Here's a story to mull over before you make any decisions about your children's needs. My neighbour's, Sylvia, experience...
Her son Ryan was in grade 2 when he began to say he didn't want to go to school. It came on suddenly and surprised his parents as he had loved school right from the start. She couldn’t get him to clearly explain why and she worried there might be a bully that he was too scared to tell her about. She asked him but he said no, that wasn't it. So she spoke to his teacher and she said Ryan was doing fine, he seemed to daydream a bit from time to time but all was good. Her gut was telling her otherwise and she pressed but was assured all was good.
Sylvia told herself not to worry and told Ryan things would get better, it was a new grade, new teacher and sometimes things took a while to feel comfortable. Ryan said he didn’t feel smart anymore and she did what any parent would do and told him he was every bit as smart as he always was, even his teacher said so.
As the year progressed it got harder and harder to get him to go and the tension spilled over into his reading homework. Anything school related was becoming a struggle.
Mercifully June came and the year end report card noted he was a bit behind in reading (Sylvia had been told that was expected of boys) his math skills were great (also told this was a boy thing) and when he seemed bored and sometimes acted out that too was the delightful nature of boys.
They enjoyed their summer but as grade 3 loomed on the horizon Ryan became more and more sullen. Sylvia tried to keep things positive and off they went to grade 3, mom with a hopeful smile on her face and Ryan looking like he was going to the electric chair.
In no time Ryan got into some trouble, acting up in class, nothing major they said but he would have to rein it in. By Christmas the school was getting upset, Ryan was getting a reputation for being disruptive and Sylvia was beside herself.
Ryan is smart. By the time he was 7 he was building his own amazing lego creations and as he took them apart from finish to start, he wrote the building instructions for putting them together going from start to finish. Now, as any mom worth her salt knows, building Lego with instructions for a tried and true Lego factory creation is hard enough, what this kid was doing was downright DaVinci-esque. It was hard to imagine what was going on with him to make him so sad.
Sylvia asked for a meeting and she sure got one. She sat at a table facing the principal, Ryan’s teacher and a school board psychologist to listen as they described her quiet and clever boy as troublesome, uncooperative, disrespectful and quite obviously challenged in some way. They couldn't tell her what the problem was but likely he needed meds and another school, one for kids with his difficulties, but she would need to get someone else to figure all that out as the school had done all it could.
Sylvia drove home in tears. She blamed herself for everything. She hadn't breast fed long enough, she let him stay up too late, she wore too many patterned clothes and they had fried his brain...the list was long. she self flagellated and called me crying.
She and I talked it out. The problem was only at school and he also got his back up when she tried to read with him - and he wouldn’t even try anymore. A bell went off somewhere and I remembered a conversation I had with a Lani Donaldson, a literacy expert. She told me: “We learn to read from kindergarten to grade 3 and from grade 4 on we read to learn.”
“Can he read at all?” I asked her. “Not well.” she said.
Maybe that was it. Once reading had become a big part of the overall learning experience he had begun to feel that he wasn’t - as he had put it - smart anymore.
I suggested she see Lani and Sylvia took Ryan to Beacon Literacy (Lani's house of literacy miracles ) and when she assessed him she could see immediately that Ryan was dyslexic. She worked with the kid and the mom together so Sylvia would know how to help. Lani’s first step was to assure Ryan that he was smart and capable and safe. The work began and Ryan started reading. After that the rest fell into place.
No meds, no special school but Sylvia did move to him to a new school, having lost faith in the other one.
As parents we follow our gut when raising our children and most of the time that is a pretty reliable indicator. But when we sit across from doctors or teachers we often disregard our gut feeling thinking we are over-reacting or being too over-protective, too involved, too mothering or whatever label it is under which we fear we are being judged.
Yes these people are experts in their field but you are an expert in your field too, parenting your children. So if something doesn’t feel right, follow your gut to a second opinion.
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