Thankful Thursday

We had an ARD (What Texas calls an IEP meeting) this week for Kitty. Used to the usual battles, I was armed with her latest neuropsych report. Kitty is my quiet, compliant RAD child. She saves all the drama for home.



Kitty take what they call a "Class within a class." This means that she is in the general ed/ mainstream class, but her assignments come from a resource room teacher, and she can be pulled out if she needs individual instruction or is feeling overwhelmed. One of her mainstream teachers who was present said she is quiet and compliant and a joy to have in class. If he didn't know she was in special ed he'd never believe it. My heart began thumping. This is when people start talking about mainstreaming her.

Not this time! Everyone was totally on board with keeping her where she is for the rest of the year and possibly on into high school. Makes me wonder what she is showing at school. No one talked about any behavior issues of course, but they obviously are seeing something besides just her learning disabilities. This is a good thing.

One thing we did hear this time that Hubby and I had been discussing a lot recently, is that when our kids graduate it seemed like they would not have a "real" diploma. This was finally confirmed at this meeting. I can't believe Bear is half way through high school and we're just now hearing this. We were told that our child in these type of special classes wants to go to college then they will be expected to attend junior college or community college and take placement tests that will most likely have them taking catch up courses before being able to move along to college material.

Does anyone else have a problem with this? "Free appropriate public education" that will not be giving them a complete education, so that we have to pay for additional classes in junior college. That stinks! Plus, Bear thinks he's getting As and Bs and going to the Naval Academy. Not that I'm saying I want to discourage him from trying, but it would have been nice if we at least had known. We definitely would be making a bigger stink about him going to Summer School and getting more free education. Maybe he would have bothered with trying.

Speaking of math... we sent Bear to Summer School because despite his having made As and Bs in math during the school year he failed the TAKS test (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills). This last school year wasn't a key year so it didn't matter that he failed. He knew this, that's why he didn't bother trying or even showing up.

Now Bear is failing math. He could potentially be kicked out of JROTC. His math teacher and his ROTC officer are both thinking he needs a tutor. Aargh! Makes me so mad I could spit! **imagine this said with clenched teeth and a slight Texas drawl**

Yet another reason for him to stay after school I bet. He's already avoiding the house because the family is here. Kitty is having more frequent meltdowns (luckily still relatively minor), which upsets him even more.

Oh wait! This is supposed to be Thankful Thursday and there's 9 more minutes of Thursday left. Ummmm... oh I know! Bear came home on the bus today even though he didn't want to! He'd argued with me the night before, but apparently accepted my decision.

The kids are complying with some of their chores. Grandma got home from New Jersey on Tuesday night. Now she has stomach flu or something (just like poor Kitty had, but she couldn't have gotten it from Kitty so I'm sure she caught it on the plane). Doing afterschool on my own is not easy, but it means the kids are more likely to do their own chores. I understand why Grandma does this (she knows if they get too far behind it will be almost impossible to catch up), but it means the kids don't have the opportunity to have to get the chores done.

The TV actually stayed off until almost 7pm today because I was there to enforce that it couldn't go on until most of them had their chores done and I kept dragging them back to have them finish chores. Bob is giving me the most trouble because unlike my passive aggressive kids who quietly try to sneak it past me, she will get in my face and refuse to do it. I hate not being able to enforce the rules with her.

I do give Bob some leeway because she does have hours of homework that the other kids do not have, but the blatant disrespect makes it really hard to "hide" that I'm not enforcing the chores for her. The other kids see her refusals and do it too. I know that is a big part of why Kitty had a mini meltdown about doing her chores tonight. *sigh*