suspected she could read for some time now, but when pressed to show off her skills she generally pretended like she couldn’t read. (How modest.) I’m honestly more surprised that the teacher is surprised. Surely she’s read Cordy’s evaluation report and knows that her autism has little influence over her cognitive abilities.

I’m outlandishly happy that Cordy is adjusting so well to kindergarten. Crazy, over-the-moon happy.

More than once I’ve encountered people who assume that just because Cordy has autism, she will somehow never be able to learn anything, will never graduate, and will spend her life dependent on her family. Autism seems to be a death sentence to them, or at least the death of any kind of promising future. When we first got the diagnosis, I remember mourning her potential, too, worried that she would never be able to live a “normal” life. But it’s soooo not true.

Cordy’s autism may affect the way her brain functions, but it doesn’t affect her ability to function. She can still learn, she can understand logic at an age-appropriate level, and while she has some unusual sensitivities and requires some different methods to learn, she can keep up with her peers in classwork.

Even I don’t always understand the way Cordy thinks, but she still manages to figure everything out. She resisted learning to read when we attempted to work with her, instead choosing to teach herself. She doesn’t appear to understand phonetics, and as best I can tell, she reads by memorizing entire words. But she still learns it all, even if it’s not how most people do it.

I like to think of it this way: just because most of us take the interstate to get to the park doesn’t mean that taking the back roads won’t also get you there. It might take a little longer, and your travel experience will certainly be different, but you’ll reach the same destination. 

Cordy’s travels to the park probably involve singing “My Way” with Frank Sinatra as she cruises along the twisting, hilly roads. But once there, you know she’ll have stories of a great adventure along the way.



Old and New

In all of the stress I’ve had over Cordy starting kindergarten this year, I’ve barely mentioned that Mira will be starting a whole new class as well. Actually, TWO new classes.

Last spring, Mira went for an evaluation with our school district to see if she should be placed in special needs preschool this year. There’s no chance this kid has autism – as the evaluation clearly proved – but her speech issues persist. She has speech apraxia, meaning that while she can hear and understand everything you say to her perfectly, she can’t say anything back to you perfectly. It comes out garbled with a lot less consonants than words should have. She’s made a lot of improvement, but her articulation has a long way to go.

Mira knows she is hard to understand, and it frustrates the hell out of her. Kids her age are supposed to be speaking in 3-4 word sentences, but this kid wants to speak in full monologues. She has an incredible vocabulary (when you can understand her) and her grasp of grammar and sentence construction is sometimes better than Cordy’s. You just don’t know what she’s saying, requiring her to repeat herself many times and often rephrase her statement using synonyms that are easier to pronounce. She’s got mad language skills, if only she was understood!

It was determined that Mira needed to be in special needs preschool this year so she could receive the speech therapy she needs. We had been taking her to private speech therapy, but after Aaron was laid off in May we had to drop it because we couldn’t afford the $115 per session. (The bill hurt only slightly more than the thought of cutting off such a vital service for Mira, but we decided she would probably rather keep a house to live in rather than speech therapy, so we went with that option.)

The best news was that Mira’s teacher will be the same wonderful teacher we had for Cordy. We’re thrilled, the teacher is thrilled, and Mira is thrilled. Even Cordy is slightly thrilled, as long as we take her to visit Ms. W. now and then.

However, the school district’s special needs team strongly encouraged us to also seek out a traditional preschool for Mira for the other half of the day. They pointed out that with a quick mind like Mira’s, she will need to stay stimulated and she might find special needs preschool a little boring. We took their advice, and so Mira will be spending the first half of her day at her current preschool before going to the public school for afternoon preschool.

On Friday, we were invited to a Meet the Teacher day at Mira’s current preschool. As we walked down the hall to find Mira’s new room, I quickly spotted her room (Fishies FTW!) but then saw who was waiting inside. It was the teacher Cordy had for after-care when she was in summer camp last year. The teacher who clearly didn’t think Cordy belonged in a typical-kid camp. This same teacher is now Mira’s preschool teacher. Eep.

