What's Really Going On

Several months ago, BoyTwo was officially diagnosed with FAS.  Although I already knew that this was most likely what he was dealing with, I felt like I had been slapped in the face when I was told.  I was surprised at how sad I felt for him.  I know that he will continue to progress, at his own rate, I know that people with FAS can be successful, I know all of that.  I'm also aware of a lot of the statistics associated with FAS and those remain my concerns.  I'm scared for him.  It's tricky, you see.  BoyTwo is likely going to need assistance forever.  This may be in the form of someone helping him budget, grocery shopping with or for him, someone living with him.  He's going to need somebody to be his exterior brain.  This person will largely be responsible for helping him with his executive functioning (or lack there of).  He will need to be able to trust someone enough to rely on them.  Which gives us our next hurdle: teaching someone with attachment difficulties to trust.  The irony of it all.  It's just one giant circle of FAS causing other difficulties in his life. 

I was mad at his bio mom for a minute.  And then I just felt sad for her, too.  

This school year is going well for him.  He is in special ed/resource/whatever the current politically correct terminology for that class is at the moment for half of his day.  During the other half, he has pull outs for reading and his own personal aide comes in with him to do his work.  His behavior has come a long way.  His teacher has been great to work with and works so well with him.  I did my usual 'BoyTwo Training' for all those who would be working with him at the beginning of the year and that seems to have really helped.  

It's hard to watch the already large gap between him and his peers continue to widen.  I see little spurts of growth from time to time where something will click and that gives us all hope:)  My heart hurts for him because his peers are also getting old enough to see how different he is and while they are still very kind to him and extremely tolerant of his behaviors, this year there is a much different feeling between them all.  He doesn't really notice that he doesn't have any friends or that he is so different than others and I guess I'm grateful for that.  He does have one little friend.  Our neighbor who is four years his junior.  

I continue to spend much of my time at the school.  I started an art program and that has been really fun for me to do.  I  do a lesson for half the school one week and the other half of the school gets it the next week. We are learning about master artists, composers and authors.  I love introducing the students to these fascinating people, many of whom struggled with identity, learning disabilities and misfortune of their own.  I love the life lesson it provides to persevere, have faith in one's self, and to not be afraid to try.  I also come up with an art project to go along with each lesson and that has been... a huge learning curve.  I'm not at all artistic and as a child I hated art during school.  It caused me enormous stress to not be able to perfectly recreate the assigned project and to not be able to make my hands produce what my mind was envisioning.  One of my first lessons this year was about Picasso who has said that you cannot create a masterpiece without first making a mistake (or something along those lines.  I don't want to look up the actual quote).  I encourage the kids to not erase, but to make each seeming mistake into a work of art, to add interest to the piece and beauty and originality.  See how it's so much like real life?  

This semester I have homeschooled One part-time.  She comes home every day after lunch.  I have loved this time with her while she still likes me and thinks I know something:)  I love that we can personalize her curriculum and have one on one time together that we otherwise would not have.

Four has taken to reading like a whiz and this mama is so so so grateful.  After having four of my other kids with reading/learning disabilities, it is a blessing to see her take joy in reading and learning and to not struggle with it.  I love when she comes to me with a book in her hand and asks me to listen to her read.  It is the highlight of my day!

BoyOne is a sophomore in high school this year.  In our state this means it is also his first year at high school.  (Don't ask, I have no idea.  I didn't grow up here and I think it is so weird.  You're a freshman in high school but you don't actually go to high school.  Makes a ton of sense.)  Without getting to personal, it's not really working out for him for a lot of reasons.  As his parents, we are needing to adjust what our goals for his education are.  What was once a priority is not a realistic option without sacrificing an actual education.  We are in the process of making decisions that will be agreeable to both him and us.  I feel the added pressure of lack of time with him.  He turned 16 in September.  Shortly after his birthday he approached me and asked me where I thought he would be if he was still in Ukraine.  Then he told me about how different his life would have been had he remained.  It was good for me to hear because I've been feeling like the progress here has not been quite what I had hoped for and that perhaps we had failed him.    

Two and Three are doing well.  School is a challenge for them both and that weighs heavily on my mind constantly.  They work so hard at everything they do.  As I often tell them, they will be blessed by learning to work hard.

I am so grateful that I am their mother and that I get to be the one to journey through this life with them.  I'm immensely grateful that I have the opportunity to be a stay at home mom ( although whoever thought to call it that was smoking crack because what stay at home mom is actually ever home?!).  This gives me the opportunity to be ever present and available to them when they need help.  One of my biggest concerns this past year or so has been the lack of time I have with my kids before they leave my home.  I have tried to spend more time talking with them about eternal things, incorporating more heaven into our house than ever before.  I'm not magically more patient, we aren't magically getting along at all times and my kids haven't magically turned into scriptorians, but at the end of the day there is a feeling of love and peace that abides in our home.  Right now that is my number one goal.

CAPD

***warning.  loooooooooooong***

Monday Three was formally diagnosed with Central Auditory Processing Disorder, aka CAPD, a learning disability called Specific Language Impairment (SLI), along with a possibility of dyslexia.

