The Never Ever Land Decision, Part Two

The smile is back!

(this is part two of a previous post on our decision to pull Shaun from his junior high school and enroll him in an online school instead...)

After watching our son completely melt down into panic attacks and depression in the first semester at his junior high, the obvious question for us was “Do we take him out of the school he is in or do we leave him there and keep trying to make it work?”

The whole “doing the same thing expecting different results is the definition of insanity” thing just kept playing over and over and over in my head. I began to lean more towards finding an alternate solution for school rather than just keeping on with what we were doing with minor adjustments. I was realizing that it was more likely time for a major overhaul instead of another tune up.

We were looking for a solution (if it was even possible) that would allow Shaun to capitalize on his strengths. We wanted something that would give him the chance to learn how HE learns best and perhaps begin to build some self-confidence.  If you’ve ever watched your kid give up because they just no longer believe in themselves after they’ve tried and tried and failed and failed, you know how hard you are willing to work to help them find that confidence. We also knew that it wasn’t someone else’s job to hold our kid accountable. It was ours. 

Taking all of this and some other factors into consideration, we started searching available options and hit on the k12 program. I had seen heir TV commercials a few times and checked them out online (www.k12.com). There were several things that we liked about it. First, it could be tailored for Shaun and he would be able to get remediation where he needed it and move ahead more quickly in areas where he was ready to. Because we would be involved in a more “hands on” way, we would see exactly what he was and wasn’t doing without having to communicate with several busy teachers. We would also be able to see for ourselves where he was doing well and wasn’t and WHY (was he just screwing around? Did he actually understand the material?) We knew that the K12 schools would work with his IEP but were kind of thinking that maybe with the online school set up; many of those accommodations wouldn’t be needed. The particular K12 school we would be signing up with, AZ Virtual Academy, also provided all of the materials needed at no cost to us (to date, I have spent far less for this school than for his “typical” school with all of their fees, etc.). The one reservation we had about the online school was that he would be home and not at school with his peers every day. We didn’t know if the online “classrooms” and chat sessions with teachers and other students as well as field trips and other activities would provide enough regular social interaction for him. 

We checked out their program as thoroughly as we could and asked around to see if anyone had any experience with them. Several of our friends had some experience with homeschooling or online school from home – a couple with the AZVA in specific. Everyone had positive things to say and good advice about getting a routine established, staying on track, etc.  So Lee and I prayed about it and decided to give it a shot. It was NOT without anxiety, trepidation, and near panic that I filled out the registration packet and sent it in. The last step was getting the withdrawal slip from his current junior high to send in to AZ Virtual Academy. Once we had that turned in, we then had to wait for a few days until his materials from AZVA arrived so Shaun got a bit of an extended Christmas break.

A week and a half later, our materials arrived and we started his online school journey. I won’t lie, it was a little overwhelming at first being mom and learning coach and organizer and I had several nights of lying in bed, unable to sleep because I kept thinking I was forgetting to have him do something he was supposed to do. Thankfully, those nights are fewer and farther between now. We’ve managed to establish a rhythm that works well. Students are supposed to do 5 math, 5 English, 5 literature, 5 history, 3 science, 2 music, and 2 art lessons each week as well as 45 minutes of PE a day. For a while we did a little bit of everything every day and it worked okay but it was a little disjointed for Shaun. He asked if we could try one week of doing one subject each day (so all of the week’s math on one day, all of the week’s English on the next, etc.) That turned out to work out great for the most part but the English and math days turned out to be a little overwhelming. So we tweaked it until we found a good schedule. The best part was that we COULD tweak it and we COULD change it.  Not changing subjects seven times a day turned out to be easier for Shaun to stay on task. So we distributed the English and math lessons a little more evenly through the week and things have worked out quite nicely. Shaun loves being able to do his lessons in his pajamas or wrapped up in his favorite quilt. He can sit on his exercise ball and bounce to help him focus without disrupting anyone else.