Aaron and I gave each other knowing glances as we introduced Mira to the room. I’m still not sure how I feel about having someone who wanted nothing to do with Cordy teaching Mira, but I’m going to try to suck it up and give her another chance. I can already tell she and Mira will butt heads – they’re both strong personality types. Mira is a child that you have to sweet talk or flatter to get her to do what you want – simply demand for her to do something and she’ll give double the attitude right back to you.

Mira starts class tomorrow for her private preschool, and then starts her other school later this week. I can tell she’s already giddy at the thought of riding a school bus and being in a “real” preschool class. My baby is determined to grow up quickly, and I only wish she’d slow down a little.

I’m going to go cry in a corner now.



If I’m Wrong, I Don’t Want To Be Right

Cordy begins kindergarten next week. I know many moms tear up at the thought of the start of “formal” school, and I’m holding in the water works, too, although for different reasons. After all, Cordy’s nearly six years old – she could have started kindergarten last year, but Aaron and I made the choice to give her one more year to prepare, holding firm in our belief that she would be ready for a mainstream classroom this year.

My tears come at the reality that she will be in a special-needs kindergarten class this year. I didn’t want this. I’ve spent the last three years convincing myself that everything will be just peachy for Cordy when she gets to kindergarten, that all of this intensive therapy and special-needs preschool will produce a child who will glide into a kindergarten classroom of typical children, place her safety scissors and crayons in her desk just like everyone else and blend right in with the crowd.

Message from reality, ma’am. It says: stop being a twit and take a hard look at yourself, ya weirdo. Blend in? Ha.

Stupid thinking, I know, but we were told so often over the last three years that the goal was for Cordy to mainstream at kindergarten. Goals aren’t promises, though, autism isn’t something that just disappears when she reaches kindergarten and I need to stop treating it like it is.

I didn’t fully accept it when we were told last spring that Cordy needed to stay in a special-needs classroom, and I still struggle with accepting it today. Every “but…” springs to my mind. But she’s smart. (Dumb excuse – there are plenty of smart special-needs kids!) But we’re told all the teachers in the school love her and think she’s so sweet. But she spent a summer in a class with typical kids and had no issues at all. But we didn’t have a single meltdown ALL summer. But she doesn’t qualify for speech therapy any longer, and occupational therapy has been reduced to only as-needed. How can they say she belongs in a class of special-needs-only kids?

Still they insist she isn’t ready, and they also explain that she is on an “inclusion track” where they will try to slowly introduce her to mainstream kindergarten. I’m sure this is brilliantly successful for some kids (and know it works very well for introducing animals to new situations), but I don’t know how well this will work for Cordy. After all, part of her autism is her desire for routine. She can handle transitions with some warning, and is even getting better at adjusting to small sudden change, but constant major changes seem like a big deal to me.

So we’re going to get her used to one classroom for several weeks, then expect her to go behave in another class, with a wildly different routine, for 15-30 minutes every day or two, and yank her out if she doesn’t cooperate? Um, I know I’m not an expert at this, but I think she’s going to not cooperate. Just a hunch here.

My idea was to put her in a mainstream class, accept that the first few weeks will be an adjustment (just like any kid starting kindergarten, I’d guess), providing aide support if needed, and then watch as she adapts and rises to the challenge. After all, it worked this summer – she is a smart kid, and she can figure out how to act if given the chance to learn how the class works. Coddling or baby steps generally doesn’t work for her – she’s more a “sink or swim” kind of girl. (Even if she does get mighty upset about being – figuratively – shoved in the water sometimes.)

But I’m only her mother, and it’s been made clear that I don’t understand how the system works. So I will (grudgingly, and with a lot of hovering) let them do it their way for now and evaluate the results in a couple of months. If it isn’t working to our satisfaction, or if I feel Cordy is falling behind academically in any way (and she’s already well ahead of the standard kindergarten curriculum), we’ll be calling her support team together and finding another option.

