There's no way to tell this story without telling you about Paul from the beginning. Paul was our miracle baby -- something I, at least, was never supposed to have. I have epilepsy and had been advised that a baby would be out of the question. My husband had promised that we could pursue adoption once we got a house and had been in it a year. At the very time that anniversary happened, I'd gone to the doctor and got interesting news -- new research into my medication meant that I could carry a baby. Less than a month later, we were expecting.
When a child arrives in a household in the kind of situation Paul did -- it seems natural that he'd get a little spoiled. We wanted to do everything right and we read plenty of books, took parenting classes, bought the Sign With Your Baby program (the list would boggle the mind) even before he was born. Funny thing is we didn't need sign language with Paul.
Paul was beautiful at birth and that isn't just the words of doting mama (though I am) -- he really was beautiful. He was born by cesarian due to my medical condition and didn't suffer the stress many babies do in the natural process because, although he was almost full-term, they also didn't let me go into labor. I can't say how much that had to do with what would come -- based on much of what I've read, it probably didn't affect it one way or the other. In fact, studies show that the most brilliant children were breastfed, and that was one thing I couldn't do. The medication would pass through breast milk, so I couldn' t give Paul that first boost. I could make sure he got the skin-to-skin contact and plenty of love, something that was very easy to do. But even in the hospital there were so many comments about how alert he was and how he seemed to be studying everything, and a few less than flattering (but still amusing) comments about how loud he was. From the beginning he didn't sleep as often as a normal infant. It was just one of those things we would come to adapt to.
One week out of the hospital came the first major stress when I went to change my baby's diaper and found blood. Paul went through a protein allergy that required fancy formula (labeled predigested). We used Allimentum and began solids a little late because of the tummy troubles. Over time I learned to manage his diet, carefully balancing diuretic foods with constipating foods until he outgrew the allergy. And in the midst of this came the first solid sign that my baby was unsual -- his first words.
His first word was a question -- and believe me, I know how that sounds. I was chattering away to him on the day I had to return to work and he was five months old. I told him that I was going to be away for what might seem a long time that day and that we was going to stay with Teresa (daycare provider) and he said, "Daddy?" I was so shocked by his first word that I was doing the happy-mom-dance and didn't associate that it could be anything else. Certainly no baby book had prepared me for anything more than that. In fact, that he'd not said just "dada", but two varied sounds is odd. He repeated, "Daddy?" and it suddenly struck me that he was asking a question. Half-numb and feeling sort of ridiculous, I answered, "He has to work too." Paul said, "Oh."
By two Paul was a chatterbox using sentences or just words that astounded everyone around us. He was a puzzle fiend and very quickly passed beyond frame puzzles. And he had an instant love for dinosaurs. At two-and-a-half, he corrected a museum tour-guide when she misrepresented an apatasaurus as an allosaurus (she was a teen volunteer who had merely remembered the name began with a) and he was right. By two-and-a-half he also knew all his letters and basic letter sounds.
Paul never went to preschool. We were between the cracks, financially. We made too much money for Head Start and too little for a private preschool. And anyway, we were assured over and over that we had prepared him well. We thought he'd be a big success iin kindergarten; we were very wrong.
His first kindergarten teacher seemed sweet and patient. She even remarked that he was an unusually advanced kid -- he had drawn a giraffe in class on the first day and it actually looked like a giraffe; she was used to scribbles. In a short time, Ms. P said that Paul was very bright, but she didn't like the fact that he was "arrogant". He was still 4, and he was quite advanced -- a little arrogance seemed perfectly natural to me, though we did work on it. He had a bit of trouble in an after-school program and I'd even gone to Ms P for advice. At that point, she had no trouble with Paul and, even though I briefly considered pulling him back out of school and waiting a year, I never really pursued it. In part it was because of the first lie we'd get from the schools -- I was told by the principal I couldn't pull him out (I wouldn't learn the truth until the following February). Heads up California residents -- kindergarten is not mandatory and truancy age starts at six. If your child is in school and the maturity isn't there, you absolutely can wait a year and you don't have to then enroll him or her in Kindergarten. You can go straight to first grade.