CAPD is a group of problems that can occur individually or in combinations with one or more aspects of the central auditory process.  It is estimated that approximately 2-3% of the population has this disorder with boys outnumbering girls by 2:1.  People with CAPD do not have hearing loss.  There are ten processes that take place in processing sound once it is detected (heard).  Three has difficulties in seven of these areas.

SLI kids have difficulties with oral language outside the typical range and can be diagnosed by an SLP (speech language pathologist).  A variety of components of oral language may be affected (grammatical and syntactic development e.g., correct verb tense, word order and sentence structure, semantic development e.g. vocab knowledge, and phonological development.  Three is affected in all of these areas.  SLI kids may also have receptive or expressive difficulties.  Three has difficulties in both areas.  

If you're a little confused and overwhelmed by that information, join the club.  Prior to Monday, I had heard of CAPD back when Two was diagnosed with SPD (Sensory Processing Disorder).  I knew a precious little about it, but enough to know some of the 'red flags' for it, yet somehow had totally missed them.  Needless to say, I have had several sleepless nights as I have read and tried to comprehend pages of information provided by the doctor, scoured the internet and searched out other articles. 

Now that it's been almost a week, I feel more informed about CAPD, more stressed about finding therapy for it and far more aware of Three than I was before.

Interestingly, CAPD is a sensory related disorder as all of the steps for auditory processing happen on the sensory input side of things.  Two has a sensory disorder.  Hmm.  Is this hereditary??  These sensory related problems?  I don't know the answer to that yet.  There are certain aspects of sensory related problems that can be hereditary, but as far as sensory problems being hereditary?  Not sure.  

Let me relay the above information to you in a way that may make more sense.  At least in a way that makes more sense to me:

Last school year, when Three was tested for special ed due to extreme reading difficulties, she was denied services due to doing remarkably well on the tests.  However, at that time, it was discovered that she had a 'language impairment' and qualified for speech therapy.  It is important to note that this therapy is NOT for pronunciation/articulation of words as I once thought all speech therapy was for.  She was receiving therapy for expressive and receptive language skills.  Remember those words from the third paragraph above?  At the time of the IEP meeting, I did not realize that they were diagnosing her with something.  I was busy trying to figure out how she had done so well on her testing and why they were not going to help her when she could. not. read.  I simply thought that they recognized she had a little problem with both receptive and expressive language and that they were able to approve her for therapy for that.  Basically, I knew that she had a problem with this, but I didn't realize it was a learning disability or the extent to which she was affected by it.  Even after seeing their test scores.  I still was thinking that the school speech pathologist was just being really nice.  This was not a primary concern of mine.  Now it is.  It has been spelled out for me in a much more concise form.  I have learned a whole lot more about it.  Evidently it's a much bigger deal than I realized and while the speech pathologist is nice, she wasn't just being nice.

CAPD.  Let me relate this to something you may be more familiar with:  A person can have 20/20 vision and still be color blind.  Their eyes see just fine, their brain does not, for some reason, process color.  Three can hear just fine.  Her brain, for some reason, does not process sound the same way ours does.  What is this like??  Two examples.  

1) Have you ever been on a phone call with someone who is on their cell phone and they have terrible reception?  Or maybe you are the one on your cell and it has bad reception.  You are only hearing about every three words and the words you do hear, you are only hearing parts of?  I'm very familiar with this phenomenon.  We have TERRIBLE reception up here in the mountains where we live.  During the whole conversation you are trying SO HARD to figure out what the person is saying and trying to decode those words that you only heard a part of.  If your kids are being loud, you tell them to shush.  If you have the radio on, you turn it off in an effort to eliminate other noise so that you can better focus on the phone call you are straining to hear.  If you are driving and it's a call that you must stay with, you may even pull over because it is taking too much of your attention to continue driving and conversing.  That's pretty much how it is for Three.  When I heard this I was pretty skeptical, but I have the audiology reports to prove it.  Hard to be skeptical with that sort of information in your face.

2) I am SO grateful that I attempted to learn some Russian prior to my trip to Ukraine.  For far more reasons now than I was aware of then.  This is a HUGE blessing in my being able to somewhat understand what Three is going through.  This next example has to do with that.  When I went to Ukraine, I had learned the cyrillic alphabet.  This proved to be enormously helpful as I was able to read everything.  Even though I often read slowly, I could read it.  Because I had started to learn the Russian language, there were a few words I even understood.  When I read our court documents (the ones in cyrillic), I could read it all.  I could not understand but maybe half of it.  And just because I could read it all did NOT mean that I could pronounce it all correctly.  Also, when engaging in conversations with natives, I relied heavily on body language, facial expressions and the few basic words I was familiar with so that I could catch the jist of the conversation.  It was enormously helpful for people to speak to me more slowly than they typically would as it took extra time for me to process what they were saying.  When people speak quickly it often sounds as though they are saying one big, huge, long word (if you doubt me, let me tell you about BoyTwo who would. not. quit. singing 'eyelockamoomamooma' over and over and over.  What was he singing??  'I like to move it, move it,' from Madagasca.r.  He STILL thinks it's hilarious that he thought it was one big word.).  When I was in Ukraine I had to really concentrate and focus and decode (break down) the conversation in my head as the person spoke.  Often my response was slightly delayed (maybe only a second or two, but not usually instantaneous).  Not only were they speaking a foreign language with conjugations and masculine and feminine words that would change the ending on words in the entire sentence, they have sounds in their language that do not exist in ours.  They also have sound combinations that are not familiar to us.  This is what English is like for Three.  The same thing may sound different to her every time she hears it.