And if it turns out that this was the perfect way to do it, you’ll all be reading my admission of being wrong. In this case, I want to be wrong. I want to write an embarrassed apology on this blog for my incorrect assumptions and how silly it was to not trust the experts.

I really, really, really hope I’m completely off-base and Cordy rocks the inclusion track all the way to full inclusion faster than any other student they’ve ever had. I hope she’s such the perfect model for the inclusion track that academic papers are written about her experience.

Nothing would make me happier than being wrong. And knowing Cordy, she’ll find some way to do it, because she’s just that damn awesome, and she loves to prove me wrong.

 (photo credit: Heather Durdil)


The Doctor’s Bill Hurts More Than The Shot

Being without health insurance at the moment, we’ve put off a lot of routine care because we simply can’t afford the bills. Vaccination boosters can wait, yearly check-ups can be put off, and if anyone gets sick, I can put my Super Mom-RN skills to use to determine if a trip to the doctor is really necessary.

But when the school sends home a form requiring a medical professional to sign off that your child has had a physical in the past year and is healthy enough to attend school – and said child can’t attend school without this signature – then you have to bite the bullet and make an appointment.

Mira had her doctor’s visit yesterday, what would have been her three-year-old well-child visit, now more like her three-and-a-few-months well-child visit. Her doctor is actually a nurse practitioner (yay for supporting my fellow nurses!), and Mira spent all morning excited about going to the “dot-torz oh-hice!” Or at least she was excited until we got there and the nurse asked her to take off her shoes to be weighed. Then the wailing started.

Thankfully, the tears stopped when the nurse practitioner came into the room. Our NP is very friendly and outgoing, and Mira quickly recovered herself and became the show-off ham she’s known for. The NP pointed out that Mira is continuing the tradition of Amazon warrior princesses in our household – 95th percentile for height – no surprise there. If she continues on this growth curve, she’ll likely be 5’8″ or taller as an adult.

There were no surprises at this visit. Mira still has speech apraxia. We knew that and she’ll be getting therapy through the school in the fall. She has sensitive skin and a sensitive tummy, which we’ve been aware of since birth. She has a persistent junky cough that is likely just allergies as her chest is clear – the NP’s stethoscope findings matched my own from home. She’s bright, overflowing with energy, and completely healthy with no serious medical concerns whatsoever. And that’s essentially what was noted on the paper required for school admittance.

In other words, we didn’t need the NP to tell us any of this. We just needed her signature.

And then we paid $110 for that signature and 15 minutes of time that only confirmed what we already knew.

Ouch.

I think my checkbook needs a band-aid and a Thomas the Tank Engine sticker now.



Disturbing School District Priorities

There are times when I will defend our local school district. Aaron is a product of that district, and had a (mostly) positive experience with it, and so I often make an effort to remember that when others bad mouth our district as being poor and not living up to the standards of surrounding districts.

After all, this was the district that helped us diagnose why Cordy wasn’t like other kids her age. The special education office worked so quickly to get her enrolled in preschool and provided services to help her adjust to the world she was so apart from. Her first preschool teacher is a woman I will forever speak fondly of, a woman I’d gladly consider to be a part of our family, and when Mira qualified for special needs preschool, I immediately asked for her to be placed with this teacher for the upcoming school year.

The principal at Cordy’s current school also worked with us to make sure that Cordy wouldn’t have to go to her “home” school for kindergarten – a school we know nothing about – when she wasn’t selected for any school in the lottery, including her current school. A quick e-mail to the principal pleading our case, and a seat opened up for her. After all, the principal has been just as charmed by Cordy as everyone else who spends time with her.

But the district isn’t perfect. I truly wanted Cordy to be mainstreamed this year – placed in a classroom of her “typical” peers where she would inevitably struggle with social rules and routines, but would hopefully be surrounded by a supportive team who would help her learn and grow and rise to the challenge like she always does. However, it wasn’t the recommended choice and Cordy will instead spend kindergarten in a special needs classroom with some “inclusion” time allowed in the mainstream kindergarten class each week.