When Ms. P started to have issues with Paul, we discussed strategies and she came up with great ideas. Trouble is she never got around to doing any of them. After a while, we started to get very frustrated because we'd been promised a higher reading system (he was bored with the simple books she sent home) and the teacher had started ignoring Paul, meaning he was left on the playground unsupervised when he didn't come in promptly. Ms. P used the star system (four stars was a perfect day) to encourage behavior and she had told me I could tell what kind of day she'd had with Paul by checking the stars. I didn't pick him up, he was picked up by his daycare and they didn't go into the classroom, so checking was impossible. I'm an email addict and I had given Ms. P my email, but she wasn't very comfortable with computer stuff and so she encouraged me to call. The daily calls were always meant to be the 30 seconds required to get the number of stars, but I'm talkative and she's talkative and the subject would always land on Paul. After a while, I was aware that I seemed to be micromanaging his education, and that certainly wasn't something I'd meant to do. Worse, I noticed that Ms. P started dodging my calls. This was confusing, because it had been she that had asked me to call daily. It was hard too, watching the clock while trying to focus on work. My stomach would start to churn as the hour grew later. Then one day my hubby dropped by to talk to Ms. P about Paul's latest test. If she had said, "I'm busy, please come back," he wouldn't have stayed, but she didn't tell him. The next thing we knew, we were being told that we were bothersome parents.
Like all things in situations like this, that wasn't completely wrong. As I said, I'd noticed myself that I felt I was micromanaging and I hated it. I again considered pulling Paul and again was told I couldn't. I kept thinking that, since I'd seen older children in the class, that I ought to be able to pull him, something didn't compute. But I admit that I didn't push for more information as hard as I probably should have -- Paul had entered Kindergarten with all the academic knowledge he needed to graduate kindergarten. He only needed the social stuff. If he was already bored, what would happen in another year? The principal actually told us to back off and not talk to the teacher or discipline Paul at home for anything that happened at school. There was nothing else offered to us. Queries about having Paul assessed were met with blank stares and a claim that no psychologist was currently available to the school. A coworker had a daughter with ADHD and she had told me that her school had given them a questionaire that led to her daughter's diagnosis. When I asked about that, I was told there was nothing. We were never offered daily reports of any other type nor IST or IEP or any of the myriad of other school acronyms that schools use and which confuse parents with no experience.
We gave the principal one month for her request -- no phone calls, no drop bys -- but it only made the situation worse. Despite the principal's directive, the teacher was still constantly complaining about Paul's behavior, leaving us in a quandary about what to say. I was convinced the teacher wasn't even trying her own interventions anymore -- that she'd basically given up. That was confirmed the day that I'd gone to school to warn the teacher that Paul was grieving a dead pet and she said, "He sure has a flair for the dramatic." Shocked, I drove to work repeating everything over and over in my head until I decided that it was time for a different teacher. The principal said there were no other teachers with space, so if I wanted a different teacher, I'd have to go to another school. So we called the district office and arranged that.
The move was arranged by the head of elementary education. She apparently made this move for us just to shut us up, but at the time I didn't know that. She asked what we wanted and I told her I needed someone structured who had room for a precocious mind -- a teacher who would listen to us and follow through with promises, and when I mentioned the higher reading program, something I wouldn't even have known about had Ms. P not mentioned it, I was told that they couldn't change the curriculum for one student (this is not completely true, but we'll cover that in the blog at some point -- search for IEP) Well I didn't want that anyway, just room to maneuver, or so I thought.
The new teacher seemed like a cold sentinel, ushering my son into a room where I wasn't welcome. Having been so completely wrong in my assessment of the first teacher, though, I was willing to consider I was equally wrong in this assessment. And, after the first day, when I asked Paul if he liked his new teacher and if he missed the old one (I was expecting to help soften tender emotions) I learned something horrible about the old teacher that I had never known. He said he liked Ms. H more than Ms. P because Ms. H didn't call him a terrible child, and Ms. P has said that every day. Stunned, and finally seeing the whole scope of what had happened at the old school, I thought the new school held so much promise.
But then things started to fall apart. The accelerated reader program we'd been promised by the district was not exactly what was described to me. And the accelerated math program was not in place yet. He had been in all-day kindergarten at the last school, and this program was morning only, so he'd had to go backward a bit, leaving him to learn songs he already knew and to complete more boring letter recognition activities. It became clear that I'd gotten the structure I'd asked for, but perhaps too much, for Ms. H wouldn't tolerate any interruption to her schedule. Then one day my little boy came home talking about a man whose room he'd been sent to. I questioned Paul and learned that this wasn't the principal. There was nothing -- no note, no explanation. As far as I knew every teacher around Paul was a female, and I was outright alarmed. I went to school the next morning trying to sort it out. I approached the principal, who claimed to be in the dark about what I was talking about. He told me I'd have to approach the teacher. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, he was misreading my alarm as disapproval of discipline.