Getting the school routine wasn’t the only challenge we had. It has taken us even longer to figure out a good pattern as a family (we have eaten a lot of fast, easy dinners these past several weeks).  Lee’s been an amazing trooper – managing dinner while I prepare the lessons for the next day or helping Cody practice his recorder while I make dinner after being a teacher all day. Cody has struggled on and off with jealousy of Shaun being home while he goes to school. However, as he’s started to see more of what Shaun does (he’s not just sitting at home having fun, he’s actually WORKING), he seems to have come around. He does want to try AZVA, too, in the future and we’ve told him MAYBE once he hits junior high. Cody loves to join us for the art lessons and he’s figured out that maybe being home with mom ALL DAY LONG isn’t as much fun as being able to get out and play with your friends at recess. 

Shaun has had to actively work at his social interaction which has actually been a good thing for him. He definitely doesn’t take his friends for granted like he was before and he’s been able to back off of some friendships that weren’t healthy for him. Most importantly, he is able to focus on his school stuff without the distractions of friends, but still has time with his friends outside of school time. He has relaxed CONSIDERABLY and Lee and I have remarked MANY times lately that we have our son “back.” He still has moments, but those panic attacks, mood swings, crazy defiance and aggression have pretty much disappeared. He is beginning to trust himself taking tests and doesn’t seem to get as hung up and panicked as he used to. He is starting to take show some ownership and is ENGAGED in the learning process now and it is awesome to watch. How cool is that????? We are always on the lookout for more social stuff for him to do, but for the time being, I think we have a good balance.

All in all, I think we made the right decision for Shaun. Although it’s been hard and it’s meant that I’ve lost a lot of my “me” time, I’m glad we did it. The positive changes in Shaun and the positive results, despite the increased responsibility, have been absolutely worth it. I also think it’s turned out to be a positive move for our family as a whole:  We have to work more closely together as a team which has made clear and calm communication an absolute necessity.  That alone has been an incredibly positive change. We’re still working on it, but we’re definitely farther along than we were! So not only is Shaun doing better in school and calmer, our whole family is learning to communicate in a more healthy manner AND I’ve even managed to get the hang of ALGEBRA. Definitely a miracle. 

Thank God for miracles. Right? 

The Journey Into Never Ever Land, part one

Someday I’m going to learn to stop saying “Never. No way. Nuh-uh. Absolutely not.” I’ll realize that I send out some sort of cosmic red flag, the proverbial matador cape or signal flare to the fates that says “Okay, she’s ready! Send it on in!” I can see God up there, watching me and hearing me utter my denials and bowing his head and shaking it, probably much like my husband does when I do something really stupid. He probably chuckles like Lee does, too. :)

Once again I find myself at that place where I am doing the very thing I vowed I would never, ever do. I’ve been here before. I would never work at a church. I wasn’t going to have kids. I wasn’t EVER going to have two boys. No freaking way would I EVER be a stay-home mom. Absolutely impossible to believe I would even LIKE it. :)

And I would have SWORN that pigs would fly before I would EVER consider schooling a child of mine from home. 

EVER.

Yeah, folks, better be checking your bacon for feathers because it’s happening. :)

How did this happen, you ask? Ha ha ha Let me tell you…

First, I just want to note that I am writing from my own perspective here, using “I” instead of “we” not because Lee and I as parents are not in agreement, but because I want it to be clear that I am speaking for myself alone. Thankfully, Lee and I share the same perspective here, so technically I could just say “we” but it just feels kind of presumptive. 

Secondly, I want to make sure that it is CLEARLY understood that I do NOT hate the public school system or its teachers. FAR FROM IT.

I am not an angry parent who hates the public school system and teachers. In fact, I have several friends who are teachers in the public school system and I admire them profoundly. I believe that they – along with firemen, policemen and other public servicemen - are tragically overlooked, undervalued, and oftentimes vastly underpaid heroes. These people make a living out of putting other people first and they too often get the last of our resources, our attention, our respect and our thanks. (I could go on and on about this, but I will save my soapbox for another blog and move on to the issue at hand.) Today’s public school teachers are dealing with issues and conditions that most of us don’t even realize. For most of them, resources and funding are dropping out from under them but their class sizes are rapidly increasing. More and more of their students are struggling with various disorders and are in desperate need of more help than the teachers can give. 

