Why I Don't Send David To Neptune

On Monday as I was getting breakfast ready, David came to me with a serious look on his face and said, "Mom, something very, very important happened on Thursday and I forgot to tell you about it".

Well, shit.  Here we go again, I thought.  I had heard from David's teacher on a handful of occasions last fall about things he was not getting done in class or at home.  It seemed to be a matter of organizational skills and his ability to focus on the kinds of details that allow you to say, bring home the papers you need to do your homework.  (She's a terrific teacher and really knows David well, but she doesn't sugarcoat anything with the parents.  In one of my favorite parent-teacher moments, she gestured at his messy desk, overflowing with loose papers and referred to it as "a cry for help". )

Last fall, we'd had a number of conversations with David stressing his need to communicate with us.  To avoid getting in trouble, he'd taken to not telling us the things he'd forgotten to bring home or get done and that part of it made me crazier than anything.  Let me give you an example.  David does the Worldly Wise spelling program.  That means that each week he has to learn the spelling and definitions of 15 words.  The test is given on Fridays.    It's an independent study program and we've developed a great system that breaks it down into a week-long process.  But some weeks if there is a lot going on, his class doesn't have spelling.  It's David's job to know when there is or isn't spelling.  A few days after one of our talks on honesty and open communication regarding schoolwork,  and after denying that he had spelling that week, he tearfully admitted on a Thursday morning that he did indeed have a spelling test the next day.  My head nearly blew off.  I debated letting him just fail the test, but I didn't like the idea of letting him off the hook for doing the work.  Instead, he came home after school that day and worked on them all evening.  The next day he aced the test.    Still not exactly sure the lesson learned by that experience...

So, even though this issue hadn't come up for months, I braced myself to hear about some looming deadline or undone assignment.  Instead, this is what he said:  "On Thursday during P.E., Hannah held a hockey stick and tried to hit the ball with it.  It's the first time she ever tried to use the equipment." 

Hannah is a girl in his class who has a severe disability.  She and her younger brother have a genetic condition in which they are missing a part of the corpus collasum which connects the two hemispheres of the brain.  The condition is so rare that it doesn't even have a name and Hannah and her brother are thought to be the only two people in the world who have it.  Hannah doesn't talk at all but when she's happy, she smiles and flaps her arms to show she's excited.  David loves Hannah.  His favorite classroom job is to be Hannah Helper which means escorting Hannah to and from the classroom to her structured learning room or to recess.  (Another reason why I love his teacher is the way she introduced them to having Hannah in their class.  She told the class that the principal thought long and hard about which room would be right for Hannah.  He looked until he found a class that was filled with kind and caring children and that's where he placed her.  Not surprisingly, with a build up like that, the class has embraced her in a big way.)

The next time I was at school, I took a moment to speak with the aide who works with Hannah in the classroom.  She said it was indeed the first time Hannah had participated in any of the activities.  She and the P.E. teacher were thrilled.  The aide was amazed that David had even noticed, much less bothered to tell me. 

Something like this makes up for a lot of whistling.