The teacher did say she should have sent a note -- the stranger was a fifth grade teacher that she had sent Paul to as a sort of detention. She then proceeded to bombard me with a laundry list of things wrong with my son, and worse, suggested they might hold Paul back for behavior. I freaked. He was already bored, how was he supposed to do kindergarten all over again and be diminished all over again without acting out? Three meetings later, the principal decided they'd try an experiment to prove to us that Paul wasn't ready for first grade. They dropped him into a 1st grade class that had already been in session for five months. He was there for one week, and he did it. There were times he was a little lost, but he did it. Then, without explanation, they took him out, put him back into his kindergarten class and told him he wouldn't see that first grade teacher again. Understandably, Paul had his first major tantrum. Well, I say understandably, but they didn't understand it.
Paul was then put on a disciplinary plan, and the IST meeting that accompanied that decision was awful. When we suggested that Paul was bored, we were told he wasn't advanced. When we asked for harder books we were told there was no reason for that. When we tried to suggest that Paul had a perfectionism problem that was easy to sidestep if the teacher would only say, "Remember, this doesn't have to be perfect", we were told that there were no signs of that. And, when I tried to discuss the original thing he was sent to detention for (he was wiggling during a story, and she put him in timeout and told him not to move. When he wiggled again, she said it was defiance and put him in detention), the principal interrupted me, told me that what was wrong with my son was obviously wrong with me, and that I wasn't to speak to the teacher without speaking to him too.
And during that same meeting, Ms. H shared what I believe would lead to my son's future issues. She had decided to pit the whole class against Paul, to show him how his behavior was wrong. She had everyone tell him how his silliness made them feel, but it somehow morphed into an emotional assault wherein one child said "you act crazy" and the other children then called him crazy -- all of it sanctioned by her. She sat there at that meeting describing this, while her boss nodded along and his boss nodded along and no one said what I was thinking, "You did what? WHAT?" They had all acted concerned that Paul did not really seem to have any friends and yet there was a good reason he didn't have friends. Children will forgive a lot of things unless the situation is cast into a spotlight that way. Months later, using the word "crazy" still sets Paul off.
Even with all this garbage, Paul made progress for a while. The next IST meeting was okay and Ms. H decided to up the behavior modification as soon as he returned from Spring Break. The problem was that Spring Break let him see how miserable he was; day care had let him read higher books and do logic puzzles during the break. He has friends in daycare, but had none at school. He returned to school reluctantly and started having major problems.
One Friday I got an email from the principal telling me that Paul had been in his office and that, though he would be allowed to attend school through semester end, he was going to advise against allowing Paul to continue the intradistrict transfer. Worse, the note mentioned that though Ms. H had brought Paul his lunch, Mr. C had refused to let him eat it because he'd not said thank you. There it was in writing and I was stunned. Worse, Mr. C had told Paul he was kicking him out when Paul had asked. Why had Mr. C told him this? He assumed that when Paul asked that question that we had told him that his intradistrict transfer was threatened. This man who runs G.A.T.E. could not conceive of a five-year-old guessing, or reading the notes that the teacher sent home. And he somehow did not recognize he was guilty of child abuse. In fact, Paul ended up not having food for 12 hours, from the time I fed him before school until I arrived home for dinner that night. The principal had put Paul on a bus in distress, and since he was small and only knew he was upset, he didn't think to tell the daycare he'd not had lunch. They're used to him eating at school and when they saw him aggitated, they did the protocol -- gave him a book, asked him to sit away from the other kids. My husband picked him up early (before snack) and then we got Mr. C's email, so my husband hurried right over to the district to try to get an emergency transfer request in before they closed. In all the turmoil, Paul was too upset to figure out he was hungry and it takes Mommy's eyes to spot it in his color. When he met me in the kitchen I offered him a cheese stick from the fridge and he grabbed it in a way a child only does when he's starving. And this is something else about Paul and perhaps other five-year-olds too, his emotions get very raw when he is hungry, thirsty or tired. Dehydration is especially bad for that. I'm not saying that his tantrums are caused by that, but it is a contributing factor.