Teachers are also being asked to add more and more non-classroom tasks to their already full schedules - such as IEPs, 504s, special trainings, etc. We are giving these individuals more to do with far less resources and they are struggling and being hung out to dry when they don’t perform up to the standards that we believe that they should be. Really? Do ANY of us perform well when we’re stressed out, tired and don’t have the basics that we need? As a parent, I know I am at my worst when my kids are acting out and I’m tired, need to get a million things done and don’t have the time or the resources I need to get them done. And teachers are doing it with far more kids than the two I have. Every day. 

So no, I do NOT hate public school teachers. I applaud them. I understand that the public school system is struggling and some of that is its own fault and some of it is the economic situation, etc. Even though it struggles and is an imperfect system, I still believe that public schools provide an invaluable service to millions of children. 

Now on to why we have made this particular decision for our particular child at this particular time.

Most of our family and friends know that our boys are two amazing dudes. And most of you also know that they each have some particular struggles that trip them up from time to time. These are struggles that may very likely be life long, so one of our goals as a family is to help them learn to navigate the world using their particular strengths and develop skills and strategies to help compensate for the particular struggles that they face. We use several approaches for both boys to accomplish these goals. 

Some of the things that Shaun struggles with are sitting still, staying focused, curbing impulsivity, and staying organized. The flip side to those struggles is that he is full of energy, ready to go, creative, funny, an out-of-the-box thinker, and never boring. In some situations – like an overcrowded classroom with a lot of other kids like him who are being asked to sit still, listen and learn – the combination of his strengths and struggles can be toxic to him and those around him. These are the times when he can be his own worst enemy. We have employed a variety of approaches to help him with these issues:  sensory strategies, reward systems, redirection, gentle reminders, not so gentle reminders, and medication (another never-ever issue). It requires a concerted effort with very clear expectations on the parts of EVERYONE involved and A LOT of follow up, follow through and regular communication.

Shaun also struggles with anxiety. It has plagued him on and off since he was young. Most of the time you would look at our bold and daredevil son and say, “Seriously? He has ANXIETY issues? NO WAY.” But anxiety doesn’t always look like the scared child sitting in the corner, cowering and afraid of his own shadow. Anxiety can be loud and aggressive; lashing out at the people you love the most. Anxiety can be twitchy and nervous or even sullen and sulky. Anxiety has a lot of faces and we have seen them all with Shaun. When his anxiety levels are up, he becomes moody, mean, clingy, antagonistic, loud, sullen, angry, withdrawn… you name it. We’ve seen it. He also gets twitchy and will rub his nose constantly, often developing sores that are painful and huge. We have learned to look for these when behaviors increase as a possible sign that it’s anxiety rearing its ugly head again. (Though sometimes it is just puberty or lack of hygiene. :) )

Knowing these things, we entered the junior high arena with some trepidation but still hopeful. Foremost on our minds was that we were no longer interfacing with only one or two teachers; now we were dealing with seven or more. In previous years, we’d been blessed with amazing teachers who had been able to bring out the best in Shaun through tapping in to his strengths and unique interests as they spent time with him and got to know him. Now, he would be with seven or more different people every day, with 30-40 other kids at the same time. We knew that this would be a difficult hurdle for Shaun but we didn’t believe it would be impossible. We also knew that the coursework and assignments in junior high would dramatically increase from what he was used to and that this would also be a hurdle for him, but again, did not think it would be impossible. 

The first quarter of the semester, Shaun loved the social part of being with so many of his friends, and he loved being able to move around from classroom to classroom throughout the day. He loved the electives and the opportunity to learn about more than just the usual math and English, etc. He loved the variety of what he was learning. But he began to struggle with the amount and speed of what was being thrown at him – more than any of us realized – and he got overwhelmed. We noticed right off that he was having a difficult time keeping up with taking notes. He has very poor handwriting and for him to write neatly, he has to go very slow and concentrate. In order for him to keep up with the teacher, he had to write fast. That meant he couldn’t read his notes. Thankfully, his IEP and the fact that he had amazing teachers enabled him to get fill in the blank notes so that he could still take notes but also get all the information he needed. That solution helped some. Unfortunately, we didn’t discover that this had been an issue soon enough. 

