B
Bunny
Guest
I've been texting back and forth with the therapist about easy child's diagnosis and what my next step is. The therapist works as a guidance counselor in a different school district that we're in, so he sees this stuff all the time. He also feels that the sd is not being proactive regarding easy child, but that's a different story for a different day,
Anyway, difficult child had an appointment with the therapist yesterday morning, but the therapist wsa asking me about easy child's diagnosis and did I get the report from the nueropsyche because he wants to see it. So we spent most of the session talking about easy child. therapist feels that the teacher making changes in the classroom for easy child without having anything written down and official from the sd is the worst thing that she could do. He completetly understands why she is doing it (because she's a caring teacher who wants to see easy child succeed), but if she makes changes for him and he does well the therapist is concerned that the people at the CSE meeting will say that he is succeeding without interventions and that they don't really need to do anything for him. The therapist' advice? Let easy child flounder and fail, if necessary. Let the school people see that he is really struggling and that interventions are warrented in this case. He told me that he sees this every day and he has told well meaning teachers that if they want the kids to get the assistance they really need they have to stop bending over backwards to help them. Once interventions are put into place by the school and everything is official and in writting, that is a completely different story. Until then, he needs to be treated like every other kid in the class. It's not what I was hoping to hear, but I do understand the reasoning behind it. Now I just have to talk to the teacher about it.
As we were talking about easy child, difficult child actually made some very good points about his brother, and he saw some of himself in some of the troubles that easy child is having. I saw something that I haven't seen difficult child display towards his brother is a very long time: compassion. I told the therapist that I had a tutor coming once a week to work with easy child and they have been concentrating on math, but I was thinking about having her come a second day during the week to concentrate on reading. All of a sudden difficult child pipes up! "Mom? If you want, have P work with easy child on his reading and I can do the math with him. It's my best subject and I would like to help him." Even the therapist was stunned. Actually, I think the words the therapist used were "very generous" and "probably one of the most mature things" he had ever heard difficult child say.
I came home and talked to husband about it. He said that if difficult child wants to try we'll give it a try, so I sat both of the boys down and we talked about it. easy child said he wanted to try it. I gave both of them very strict guidelines. I told easy child that if this was going to work he was going to have to give difficult child the exact same respect and attention that he already gives to P. IF difficult child is going to give easy child an hour a week of his time then easy child had better make the best effort that he can. easy child agreed. Then I looked over at difficult child and told him that if this was going to work he needed to give easy child the same respect and patience that he gave to his friend last year when he helped him with his math homework.
I spoke to the tutor and she said that she would do whatever I wanted, but that she also felt this was a good idea. It would give difficult child a sense of accomplishment when he sees easy child learning from him.
difficult child is aware we're doing this on a TRIAL basis right now. I want to see how it goes and we'll go from there. If it works out we'll give difficult child an increase in his allowance for his tutoring time. Hopefully, that will be an incentive for difficult child to do this the right way and make it work.
I hope that I'm doing the right thing - for both of them!
Anyway, difficult child had an appointment with the therapist yesterday morning, but the therapist wsa asking me about easy child's diagnosis and did I get the report from the nueropsyche because he wants to see it. So we spent most of the session talking about easy child. therapist feels that the teacher making changes in the classroom for easy child without having anything written down and official from the sd is the worst thing that she could do. He completetly understands why she is doing it (because she's a caring teacher who wants to see easy child succeed), but if she makes changes for him and he does well the therapist is concerned that the people at the CSE meeting will say that he is succeeding without interventions and that they don't really need to do anything for him. The therapist' advice? Let easy child flounder and fail, if necessary. Let the school people see that he is really struggling and that interventions are warrented in this case. He told me that he sees this every day and he has told well meaning teachers that if they want the kids to get the assistance they really need they have to stop bending over backwards to help them. Once interventions are put into place by the school and everything is official and in writting, that is a completely different story. Until then, he needs to be treated like every other kid in the class. It's not what I was hoping to hear, but I do understand the reasoning behind it. Now I just have to talk to the teacher about it.
As we were talking about easy child, difficult child actually made some very good points about his brother, and he saw some of himself in some of the troubles that easy child is having. I saw something that I haven't seen difficult child display towards his brother is a very long time: compassion. I told the therapist that I had a tutor coming once a week to work with easy child and they have been concentrating on math, but I was thinking about having her come a second day during the week to concentrate on reading. All of a sudden difficult child pipes up! "Mom? If you want, have P work with easy child on his reading and I can do the math with him. It's my best subject and I would like to help him." Even the therapist was stunned. Actually, I think the words the therapist used were "very generous" and "probably one of the most mature things" he had ever heard difficult child say.
I came home and talked to husband about it. He said that if difficult child wants to try we'll give it a try, so I sat both of the boys down and we talked about it. easy child said he wanted to try it. I gave both of them very strict guidelines. I told easy child that if this was going to work he was going to have to give difficult child the exact same respect and attention that he already gives to P. IF difficult child is going to give easy child an hour a week of his time then easy child had better make the best effort that he can. easy child agreed. Then I looked over at difficult child and told him that if this was going to work he needed to give easy child the same respect and patience that he gave to his friend last year when he helped him with his math homework.
I spoke to the tutor and she said that she would do whatever I wanted, but that she also felt this was a good idea. It would give difficult child a sense of accomplishment when he sees easy child learning from him.
difficult child is aware we're doing this on a TRIAL basis right now. I want to see how it goes and we'll go from there. If it works out we'll give difficult child an increase in his allowance for his tutoring time. Hopefully, that will be an incentive for difficult child to do this the right way and make it work.
I hope that I'm doing the right thing - for both of them!
