Sunday, September 11, 2011

Alpha Delta Delta's and school

Just when you think you are done doing the ADD parenting thing. . . You find out you're not. I got married again a few years ago, and when the kids came up from Mexico, they had forgotten all their english and had to start all over again. They were all in elementary school, so it wasn't too bad. All three of them stayed back a year to help with the language problems and academic shortcomings, and so far the oldest was able to return to her normal school grade. The younger ones are still working on it. The middle daughter has been struggling to even maintain her reduced grade work, and so we initiated an IEP and got extra support for her. She is doing quite well with her school work and in junior high she has special classes and resource assistance and is doing really well.
I think.
I am worried that things are going too well.  I have never heard of a situation where a child  had problems, and after two IEP's everything that needed to be done was working and nothing more needed to be said or done. Call me jaded-- but it just sounds strange.
I fear that there may be another issue with her education. The school could be just saying great things and not bothering to go into any further detail or extra work or expend any further resources regarding her special education needs. We have also not even begun any discussion about  additional study interventions at home.
Another problem I have is our new county's method of ADD diagnosis. I am used to using the Connor forms and having both parents, and the teacher filling one out, but then we needed to make an appointment to go to an office a hundred miles away for an initial appointment and then possible future group sessions as well. What? There is nothing short of taking an entire day off of work and school for every session my daughter needs with an ADD group program located in a pretty distant city. I don't think so. I will make further inquiries and see what else is possible. Surely this can't be the only way to get to the bottom of my daughter's problem.

That being said, I just saw an article on CNN about parents and teachers fighting over who carries the most blame in the education problems with the child. Do the parents have to take the teacher's word for what is happening in the class, or are the parents to blame for the problems themselves? I have worked with some teachers that knew squat about ADD, nor were they interested in learning anything about it. I also worked with teachers that knew a lot about ADD and reached out to me for help. I also saw their pleas for help to other parents fall on deaf and uninterested ears. Clearly anything is possible with regards to the educational well being of your child, so really there is only one true way to find out what kind of help your child is getting; assume they are on your child's team and try to work together to find solutions that will help with the success of your ADD child. If there is lots of feedback, suggestions and just plain support, then there is a team at work and your child has a better chance of success. If either you or the teacher find that there is no effort or sincerity coming from the other, then there is a team of one at work, and the chances of success have just been halved.
For a parent, if you find yourself  struggling to get any help for your struggling child, all you have to do is make noise, and you will need to make it loud enough for someone high enough to do something. Once you get there, be gracious and thankful. An arrogant, "finally!" never got anyone even more cooperation than was minimally necessary, but thank-yous and compliments get wonderful extra efforts.
For Teachers, there is little you can do to get a parent off the couch and into the team, so my sympathies go out to you. Negative expressions of discontent have never gotten wonderful results either, so try to keep it positive, and perhaps your principal or school counselor may have suggestions as to how to initiate a parents participation, or possibly ideas on what else can be done without it.
Hopefully I am not getting a third and extremely difficult scenario- A school that acts like it is a team player, but really is disinterested. "Tacit" team players are the worst. They tell you what they think you want to hear, and then just go about business as usual, even when things are anything but. You can tell this is happening when you are the only one on the team that is hustling, or if the grades do not actually reflect what you see at home. (great at math? she can't even count by fives yet. . . ) When this happens, let the results speak for themselves, and ask for specific explanations as to why there is such a chasm between your child's grades and their performance. The parents of children in Georgia could have seen this coming if they would have been paying attention to their child's grades, and performance on homework.
So, if you are a parent of an Alpha Delta Delta,  it shouldn't be easy. If it is-- whose fault is it, and what are you going to do about it? After all, when this school year ends, the teacher gets a vacation, but they are still your child.