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The aftermath of the school news

A lot of feelings have come up for Juli in the past week since Seth and I told her about the new school. She's definitely sad about leaving her friends, but I do think deep down she knows it's best for her, even if she doesn't exactly know why. In a way, I think it's helped that she's had to comfort her friends at school who are sad about the news.

When she told me yesterday she didn't want to change schools, I gave her my spin of the "living in the moment" speech. The less than a minute version. I told her that she was still going to her school right now, to enjoy it, and I suggested she give herself permission to worry about the new school, let's say, in August--that she had 10 weeks off from school this summer (I put up 10 fingers, and then I left only 5 up)--I said, when we get to 5, then start thinking about it. Because money is extra tight this summer, there won't be any summer camp, so days spent with her school friends will be part of the routine over the coming weeks. Hopefully, that will help take the sting out of it all. All that said, I will be giving myself the same talk until we have the meeting with the public school about Juli's future. Otherwise, it will be impossible to pay for it all.

The unfortunate thing about all of this--and that's a gross understatement--is that all of this could have been avoided if the teachers in the public schools were trained to teach children with reading issues--whether it be dyslexia or not. Since my mom is a reading specialist and deals with this all the time, I've learned quite a bit over the past few years. She tells me that over 20% of the kids in our schools have some sort of reading difficulty (from what I've observed, I'd say the percentage is even higher in Juli's current class) but that most of them can be taught in their own classroom if the teaching methods were changed to the sort of specialized system she has learned. Even a teacher in Juli's school right now who has taught for over 25 years and knows Juli quite well told me they just simply are not trained to teach kids like Juli.  And so she encouraged me to look into other alternatives for Juli...and I did.

Now we just have to see how the summer unfolds!

Career "Morning"

So, every morning this week and I guess the next 2 weeks in Juli's class, parents are coming in to talk about their jobs or careers. Seth went in yesterday and was a hit. Juli loved it, the kids did, and so did the teacher--and, of course, Seth. And so I guess it wasn't that a big of a surprise for Juli, as I was kissing her good night, to ask me to come in to her class. She said I could bring in my computer and show them what I do--closed captioning is the job I do at home. Being put in the position of being asked by my 8-year-old daughter to come into her classroom, well, you would think it would generate a sense of pride and a good feeling within me, the parent. It did not. I gently turned her down and said "maybe next year." She said there wouldn't be time next year because third graders are so much busier than second graders and I said the infamous line, "We will see."

I talked about it with Seth when he got home. He thought I needed to do it anyway. I was thinking it had to do with the fact that I'd rather be talking about the career I don't have--as a writer, actor, singer--instead of the job I have to pay the bills. But Seth made a good point, that it might well do the kids good to talk about dreams and pursuing those career dreams, but in the meantime having a job to support you in the meantime. And that he had his parents to give him cash early on in his career  to get him through the hard times. I did not have that. In fact, it was reversed. I was many times sending money home when I was in my 20s. I thought Seth made a good point. So, I emailed Juli's teacher and asked if I could come in.

I got my response in my email inbox this morning. The answer? No. She had to limit it to one parent per household. Understandable. I do feel a little bit of relief. But I also now have a better understanding of why I was upset last night when Juli asked me such a simple question. Partly, I think I was upset that I obviously saw Seth's career as more important than mine and that's why I so readily said he should be the one going into the class (though I have to also admit even if I had written or starred in a Broadway show, I find those situations intimidating whereas Seth thrives on them and I know that, too). However, I think the main reason I was upset with her asking me is because that's how she sees me. This guy who works all the time on a computer. She knows I love her and am here to protect her and we do fun things together, but, overall, she sees me as working all the time--she brought it up again last night, asking why I had to work when she gets home from school and in the evening sometimes--and a "computer guy" instead of a creative one. Maybe that's the motivation I need to find the time--even in the middle of the craziness of my life right now--to be more creative. Even if it's just a little bit each day. After all, I'm still "only" 39. There's time for not only Juli to change her view of who I am, but me, too.

