Adrift…And….Feeling Stupid

You know what I hate? I hate when you go and read someone’s blog and you discover that, through their own words and takes and experiences on life, that you really don’t like them. This doesn’t happen often to me, of course.  I go to blogs that are written by people that I am sure [...]

A New Reality

It should have been more momentous. Sitting there, in a classroom last week, listening to my autistic son’s teacher tell me that he was doing well in all his subjects was the stuff of my dreams a few years ago.  A reality I couldn’t imagine, but one I hoped to attain in the far away [...]

Another Day In the Life

Michael lost it the other night. It had been a good day for him, in fact a great start to the school year so far.  Last year, he stumbled so badly at the beginning of the school year, in terms of academics and behavior, that I actually phoned his teacher on Friday in tears wondering [...]

Two Steps Forward, Three Steps Back

“You need to come to the school and pick him up,” said the voice of my son’s special education teacher on the phone. We’d been riding a positive wave of good news as far as Michael had been concerned.  His last conference had brought me to tears; he was working on grade level, in the [...]

Finding the Right Fit

I sighed as I listened to the speaker on the other end of the phone line.  ”Really?  He’s going to switch special education teachers for the third time in three years?” It was a week before the close of Michael’s first grade year.  It had not been a stellar year, by any account, from the [...]

Is It Always Greener?

I’d seen it all before.  I recognized all of the signs. I looked at my girlfriend Jessica from across the room at the town library early that summer.  She was the mother I’d met at special needs playgroup, whose son shared the same diagnosis as my own, had traded “life is hard” stories with me [...]

First Day of School

I got in my car and followed the school bus.  R followed me in his car, both of us nervous and wanting to make sure that Michael didn’t freak out or meltdown on his first day of kindergarten. It was a big day at our house, a warm late August day.  R had almost missed [...]

The Difference of a Year

“We have a pool,”  the mother of one of Melinda’s friends said to me over the phone.  ”Would you like to bring the kids over this afternoon?” Her name was Sue, and she’d been the room mother of my daughter’s kindergarten classroom this year.  I’d volunteered in the library and reading to the kids once [...]

Playing the Game

I cornered Michael’s afternoon teacher at the end of the day.  Normally he came home on a special bus, the “short bus” as it was commonly known.  A bus that I’d sometimes had to belt him into, kicking and screaming as traffic backed up behind its red lights.  But today I was picking Michael up, [...]

Never Normal

It was time for our monthly meeting at Michael’s preschool.   To keep tabs on Michael’s progress, his school scheduled family meetings once a month to update the parents on the progress of their special needs child.  It was at these meetings that they would make suggestions about what could be done at home, if [...]