Excitement is muddled with fear as a new school-year approaches. I’m ready for some quiet around the house but I have two kids with special needs and the back to school terrifies me.
My youngest has Down syndrome and she thrives on routine. We had Kindergarten down! She was in a co-taught classroom with the regular kindergarten teacher and a special ed teacher. It was great! There was a bathroom attached to her classroom. She adored her teacher.
Things change in first grade, and there is no co-taught classroom. I also had to make a choice between regular curriculum or special curriculum for kids with cognitive disabilities (as they call it). It stinks.
There is no bathroom attached to her new classroom. She will have a locker. She will have a new teacher. She will have new classmates. For my child who strives on routine and sameness, this is a lot of new and I don’t like it one bit. Nobody in her class knows her yet. This is terrifying!
Worse, her speech makes it hard for her to communicate what happens in school. “How was your day?” Is sadly not a conversation I’ll have with my child, at least not to the extent I wish we could. What if someone is mean to her? What if someone picks on her and calls her names? What if they make fun of her? It is terrifying!
My middle daughter has cerebral palsy and a number of other diagnoses. She had the same teacher the last two years and she needed that consistency, yet this time around we don’t even know who her new teacher will be. Not a great feeling for a child with attachment issues, post traumatic stress, and clinical anxiety (yes, besides her depression and ADD).
She will have a new class. New classmates. More kids that will ask her, “Why do you walk like that?” and, ” Why do you have those things on your legs?” She already hates the fact that she has cerebral palsy.
I know we will take it one day at a time. I know teachers and therapists alike will care for my kids. I know my girls go to a great school and they have great supports in place, but this mama’s heart feels heavy.
And it is in situations like this that I recognize how different life can be from typical families. Although I have similar fears with my oldest (and typical child), it does not compare to the fears I have for my vulnerable kids. Not even close!
I pray often that my girls find friends, that they feel loved and accepted, and that they navigate the new school year with grace and self-assurance.
I’ll most likely be the mom crying that first day of school. And I really hope I don’t drive their teachers crazy when I ask them 100 questions on our open-house day. “Who will be with Nichole during recess?” “Who is helping her when she has to go to the bathroom?”
As much as I wish I could keep them home with me, I know this is good for them…and good for me. Ultimately, I want my children to become their own advocates. I want them to stand up for themselves, I want them to learn to use their voice. And these new challenges, such as a new school year, provide an opportunity for growth for all of us. For me, to let go. For them, to go on. Still, I’m terrified!
Special Needs Parents, Are You Surviving?
I created a guide with 13 practical ways to help you find peace in the midst of chaos, opt in to make sure you get a copy of this freebie!
I am so scared too!!!! My kids are homeschooled, we are starting a new adventure with 5 other families this year, a kind of makeshift montesory kind of an environment in one of the family’s homes that used to have a private montesory in it. It is exciting but so scary. We are finishing up evaluations that are pointing to Fetal Alcohol Effects. Invisible disabilities with wounds that are deeply imbedded in their brains, that to therapy or time will ever heal. I am just heart broken. So to figure out how to live life with this new diagnosis, and figure out how best to help them today and in the future looms large and scary. I love your writing. Your peace is something I strive for. I don’t have it. I feel frantic so much. I want to be calm and cool and figure out life. I hope I will find that some day. In the mean time, I read you blog. Thanks for sharing your life.
Good luck as you tackle the new home school adventure, it sounds like you will all have support from the families involved! I am not sure that calm is something I have a lot of 😉
Love your blog and can relate to this feeling even though my son has yet to start school. My son is only 2.5 years old but his future schooling is scary to me. He has a physical disability that makes him unable to transport himself. Thus far, my wife has been able to stay home with him and help him develop. I pray a lot that God would send us helpers in teachers that see his potential and assist him in becoming an independent adult. It’s a vulnerable feeling knowing he will need help and not being certain he will get the help he needs to get there.
Bryan, praying for your family too, I think those early years can be quite overwhelming, I remember being there!
Hang in there. A little secret…for those of us who care how ALL kids do on their first days of school, it scares us, too. We only want so much all the things you want for them. We just can’t always tell you that. We have to appear confident and like we know the answers to all the questions. Maybe for teachers this is different, but maybe not. Day by day. It is all God asks for every day, and more so for the tough ones.
Me too! More than any other year…4 kids 3 with special needs and the ‘typical’ one is showing more anxiety…the special program for my teen will have new staff…and that’s all I know…I took my anxious one to school so he could practice walking to his class when the hallway was not crowded, and he wasn’t allowed…and spent the next 3 hours in a dangerously giddy anxiety reaction…last year, we never seemed to get into our ‘school groove’ and I was trying to avoid some of the same pitfalls this year…and some days, I just have to accept that I can’t control it.
Like you, we have good schools, and I know they will do their best…I just want more for my kids than ‘trial and error’ awkwardness.
I have to tell you, I grew up when they were just starting to mainstream. And yes kids can be cruel, ask a lot of questions, and be inappropriate. However it is a great way for them to learn too. That we are all different. I can’t say that it influenced me to be a nurse, but as I nurse I had that influence.
Sometimes bad and uncomfortable things happen to all of us, it’s part of learning to grow up, to be able to handle it.
Being a parent that communicates w your child, will help you to help them over the rough spots.
As for the non communicative or hard to understand child. Maybe she needs one of those Camera’s to wear that seem to be enthusiastically worn by sports people of late. It might give all the adults an idea of what it’s like to be a special needs child.
Oh I don’t know what type of cameras you are talking about, but I’m interested!
Breathing a prayer for you all right now! We feel our way forward one day at a time, knowing He is with us! Bethany (ds) is in 7th grade and we’re doing part time home school part time public school. Every decision in our kids lives bring up so many questions- Praying the Lord guides us every step of the way that they might fulfill His purposes and plans! thanks for sharing your heart Ellen! You’re so precious!
Thanks Cindy!
Deep breaths, mama! They are going to rock this out! And so will you!