Back To School... Again...

School started this week...

             When? Who? What?

                         I'm not ready! No fair!








                           

And why start it right before Labor Day and then give the kids Labor Day off. Explain that...?

So with school starting, life gets so much busier. Rushed mornings, "did you get your homework done"? questions, packing lunches, following up with teachers... ugh..

 

The best thing of all? This is our second time around for 9th grade. We think my son has Asperger's. The problem with Asperger's? The almost impossibility of anyone to positively diagnose it. Many visits to the doctor, visits to a psychologist and still no one can say definitively what he has.

Asperger's is a form of high functioning Autism.  

My son is very smart. He LOVES talking to people. The problem, like many people with Asperger's is the difficulty in reading social cues. It makes it hard for him to make friends. It makes it hard for him to know when he should be quiet and when it's appropriate to talk. Most of his teachers find him absolutely charming. He is very polite. He opens doors. He knew how to say please and thank you as young as 2 years old.




But with kids, reading cues get tricky and as anyone that has kids knows, kids can be really cruel.

..And this was the reason my son said he intentionally failed 9th grade. He simply didn't want to be with the kids in his current class.

Is that sad or what?




When I see "My kid is an honor student at XYZ school, I often think that there should be an ode to the parents who's kids are not "perfect" in the eyes of the school/public. We want our kids to succeed too. We spend endless nights playing catch up with homework and emailing and phoning teachers trying to make sure our kids are doing what they are supposed to.



And we worry.

We worry that they don't see how their actions now drive their success in the future.

We worry what kind of future they will have.







But we look to the future with hope. Hope was the last thing in Pandora's box, it was the only true gift there.

Maybe 9th grade will be better the second time around.