Those damn pigeons

Do some people race pigeons? That's the latest question which set off a firestorm in our apartment that stretched over 3 days. Juli's class is studying about birds. ALL semester and she's quite obsessed. Well, she had some homework Wednesday night that involved 8 true/false questions culled from this sheet everyone took home on, you guessed it, pigeons. She answered the questions really quickly. I mean, fast. And I thought she was just rushing it through it so she could hurry on to something fun. I looked it over and the boring "fact" sheet (told in the narrative) and I noticed that 3 of them were wrong, but I didn't want to tell her which ones were wrong because, well, that's one of the problems with true/false--that would be giving the answer away. Seth read the questions aloud (which she had read, I'm guessing, to herself really fast) and she answered at super fast speed-TRUE! FALSE! You get the idea. After the third question--about racing--I said, you've gotten one of those three wrong. Do you know which one? She said no, they're all right. I then decided to tell her the racing answer was wrong. It was not true, not according to the paper the teacher had given them. I asked her to find it for me because if it was on t he sheet, I didn't see it. And that is when it started. She got belligerent and said I didn't believe her and that it was true and then refused to do anything else. Said it was stupid, I was stupid, said she hated me, it then escalated into stomping on the floor (and remember, the people downstairs are not fans of ours to begin with, which Juli knows, and is why she does it--not to get at them, but to get to us). She wouldn't do a time-out, so Seth and I decided to take one. But then she follows us, storming into the room. Because she's going to kick down the door, we go the old route of not saying anything to her and just picking her up and taking her to her room, she would then storm out again, and the cycle continued. She wasn't supposed to watch TV anyway, and she starts turning it on, saying she can do whatever she wants, I'm not the boss of her, etc. And then we became not-so-ideal parents because we felt like we were running out of options and started gathering up her things to "throw out," which we weren't going to do, but we were like grasping at straws. She got even more upset, saying the things we were throwing out were given to her by her mom. So then Seth took this teddy bear he had just given to her and said he'd throw that out (which he actually stuffed in the mailbox downstairs). She was on her bed crying, I go to my room to calm myself down, Seth soon afterwards ends up talking to Juli and they both come into the bedroom and Juli apologizes. Unfortunately...

it happened again the next afternoon. It had been a half-day at school and Juli was doing her homework after having played some learning games on the computer. It was a bunch of consonants and two vowels and they had to make 2/3 letters words, then 4-letter words, etc. out of the letters. She made 5 on her own of the shorter words, but it was overwhelming for her to make the larger words. I pointed out to her on her computer games a bunch of words had ended in i-n-g and that I saw three consonants that would make three 4-letter words. She then kept repeating for me to help her. I would try to help her and I was helping her, then she would say that I wasn't helping her and for me to help her, and the double speak/spiral began again. She then said she was hungry. She didn't like the choices I presented her and then everything that had happened the day before began again but this time without Seth home. He and I were going to see a show and I told him to cancel the babysitter and he could go. I wasn't going to subject a new babysitter to what was happening right now and then I started crying and hung up--he had his weekly show to do at that moment--bad timing all around. Meanwhile, I've got work deadlines I've got to take care of. Juli is not doing time-outs, so I go to my room to finish my work. I have no choice. She begins this assault on the door, practically kicking in, she's stomping on the floor. The whole thing ends up going on for easily 45 minutes to an hour. I scream at her at one point, cursing at her, something I did the night before as well. Before last week, I've done that maybe a handful of times--ever--and now, in the past 9 days, I've cursed at her more than all the other times combined. And then...the doorbell rings. It's the woman downstairs, holding her baby. She's got tears in her eyes saying she's going crazy because of her ceiling trembling and the noise. We're out in the hallway. Juli is stowing away in the closet, overhearing us, which I think is good. The woman wants Juli to meet her baby so she can put a face to whom she's affecting. Juli, of course, refuses to budge. The husband then comes home and comes up the stairs. Long story short, they're both nice to me, but I know, to put it nicely, they're not so fond of Seth and vice-versa, and I have a feeling they're going to try to get us evicted. (cut to the next day: Seth tells me the guy did call the owner of the apartment and said he'd be contacting his lawyer but probably because he knows he wouldn't have a chance in court arguing about a kid, he instead is complaining about Seth running a "music school" in our apartment) Anyway, the upshot of her visit is that she stops her crying. I've now put 4 different things on the table of her favorite foods. She eats them and then begins to cry, saying she misses her mom, over and over again. I hug her and comfort her. I'm crying. She then takes a bath. I call Danielle and begin immediately crying yet again. I tell my sister that I think it's a combination of the school/diability thing and the pain of being separated from her. Danielle listens and says she thinks she should move up here with Mom in February. I tell her that would be great but I also don't want her and Mom killing each other. Mom is having hip replacement surgery in a few weeks and Danielle will be living with her most of December and I said maybe this is God's way of testing the two of them, see if there have been any changes, and that it would be the perfect test run. I told her not to make any decisions now, but to wait and see next month.

