Finally free of the school system

This is Skyler's last couple of weeks in his senior year. While other parents are looking back at years gone by with their kids accomplishments and looking forward to their future achievements, there are other households where this occasion marks some different feelings.

Ours is such a household.

Our journey through the school system with a son that has Spastic Quad Cerebral Palsy and significant sensory issues has not been what could be called smooth. Even before Kindergarten, we already felt the system trying to steer us away from his home classroom and into a contained program. It doesn't matter that the law says least restrictive environment, or that was what we wanted. What mattered was they could keep all of "those kids" in a separate classroom, and usually even in a separate school.

But we fought the system, tried to make everyone see the little boy who tried hard to make himself understood while he battled his stiffness and lack of control. Some teachers "got it", most did not. We finally had a change in school administration in Skyler's 4th grade, and got a principle who supported inclusion. Now, it was a mandate that Skyler be accepted, and still some fought against us. But things were better overall now that we had him on our side.

I remember one event as if it happened yesterday. While working with an aide in the classroom, she would show Skyler cards with sentences that had a missing word on them. Sometimes the would give us the lesson in advance so we couldprogram into his communications device the proper language, other times they would not. On this occasion, he had a page with all of the language for that day. The sentence that he was asked to complete was "I sit in a ____" and he had the word chair on his talker. But he kept leaving that page and looking elsewhere. the aide kept grabbing his hand and taking him back to the language page, and he didn't cooperate, so she got mad and said he won't stay on task.

When I picked him up that day, they told me that he wasn't staying on task, couldn't read, didn't belong in class... Blah blah blah, the whole thing. I asked for what they were doing and they explained that he was leaving his page when asked to fill in that blank. After looking at the sentence, I asked Skyler to show them what he was looking for. He immediately left that page and went and found his environment page, and said "wheelchair".

He knew better than them that he doesn't sit in a chair, and then he just looked at them in contempt.

You go dude!

Year after year through school this continued, all the way up to his Junior year. Now he is with his typical peers about 1/2 the time, other times he spends in the wonderfully named "challenge room". He really likes making videos and working on recording things, but they say that the schedule won't accommodate him leaving the challenge room to take the video editing class. Besides, "it's probably above him"... So what is their solution for a kid who can't hardly control his arms?

Ceramics.

We said "have you spent any time watching our son at all? Do you not see that he isn't going to be turning pottery anytime soon?

This year, his last in school, he finally got to take video editing. He got an A.

I won't miss this battle one little bit.