Missed appointment

[Malika]

J had an appointment with a neuro-paediatrician at the local hospital today. I had left a note about it in the notebook where parents leave any messages for the teacher, saying I would pick him up at 3.30 today. When I arrived at the school, I was told all the children had gone out looking for seeds! I drove around a bit looking for them but no success. I guess the teacher must have forgotten.
I had to ring the hospital to cancel the appointment and was told the next one is not until the end of January. I don't know whether it's a good thing or a bad thing but I don't really mind about this missed appointment... It is by way of a kind of second opinion re J, but I don't know that it's going to really help any. I will go to the next appointment, if we are still here then but now I am seriously considering returning to Morocco in January for six months, and continuing to teach J to read myself, as well as doing other learning stuff with him!! He is struggling along with the reading, making slow progress, but it's clearly not the optimum time or method for him to start reading.
And then... I would like him to speak fluent Arabic. And now is the optimum time for language learning...

 

[buddy]

Sorry about that but sounds like it was not a huge issue thank heaven. Will be anxious to hear if you make the decision to move! It's a long thought-filled process.

 

[Malika]

It's not really moving, buddy. It's a kind of coward's way out of that huge decision... ie we would go to Morocco for six months, where I would continue teaching him or he would go to one of the several French speaking schools in Marrakech and he would really make headway with his Arabic and get to see his Moroccan family. And then for next autumn we would come back here and he would return to the village school.... J insists and insists that he doesn't want to change school here in France - having known it since he was 3, it is his universe, I suppose.
And the appointment... well I could have got all upset about it if I'd had a mind, cos we've been waiting for it for months. But somehow it just didn't seem to matter... Maybe I have begun to doubt what the professionals can really do for J, other than give him medications, which I feel we cannot justify yet.

 

[InsaneCdn]

An extra 6 months... or an extra year... can make a BIG difference in what the specialists can tell you, too.
So it might not hurt to "miss" TWO appointments, Know what I mean??

 

[Malika]

Yes, that's right, IC. In fact, time reveals many things of course. I wonder whether I have a tendency to over-react, anticipating the worst, because of all that I have read and learnt about ADHD and associated conditions? Eg with this dyslexia thing... it's taking J more time than some other children, perhaps, but he is beginning to connect to reading... so in a year's time, say, we will really know whether there is a reading difficulty or not whereas now it could just be slower development. At the same time he has such a PHENOMENAL memory for events, things he has seen and experienced, that this really slow memory for letters, for example, is curious.
Anyway... sufficient unto the day.

 

[whatamess]

Once he cares about knowing the letters...it becomes relevant to HIS perspective...he will have them memorized in no time!