What's interesting about all of this is that as much as Juli talks about missing her mom and as angry as she gets at me, she never says she wants to live with her, she wants her nearby, spend weekends with her, because I think even though you'd never know it the past few weeks, I think Juli does, ultimately, like living with me and feels secure (when I'm not cursing) and doesn't want that to change. She just doesn't want the distance, I think especially when she already feels so much vulnerability with the whole school thing.

Seth decided not to go to the show with his friend and he came home around 7:30. We ended up playing a game, talked a bit, and then read some bedtime stories. Not everything was really resolved. I did apologize to her Friday for cursing at her, but she was still pissed at me--maybe just pissed in general--at a lot of things, but by the evening, when I picked her up from after-school, everything seemed to be fine. We all went out to dinner, and then a babysitter came, so Seth and I could finally go out, and when we got home last night, she reported back that Juli was a perfect kid.

Lessons learned? 1) I gotta get those menus together. I do think food played a part in it. 2) Rewards chart. The rewards for good behavior and doing whatever personal/household duties can't all be about television privileges. We gotta vary them, make them fun, and come up with creative ways to earn them. We were talking at dinner about grab bags or levels of "prizes" that can be won--and the prizes could be a bath-less night or going first in the games we play for a whole week--things like that. 3) If she does the homework, let it be between her and the teacher about whether the answers are right or not. This was the teacher's advice, because....the truth is, what started this whole mess--those damn pigeons and their races--what I said was false, ended up being true--Juli DID get it right--AND it was on the sheet, after all--I just missed it when I quickly scanned it! ARGH!

Post-meeting

So, the meeting is over. I wish I could say it would be the last one and that was it, but I know it is only the beginning really.

Keeping things in perspective

We went to an ovarian cancer benefit last night. Lots of Broadway people singing and dancing. Seth was playing for his friend Norm Lewis at the end of the first act and we thought it was early enough (7:00) that at least we could still get home by bedtime for Juli. Well, we ended up staying for the whole show, not the least of which was because after I sat down and read the program, I realized the benefit wasn't for the "cause" but for the woman who had worked as a dresser for all of these performers in various Broadway shows over the years...and she was sitting next to me in the front row.

Now what?

So, we're back. Our day and night on Fire Island was a wonderful escape, but it wasn't long enough. Having never been before, I had no idea what to expect. I loved that all Juli needed to be entertained was walking along the beach looking for shells and then doing some bird watching on a nature walk. However, now I'm back to reality and the IEP meeting at Juli's school is upon me this Friday.

Gotta keep trucking

I knew I was really down when, for the first time ever, I called my therapist on his cell phone and said I needed to see him. (of course, being the nice Southern boy, I said on his voicemail that if not, I understood and I'd see him next Tuesday). He called me back and said would 2:00 work? I said, YES!

Tests, tests, and more tests

I took Juli to get updates on her tests that the child psychologist I hired last year did, the same woman who officially diagnosed Juli with dyslexia and working memory problems. This was on top of the poor kid being tested at school (bad coincidence) by the psychologist there yesterday and last Friday. She's gotta be sick of them...and so am I, quite frankly...especially the preliminary results I was told this morning.

And so it begins...

Yesterday Juli and Seth and I drove about 60 miles north of the city and went apple picking. It's great getting out of the city, especially when you drive north. You don't have to go very far before it's easy to leave the big city behind. The leaves are beginning to show their autumn colors and there's not a cab or crowd of people in sight...until we got to the apple place, of course. Until then, we were driving along this fun, back country road. I was so proud of myself that we were going to have this orchard all to ourselves. All of these other "pick your own" orchards I saw on-line had pictures of all of these crowds. Not this one. And the long, winding drive was proof to me there was no way anyone would find this place easily. Wrong!

Walk Softly

I went with Juli's class yesterday on their first of three bird watching field trips. I've spoken with Juli's teacher several times, but this was the first time I really saw her in action with the kids and it was the longest stretch of time I've spent with her. It was a very good lesson in how to speak to children.