I struggled to be convinced of why this was the best option for her. Her team gave us such glowing reports at the end of this school year: she no longer qualifies for speech therapy. She’s academically at a kindergarten level already and they recommend testing her for the gifted program next year. She’s still uncoordinated and does need assistance with some fine motor tasks, but she’s improving. Why should this child be in special needs?

She has trouble adjusting to a change in routine, they explain. The normal pace in a kindergarten class may be too fast for her. (A kindergarten class has a fast pace? Remember when we spent kindergarten learning to cut with scissors and had nap time?) She’s sensitive to some sensory stimuli. She would require too much attention from the teacher, and there are too many kids in the class for the teacher to spend a lot of time with her. Yes, if she had an aide she would probably do well, but that just isn’t possible.

It doesn’t make sense to me. What I hear is: our schools are overcrowded and our teachers are spread too thin already. And I also hear, loud and clear: your daughter would do well in a mainstream classroom, but we won’t pay for an aide for her to make this possible.

I’ve tried so hard to rationalize this information. I know Columbus City Schools is cutting corners just like every district to save money. They closed several schools this year, shifting the students to other schools to save money. And at the end of the school year, 133 teachers in the district were laid off. With this poor economy, other staff received no raises, but at least they were able to keep their jobs. A levy was passed in recent years, but apparently it’s not enough to help the school district.

I try to remember that Cordy isn’t the only child in the district, and that the cost of an aide for a child like her might be too much for the district to handle.

And then.

Then I read the news about the school board voting last week to give the superintendent of our school district a raise – a raise far larger than any teacher or staff member in the district is receiving. For the next four years, she’ll receive annual 3% raises along with a retroactive 4% raise that she deferred last year. Her total salary at the end of the four years will be $217,000, making her the third highest paid superintendent in Ohio.

This is not a reward for a stellar performance. The test scores for our district are abominable. (And the average high school student in our district probably couldn’t tell you what abominable means, other than something to do with a snowman, or spell it.) The superintendent is getting a raise for a graduation rate that has made an “improvement” to 73.9%.

I don’t see the reason in it. Schools are closed, teachers are laid off, they threaten to scrap bus transportation for some students, and yet the person who has the least to do with educating children gets the largest pay increase?

On a more personal note, the district can’t provide my daughter an aide in the classroom to give her the legal right to a “least restrictive environment”, but they can make sure their superintendent is the third highest paid school administrator in the state?

I really feel the district has a screwed up sense of priorities. I have no doubt in my mind that the teachers are doing the best they can with the resources given to them, but the school board and administrators aren’t properly appropriating those resources. The teachers need more help. They need fewer students in a class, and aides to help out students who are academically ready for their grade, but might need some assistance with adaptive skills and transitions.

If Aaron wasn’t laid off in May, we probably would have enrolled Cordy in a private Montessori school. After all, she’s doing extremely

But, like the teachers in the school district, we also can’t provide the best for Cordy because of money. It sucks.

The plan at this point is to be the best advocates we can for Cordy this year, watching her progress at school closely and pushing for more integration and moving away from the special needs classroom if possible. Assuming we’re both employed next year, Cordy will then go to the Montessori school for first grade. Seeing the superintendent get a large raise when teachers are laid off, classrooms are stuffed full of more students, and when my daughter can’t get the most appropriate education because it’s not in the budget has completely turned me off from this school district.

I want to support public schools. But I can’t support a school district that I feel doesn’t use its money properly. I will vote against the school board members who voted for the superintendent’s raise, I will not support this superintendent, and should the district cry “poor!” and put another levy on the ballot in the next few years, I will not forget the actions of the district this year when I cast my vote. And I will find another district, or save all we can for a private school, for my children where I feel they will get the best education possible.

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