Day 27: Blogging in the 31 For 21 Challenge For Down
Syndrome Awareness
Bradley has spent his third day “blending” into another
classroom, so far so good. It’s not like
he is going into a regular day class or going for a long time. He goes into a Special Day Class and he goes
twice a week for a full fifteen minutes each time. On his IEP I think it gives him a whopping 1%
of the time in blending.
I have spent most of my energy with the medical side of Bradley’s
life, that’s not to say that I don’t work on the scholastic side of things with
him, more like I rarely give the school side of things too much of my attention
when it comes to Inclusion or Blending.
Bradley spent the first few years of his “Schooling” at the house in a
home medical program because every time he went out he would get sick and every
time he got sick it was drastic. But he
started getting stronger and because his Pediatrician in San Diego was a
retired Fighter Pilot, he was like: let’s send him and see how he does. As I never once doubted this man, I said: “Okay…let’s
do it” with a lot more bravado than I felt.
But I also never wanted him to see my cowardly side, so there you go, we
slowly integrated Bradley into a school setting. At first he went after everyone went home,
and of course loved it there. I mean who
wouldn’t, it was the coolest pre-school classroom and it made me strongly
consider returning to my own pre-school days – I mean, being a pre-school
teacher, yeah, that’s what I meant. And
here’s irony for you, in a classroom where the kids were compromised in some
way, with really strict dietary needs…this class had these amazing teachers and
parents that threw the BEST parties with the BEST food!!! ;-) A
whole new take on school parties. All lovely
people, the teachers and the parents. We
were thrilled to have this be our start.
Speed ahead to where we are now, Bradley is in his second
year of organized schooling and he’s doing so very well. He is in a special Ed classroom where they
know how to take care of his G-Tube and are trained to handle his
seizures. I can remember when I was a
kid, we had a boy in our class who would have seizures (awful for him), and a
boy that suffered asthma and they weren’t separated from the rest of us, so I
figure his seizures shouldn’t be a hold back for him. The G-tube, I always wonder where that would
leave him at school. Will he always have
to be in a Special Ed classroom where they can take care of his G-tube, or
would he be able to be in a regular classroom where someone could still take
care of it if and be trained for seizures?
And then you have the issue of the potty training. His GI Issues make his potty training a
nightmare, and I have to wonder if he could ever be in a regular classroom
until he is without diapers. Oh and his
speech, or lack thereof…where does that leave us? How prepared is a classroom to take a
non-verbal child?
So with all that, I don’t spend too much time thinking about
whether we should be pushing Bradley into general ed, but I do spend a
considerable amount of time wondering whether or not I should be thinking about
this stuff. You can’t spend too much time
on Facebook and other websites without running across all the parents that are
out there that are fighting to get their kids into general ed. How integration is the key, how anything less
is unacceptable. And I admit that I
avoid most of that right now. You see,
you get sucked in pretty quickly when you read all that. You start to think you aren’t measuring up to
everyone else, that somehow by Bradley not being included and in a regular ed
classroom that we are failing him. But that
runs right back into comparing your child to another. How the Hell are you going to try to compare
a child with Down Syndrome with all of his Medical issues to another child with
Down Syndrome who hasn’t any of the medical issues that he has had?
It’s simple really, you can’t. You have to force yourself to stop the
comparisons in your head. Some kids are going to be able to do it and
some are not. I think that the truth is
simply this: Bradley is going to fall somewhere in the middle. He isn’t going to fall through the cracks because
we will not allow that. As for his
education, we are starting with this short time in a Blended classroom to see
if he can handle leaving a place he knows, to go into a new place with a new
teacher, and would he do well in there, and would he listen to a new
teacher? Lots of questions to answer in
one little fifteen minute classroom session, but answer we must. The only ones that thought he could do it
were his Dad and I, his teacher in his current classroom, and his Speech
Therapist. The Bureaucrats that sit on
these IEP meetings, they smiled at me and nodded and fully expected him to
fail.
And that’s the thing, they expect him to fail – the ones
that live on Team Bradley, we all expect that he is going to not just succeed,
but blow it away. We have complete Faith
in our little guy, whichever path he takes, wherever his path leads in a
General Ed, or out. At this point, we
aren’t all that concerned with where he spends his days at school so much as
making sure that we plant the seeds so that should he be moving into a
different orbit later, we won’t look back on this time and wonder why we didn’t
do more to prepare him. I have plenty of
doubts, so I don’t need to add to them.
To those that are sending your kids with special needs to
general ed classrooms, we admire you and while we wish our kid could do that,
we know that today is not the day. So
please, don’t judge me for not having my son there, I have him where he is safe
and learning and growing. Keeping him
where he is at is not a step back for the Special Needs community and integration. Keeping him where he is, is the only
plausible step down any road he ventures to tomorrow. We will keep working on the alphabet and
speech, and someday he will be reading and writing his name. He will be able to do all the things that he
needs to do in his life to be happy and contribute in positive ways to society,
with or without general ed.
On the days where life overwhelms me and the constant push
gets the better of me, I will take some time to wonder who and where he would
be if he hadn’t had all the issues he does and could have been integrated at
Kindergarten. I’ll wonder if I would be
one of those parents jumping on those Facebook pages and giving the great news
about how awesome my kid is doing, or how the next fight to modify homework is
going...how integration works and my kid is paving the way. But I’m not that parent, and that’s not my
sweet boy, might never be, and in the end that’s okay. When it comes down to standing in the road
and trying to choose the right path out of the myriad of choices laid out
before us, all that matters is that Bradley is here, is healthy, is happy and
is living a good life. He needs to be proud of himself and know that
every day he has lived the kind of life that allows him to look at himself in
the mirror and meet his own eyes, because he is a good person. I tell his sisters the same thing, at the
end of the day you have to meet your own eyes and know you’ve done your
best. What class you are in in school:
Special, General, None…none of that matters at the end of the day. How you treat yourself and others, how you
show respect to yourself and others, that will help you gauge your self-worth. Don’t let it be from someone else’s opinion. Their
mom takes this advice too, and I leave those sites and those sometimes harsh postings
when they make me doubt myself more than I already do. Every day we have to do the best we can to
make the lives of all three of these kids work, and make their growth into
adults successful. But especially for
Bradley, we have to take what has been given and nurture that into what will
bloom tomorrow before we can make each planned step count. And we definitely make each planned step
count for all we can.
I am proud of my three kids.
I am proud of my son. What he has
battled through and how he has come out as amazing as he is…yeah, he’s more
than something special. I want him to
have the best life he can have, where ever he needs to plant his roots to do
it. In, out or around Special Ed!
Have a great Thursday night!
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