Being an Okay Parent
Being an Okay Parent
I have a meeting with Wesley's teacher this Tuesday. She wants to share with me a new fabulous reading program for Wes. Bill jokes that it is the special education class. We laugh at our deepest fears.
I have already had the battle with them over the special day class. Wes is not stupid. He can just barely read, and for a twelve year old, this is disconcerting for everyone involved.
He has been diagnosed with dyslexia, audio processing problems and speech impairments. He has had therapy with a speech pathologist, a developmental opthamolgist and a good, old, home-grown therapist for counseling. He has done all the reading programs: hooked on phonics, morphographs, reading from scratch, Fast ForWord, after school tutoring and any other great things the teachers tried on their own. He has read out loud to me diligently since kindergarten, both times he was in it. And, I agreed to the meeting despite having accepted that there is no fix for Wes.
I searched for a fix most of the first eleven years of his life. I had his pediatrician test him for seizures which could be medicated, solving his problems. I took him to a neurologist who gently told me that apples don't fall far from their tree. Wes's dad is undiagnosed, but dyslexic just the same. But, I didn't hear the neurologist yet. I pulled him from public education and put him in a private school which catered to his learning disabilities.
We make progress. Don't get me wrong. We plug away and I see improvements, but when Wes is screaming for me to read directions to him for his video game, or yelling from the shower, "Which bottle is the shampoo?" I want him to read it himself.
A colleague at work, Tom, shared with me that he has a student who never does his homework and is failing miserably. The boy is special education. The assumptions teachers usually make is that he doesn't have a family who is supportive. But, Tom shares, this doesn't work with this kid. He plays baseball. Tom sees the whole family come to his baseball practices, including Grandma, at an age when most parents are reluctant to slow down the car when dropping their kids off. Tom muses, the support is there.
I grimace. "They just don't feel like yelling at him for at least an hour every night to get him to do his homework. By this time, it has gotten old."
I met a friend the other day to discuss some letters she had received from the school I work at. Her son and my son played football together over six years ago, when they were both young and we figured they'd eventually catch up academically with their peers. She handed me the letters which told her what she already knew as a good parent, that her child was behind grade level in his work and she needed to provide him adequate homework space and time, support during homework time and a good breakfast and
dinner each night. She was indignant.
She has taken her child to Sylvan, hired private tutors and supports her son throughout school, and the letter felt like a slap in the face.
"Okay," she shrugged her shoulders, "this tells me Curt's problems in school are my fault. I'm a bad parent. I wished I could send him to some good parents so his problems would be solved, but that is not an option."
This idea resonated with me.
When Wes couldn't speak as a small child, everyone accused me of talking for him. I was the controlling mother who silenced her child.
When Wes acted out in frustration at school, another parent was told we were unapproachable because "his dad's a coach."
When I refused to make Wes go to after school tutoring which as a professional I deemed worthless (read - do lots of worksheets), I was accused of not giving him every opportunity to succeed.
In Changed by a Child: Companion notes for Parents of a Child with a Disability by Barbara Gill, she calls this B.M.B.D. Disorder - Bad Mom Bad Dad Disorder. If only this child had better parents... and I believed this myself for years and expressed this to our family therapist when we had Wes in counseling because our schools told us he needed it, never admitting that they had created the need.
The counselor told me most parents are able to get away with being okay parents because their children are easy; they fit in the world easily and accept the world easily. But with a child with Wes's needs, I have to be an excellent parent. And I strive to be that parent, with all my human failings. It would be nice to be able to send him off and let other parents fix him so I could just be an okay parent.
I wish there was a magic program or medicine that would "fix" Wes. But when Bill and I contemplate what we would give up for this new and improved child, we both agree; there is not one aspect of Wes we would change or give up to make him a better reader or a better student, not his sense of humor, not his spontaneity, not his friendly nature. We would definitely not trade in his empathy for other children and adults who struggle each in their own way. We would neither trade him in nor trade up when it came to Wes.
Will I agree to this new reading program? Of course. I realize that my job as a parent is to accept and love my child for who he is. As a teacher, my job is to problem-solve and try my best to meet the needs of all my students. Wes's teacher is trying to make Wes a successful student, while I am concerned about making Wes a successful person with all the human gifts and frailties that he has in this world.
About the Author
Diane is author of "Quick and Easy Ways to Connect with Students and Their Parents," Classroom Record keeping Made Simple," and "Wishes in the Field." She currently teaches middle school in California.
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