By Sunday night, I'd found the words I needed to complain without the string of expletives that wanted to surface everytime I'd considered it on the previous days. I wrote an email to the district complaining and I copied that to the Board. The letter I sent was as polite as I could manage and I never told them that I knew what Mr. C had done was considered child abuse -- I was afraid of the fallout. Then things went from bad to worse.
I had never imagined they'd suspend a kindergartener. Honestly, I'd never heard of such a thing. When I read the manual for the school, I saw that in their disciplinary actions, but I just never associated that it might be in the stars for my child. And, in the history of ideas, this has to be one of the dumbest because a. he's only five and not always capable of controlling his emotions (sometimes a five-year-old can't controll his bladder and emotions are much harder) and b. time at home, even doing endless chores, is preferable to Kindergarten Hell. When the first suspension happened, the principal finally saw that Paul was gifted. The tantrum had been caused by a perfectionism thing (which you might recall Ms. H saw no sign of) and the principal had talked to Paul about the fact that his jellyfish didn't need to be perfect. And, to calm him down, the principal had offered to read to him. Paul, who was still upset, said, "No thanks, I can read it myself." He then proceeded to read a fourth grade book to the principal. Mr. C seemed nice this time, though not nice enough to rethink the suspension. We talked about gifted kids and I was sent home with a book on gifted education. The book was good but it made me terribly angry -- this book in Mr. C's possession showed over and over where his teacher had completely failed my son and even described her behavior as "damaging". Worse, Mr. C is the principal not just for that elementary school, but for the district G.A.T.E. program. At that time I thought we were finally on the same page, though he still didn't begin to have a grasp of Paul's capabilities (Paul figured out multiplication on his own, he's an artist, and can do sudoku at the age of 5 1/2). He had finally seen that Paul might be bored in class and he must surely realize there was more going on than defiance, right? Wrong.
Our simultaneous visit to a psychiatrist did also result in finally getting an assessment started. The magic answer was a written request with our signature. Poof! A psychologist appeared and strangely, she had worked for the first elementary school too. And she'd never even heard of Paul before that. We thought things were going to get better and that was wrong too.
Meanwhile I had begun to consider that Paul might have aspergers or something like it. I'd seen signs that matched something I'd read and a friend who is a teacher in England confirmed that she'd thought so before. Of course, if Paul is, it is mild and he sometimes has behavior that contraindicates such a diagnosis. I had even suggested the notion to Mr. C before he gave me the book. He'd said, "No, he's just a gifted child." Honestly, that's nicer to hear than "he might have an ASD" but nice doesn't help you solve something if a disability is in play. As harsh as the notion of any autism related diagnosis woud be, it is better to have the facts and proceed accordingly than to flounder around looking for a solution and ignoring what's right in front of you.
This was something I told the Assistant Superintendant when I spoke to him by phone the day after the suspension was issued. He was following up my complaint, of course, and was a little astonished by the whole story. I might never know if he thought Mr. C handled the whole situation wrong, or if perhaps both principals did -- a man in the position of assistant superintendant wouldn't dare tell me. But if I were him, I'd have been thinking it.
When we returned to school it was abruptly clear that the teacher still didn't believe that Paul was gifted. She said she still didn't believe he should be "pandered to" and claimed to be unaware of the cool-down book idea. Even though the principal and I agreed on a "cool down book" to accompany timeouts, the teacher refused to use them. I had read that tantrums are a form of communication, however misguided. That made sense to me. Paul needed to know that he would really understand what he did wrong, and, if he felt he'd been treated unfairly, he needed the chance to defend himself even if it gained nothing. Without that offering, he tried everything to get the teacher's attention, including being a complete jerk -- screaming and pounding his head against the wall.