In his efforts to try to stay on top of things – or at least give the appearance of staying on top of things – Shaun began to let things slide and would put them off until later but would never actually get around to doing them. Although he is a master strategist (play chess with the kid and he’ll beat the pants off you), figuring out a plan for his day is mind boggling. Although he can manage to build an entire civilization in a computer game (where you will note that structure is already provided for him), breaking down a homework assignment into workable pieces is overwhelming. 

The thing is, the kid is brilliant and he KNOWS he should be able to do these simple things. He sees that it’s “just” a homework assignment or what have you, but he doesn’t know how to start it. All he sees is the giant wall in front of him and no way to climb it. He just knows he has to get over the damn thing and everyone is on him to get it done NOW. Imagine yourself in that situation. You see the wall. You know you HAVE to get over it and you SHOULD be able to get over it. And you have everyone around you saying “come on, already, get over the wall” but you can’t find a way to do that, and man, that wall is HUGE. Would you feel a little anxiety there? Now imagine that you’ve faced this situation over and over and over again and every time you hit the wall, those people around you get more and more impatient, angry, loud and demanding. They tell you that you are not climbing that wall on purpose. You might start to get a little jumpy every time you see a wall. In fact, you might get a little crazy about them. You might start having panic attacks when you saw them. Or you might just shut down and walk away and avoid walls all together.

I think Shaun thought he could coast through on his charm and charisma but he got further and further behind, deeper and deeper into an abyss and began to basically disintegrate. He was at a massive wall and he had seven teachers, two parents and a host of other peoples all breathing down his neck to get it over it. What we saw was a moody, defiant, irresponsible, lazy, manipulative, frustrated child whom most of us thought just needed to buckle down and get his nose to the grindstone and he’d be fine. What was happening was that Shaun was standing in front of this massive wall, much of it of his own making and he knew it. He was frustrated, ashamed, scared and had given up and no one was listening. In fact, we were all just yelling at him. All the time. 

I was on the phone with or emailing with most of his teachers at least once or twice a week, trying to keep tabs on what he needed to do and turn in because getting information out of him was impossible and assignments and projects were forever getting “lost” between school and home. We took away privileges, we tried everything we could. Nothing helped. We got more frustrated and angry and frankly, incredibly anxious ourselves. Peace in our household dissolved like snow in Phoenix in the summer.

During the second quarter, under threat of permanent misery at home, Shaun started off well and wanted to do better and stay on task. He realized that if he failed that quarter, he would have to repeat classes over the summer or next year which he did NOT want to do. So he tried. But there was still enough gray area around him that he was still able to work the system and do as little as possible to get by. It didn’t work for him. He continued to not turn stuff in, not do his work in class, bomb tests, etc. I think he never believed he could do it all so he never tried. We talked with his teachers. We made contracts. But he continued to struggle academically. And we watched as he become more deceptive, more moody, more withdrawn, more anxious and no longer cared about any of it. We had him tested for drugs. (Negative.) We changed his meds.  

And nothing improved.

As Christmas break approached, Lee and I began to sit and really talk about how much our family was just disintegrating. We were all tired of the fights, the yelling, and the constant conflict. We were both deeply concerned about the direction his character was going. We no longer felt like we knew our son. We couldn’t believe anything he said. 

We prayed. A lot. And cried. And sweated. And began to realize that we as a family needed to make changes. We needed to CALM things down in our home and refocus on the things that were most important to us as a family – God, love and family. Yes, our son was struggling academically. Yes, our son was overwhelmed. Yes, our son’s character and integrity were disintegrating. But he was still OUR SON. And we, as his family, had to DO something about it. 

About this time, Shaun had a couple of episodes where he had chest pain and couldn’t breathe. At first, I thought he was just being dramatic and seeking attention. But he kept having them and I saw him trying to deal with them on his own at home, without trying to draw my attention to them. I casually asked him about them and found out he’d had them at school, too. So we had an EKG done to make sure it wasn’t from his medications, which it apparently wasn’t. I also noticed that the sores on his face were getting worse.

I found myself with a 12 year old having panic attacks and realized that it wasn’t about just increasing his meds to take care of it. We needed to deal with what was CAUSING the anxiety to skyrocket out of control. And that was easy enough to answer. 

School.

(Stay tuned for part two of The Journey Into Never Ever Land...)