The hard part about leaving Bradley’s second grade classroom was leaving the teacher, his favorite aide, and the comfort that was helping him continue his journey on the learning curve. Even harder was leaving behind his friends. Of course, he was comfortable there. He’d been there three years and finally we were starting to get recognition of letters and numbers. Eric and I even considered keeping him where he was for one more year. Maybe settled in he would be able to really expand his brain to stop worrying about where he was and concentrate on learning the new things. Everything I’ve read keeps suggesting that repetition is the best way for Bradley to learn. So I am left to ponder if we made the right choice to not fight to keep him where he was. And yet, he is almost nine years old, and I also don’t see how keeping him with kindergarteners was going to advance his social concepts and his knowledge of the alphabet.
And yet, he left behind his two friends. Bradley had made friends, one was a kindergartener and the other a first grader. This year she is in first and he is in second and Bradley is two classrooms away in third grade. And as much as we counted on his comfort level to give him the chance to actually learn and grow...his connection to friends in the classroom are the connections that he misses the most. Both kiddos are on his bus, but they don’r sit together, each has a special harness to keep them safe on the bus and when I watch Bradley get on the bus, I don’t see the light of recognition in his face, I see excitement for the bus and only that. It’s almost as if last year never happened and he never made friends. And it breaks my heart.
In this classroom, he had two aides he really seemed to like, they visited him last year a few times in his classroom and made a point of spending playground time with him so that he would have some familiarity with them this year. Only one is still in his classroom, the other has been moved. So many changes. He is supposed to go to blending twice a week, but right now he can’t get there. As his behaviors return, I’m not sure if it’s worth it to keep up the attempts anymore. Seems like he gets so many changes going on in his classroom that he doesn’t necessarily need the lessons learned from changing classrooms and teachers. They are more scholarly over there...but I just don’t know anymore. I want him to use his brain but I also want him safe. I’m not sure about the fight to get him over there. And at the end of the day, I miss the loss of friendships he was cultivating more than him only getting to blending once this week instead of twice.
Perhaps my brain can’t quite work through to any kind of comfort level with the way he looked getting off the bus yesterday, the bruises on his head from where he started hitting his head again. The long email from his teacher as she is trying to find a safer solution to try with him right away, worried about him and his head too. I keep reminding myself that he was sick yesterday so his world was upside down and kind of sideways...and that means I really have to just get him feeling better first, get him back to school next week and then, see what happens with him at school and decide where we go from here.
His temp has been up and down today, not bad but at its worst, he definitely reacts with tears and searching for snuggles. He didn’t sleep last night, but after sleeping so long yesterday it was to be expected. When the wakeful stage turned to tears and whimpers, it was time to get Motrin in him again...twenty minutes later he was sleeping again. No sleeping today, just playing and then movie, then back to playing, some snuggling when his temp went back up...and then back to movie and playing. I know he’s sick, so I’m not putting demands on him and he’s having a pretty good day, albeit because he’s sick. So we’ll see about the school thing once he feels better enough to go back and then see where his behaviors go from there and take it one day at a time. My poor guy. Sigh...
We’ll just have to see how it goes and take each day as it comes. When we add a communication device we’ll judge his behaviors and go from there. So many changes...time will tell if there are just too many changes after all.
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