The second suspension happened three weeks later, and it was the result of the mother of all tantrums. But if the school wouldn't change their behavior and Paul couldn't change his yet (he was only five, afterall, even if he talked like a nine-year-old) I couldn't see how anything would get better. This time it was a two-day suspension and Paul was sorry but didn't know what to do. I tried to fight this one -- in part because I had also begun to worry about my job. A one day suspension for him meant two lost days of work for me since his daycare's policy said he couldn't be on premises when suspended from school. A two-day suspension equalled three days lost work for me and it was not going to help or change anything. School was now so scary that Paul would cry when we were getting ready in the morning and beg not to go. The person I spoke to at the district (the assistant superintendant I'd spoken to before over the food issue) was nice but couldn't or wouldn't overrule the school policy. The fact that we were in the middle of assessment changed nothing and, though I pointed out to him that part of my job as Paul's parent was to provide his basic needs and that these suspensions were threatening our ability to pay our mortgage, he never offered us any recourse. The way I saw it, keeping Paul in school was less important than maintaining his home -- especially since Paul was learning nothing at school. By that point, I'd been researching homeschooling, and though both my husband and I must work, I'd become convinced that we could do it. I threatened to pull him, but relented when my husband split the down-time with me and insisted we try to get that assessment finished. It was only four weeks until the end of school, right?
Paul returned to school on Friday and was suspended the third time on the following Monday. This time I was done. I didn't care that there was so little time left. I'd used up my vacation and sick leave trying to attend all the meetings and then subsequent suspensions. But my hubby wanted the assessment done and he spoke to the assistant superintendant by phone and finally got someone in the district to see that Paul had been put with the wrong teacher. Worse, now with the assessment half done and pretty convincing signs that Paul has a mild ASD (autism spectrum dissorder) the school's refusual to follow any of our plans for derailing a tantrum seemed petty and cruel. The truth is that Paul was always easy to derail. All we've had to do is hand him an open book. So the Assistant Superintendant agreed to finish the assessment, but not fight our decision to homeschool.
After all we've been through, you'd think that this would be the end of the school mess, right? Wrong. The day after the final suspension, my hubby was home with Paul after having been assigned night shift for one day. He was the one who fielded the principal's phone call. Harold usually doesn't yell -- I'm the yeller. I'm the one who loses my temper while Harold sits and seethes. I'm the one who says things I wish later I hadn't. For Harold to lose it, Mr. C must have really been a jerk. Mr. C told my husband that Paul was just spoiled and that he was finally getting what he wants. Perhaps that is right to a degree, Paul certainly wanted out of the toxic situation he was in, but I don't think Paul realized it could be better for him. Homeschooling sounded awful to a child who likes other children. As I thought about the principal's reaction, I couldn't help wondering what I missed? Why was this principal angry that we'd pulled Paul? It seems to me that he got what he wanted; he's been pushing my son out the door since he arrived. So why fight it? He had to have known that, even if we weren't angry about the situation, we'd have been forced to pull Paul. I'm really lucky I didn't lose my job out of the deal. Constantly running to get him -- unable to keep him anywhere for inane rules that barred him from childcare. Even if I had agreed with the principal, I couldn't keep this up; no working parent could . Punishments didn't stop it from escalating, lectures didn't work. I believe Paul meant to change, but at only five, change is hard. It's hard for an adult! What did the principal think would happen? The principal had other means at his disposal. I know there are in-house suspensions and transfers of placement that he could have used. And of course, he could have insisted that Ms. H follow the protocol in place for intervention. He never did. So why be angry? It was like shooting at an animal repeatedly and then being upset that it died.
But is homeschooling the right decision? I think so. When we told Paul, he was scared. Because we said we were going to make the best of the situation and we seemed confident, Paul came around. He asked if our homeschool could have science and I nodded. He liked that. He asked about crafts because he really likes crafts and I told him we could do that too. Then he said, "What do I call you?" I told him he could call me Mrs Mom if he really wanted to, otherwise Mom would be just fine. And then he asked if his new teacher allowed hugs, and I said, "Yes, kisses too." I will never forget the way he hugged me then and the smile I hadn't seen in so long. A day later he had begun to sing again -- though I hadn't heard that in weeks.
No matter what anyone uses to argue, or how hard it is to juggle everything, some kids just don't belong in public school and I believe mine is one of those. For months school has been sucking the life out of him until he is nothing but raw nerves and fear. I don't care what anyone says, that's not good for a child. I believe that schools should adopt the hypocratic oath and stick to it -- first DO NO HARM.
At the age of five, Paul can:
A bit of vindication: the school assessment showed that Paul was off their chart. His spatial reasoning is equal to that of a twelve year old. The assessment recommended four grades at once for the future with no solution how that is supposed to take place. The school psychologist has been administering those sort of tests for a very long time and has NEVER tested a child as high as Paul. Did that make the school district want to help us -- not in the least. If the child doesn't fit the box, the so-called professionionals are completely at a loss.