I want to sing this blog to the very popular song from Frozen, however the thing that I need to let go does not resonate around me concealing my feelings and challenging everybody else....that was last year!
So, the Saint was off sick last week along with the boy's other teaching assistant. Disaster. He is currently attending two mornings a week, which has been wholly supported by the teachers. It has been heart warming to come and collect him and observe him interacting with them and he has been very positive about the other pupils there as well. When I heard the news that the teachers were off sick, I in all my non dyspraxic, non Aspergers innocence thought well that's not too bad, he can still go in, after all, its only three hours and all of the other teachers are lovely.
Wrong, Wrong , WRONG! No Mrs Quirky, your son has Dyspraxia and Aspergers, he can not possibly cope with change of teachers especially during this particularly sensitive period of adjusting to a new routine.
Eh? Surely he can manage a little bit, c'mon, it's not as if he has to cope with a class full of kids is it? There must be some bounce in him somewhere. Apparently not.
So he had the week off.
There is a part of me that finds it hard to explain why my son is struggling in the best specialist unit in the city. Despite him being on anti depressants and having these diagnoses, I sometimes see a cheeky 13 year old lad who is bunking off school. I really feel that he should have a limb wrapped in plaster just to remind me that I need to be patient and understanding. No wonder people with mental health illnesses struggle so much. The boy even moaned that I was not a good advocate for the Dyspraxia Foundation if I couldn't even listen to him properly.
The Saint phoned me up this morning to let me know that she was back at work and looking forward to seeing him again tomorrow. I admitted to her that I had been a bit like a bull in a china shop in trying to encourage some contact with education and she reassured me that the boys behaviour was normal for his condition and that the other pupils had been just the same. She did not want to rush him like he had been previously because that's what had ruined his school attendance before. It dawned on me that if I kept poking and prodding him in all of my eagerness, it would mess up the Saint's fantastic work with him. Maybe I was underestimating the amount of effort that it took for him to attend. Looking back, we have seen him do well at something like sailing and innocently encourage him to do a bit more to find that he drops out completely, there just is not enough energy to meet the challenge. We then witnessed the same behaviour with horse riding, cubs, guitar lessons, hockey and so on. Quite clearly, there is a very limited amount of bounce.
The boy has remarked as well that he feels that our affections for him are entirely based on whether he attends school. That is not what I want him to feel, unfortunately he does not seem to notice the never ending supply of hot milk, crumpets, pocket money and loving words that come his way as well. It is very difficult as stated a million times before in this blog to accept the deviation from the normal path of parenting and I imagine myself writing lines as a punishment every time I react in surprise that he does not respond to situations as I would have expected. The L plates are still firmly attached!
I also never anticipated that I would have a child whose inner motivation goes against the grain of how I would normally parent in regards to praise and encouragement. I think that has been the most bitter pill to swallow. There has been articles in the parenting press recently about the "dangers" of over praising in that the child is anxious about their performance at an activity rather than the taking part. I try not to go overboard in my encouragement and I certainly do not demand that my children achieve top marks in all subjects. The irony is now I am trying not to be an over anxious parent which increases my anxiety even more!
So, I am letting go of the rope that binds me to the anxiety of him engaging with the education system. The Saint knows what she is doing and I do not want to make her work harder. I am most fortunate that I can faithfully pass the worries to her. I promise to look interested peers in the eye and say that yes the boy is doing fine on X amount of hours per week and be 100% behind him. Just need to let go.........................................
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