As for not diagnosing dyslexia at this time?  Although Three presents as though she is dyslexic, studies indicate that as many as 50-75% of people with SLI have problems reading and the statistics indicate similar numbers with CAPD.  Out of the seven people I have found (only one is in real life.  Four were mentioned as part of an article and the other two were blogs that pulled up that are not current) that have CAPD, three are also diagnosed dyslexics and the other three have significant reading struggles.  The last one is the real life person.  I actually only know her aunt and she wasn't sure about the reading thing.  It is possible that Three's reading difficulties are simply (haha as if any of this is simple) due to her SLI or CAPD.  

It is overwhelming to me, as I research therapies to improve Three's ability to process sound, that there are not very many options and that the options available all have conflicting reports of progress.  Where one person has significant improvements with one therapy, another has few.  Unfortunately all of these therapies are quite expensive (of course, not necessarily because they are trying to take advantage of you but because they are so intense.  Each one recommended to me by the doctor involves a minimum of 3 days a week, with 5 days a week being the recommendation, for at least one hour each session).   These therapies also take time to see results as we are literally trying to teach her brain something that it never learned, not to mention the fact that she is about two full years behind in her language development.  So it's not feasible that I 'try' something out for a few months without taking a loss either monetarily or time-wise if something doesn't work out.

How did I miss this??  How do you not notice that your kid cannot process language??  I don't know.   I did beat myself up over this briefly, and still do a few times a day, but in the end have decided it's not worth it.  I don't have time to feel bad about not figuring this out.  Also, I can think the same question two different ways:  why me?  1) was it something I did wrong when I was pregnant? etc, or 2) why did the Lord choose to bless me with this particular child who has this particular struggle?  He must have something up his sleeve.  I need to figure out how we are to use this to bless us and others.  

But really, I'm sure some of you are sincerely wondering how in the world I missed this and for you, I do have a few logical explanations.  Because she has poor language skills, Three cannot adequately express herself to me.  Because her sister right above her in age also has language difficulties that are/were more prevalent, Three's language difficulties didn't seem so bad.  It's hard to know that something is wrong when it seems to be so much better than the same thing in someone else.  Does that make sense??  There have been times before (but really only a few over the course of three + years of schooling) when she has told me, 'I didn't finish my worksheet because I couldn't hear how to do it.  It was too loud to hear my teacher.'  People, she's in second grade.  As this is not something she complains about frequently or even often, I thought it was a volume or sound issue.  I merely thought the kids in the class were just being kind of loud that day and that she literally couldn't hear the teacher very well over the noise.  Also, because this is how it has ALWAYS been for her, she doesn't know anything different and therefore does not complain about it hardly at all.  Every day she struggles with this.  (It's just like when I quit eating dairy and realized how sick I had been feeling every single day.  I didn't ever know until it had been taken care of.  I knew that I didn't feel great, but I had no idea I was feeling so badly because it was how I had always felt for my entire life.)  At home??  Well, I have one special needs child already, Two.  The way I interact with her carries over into how I interact with all of my other children.  Many of the ways I interact with her and the way we do things at our house already are 'recommended interventions' in how I ought to interact with Three.  Because I was always doing these things with her, I didn't notice anything odd.  There wasn't a time when I was NOT doing these things to notice something was awry.  Add to that, recently, two children that do not speak the same language as we do and we do a lot of pictures and body language and use few words (hard to believe, I know) when giving directives.  

Anyhow, enough words from someone who routinely uses limited spoken words at home:)

Valentine's Week

It feels like Valentine's Day was months ago. You know the days, weeks, and months that go like that:)

Monday started great! If you recall, I attended a field trip with Two all day that I had actually forgotten about and wasn't super excited about. Honestly, it was a huge blessing in disguise. I had been asked specifically by the teacher to attend as she would not be there. Well, wouldn't you know? One of the other parents in attendance has a son who was just diagnosed with dyslexia. She was a wealth of knowledge and gave me some good tips. Thank you Heavenly Father!! (by the way, working on getting an appointment with a neuropsychologist as this is the professional that officially diagnoses dyslexia. Problem now is that insurance won't cover the $2000 test citing it is supposedly covered in the 'no child left behind' act?! School says that they do not diagnose, only test to qualify a student for services to assist in making sure said child is not 'left behind.' aughhhhhh!!!) The field trip was great and I enjoyed spending time in the great outdoors herding children. It was especially good for me to see Two in a school setting outside the classroom to see how she is handling her SPD these days. Poor kid. Why do some have to struggle so much? I guess I know that answer. I just wish that every day life wasn't such a challenge for her.

After school a situation arose with BoyOne that caused us, as parents, to do a reality check. I forget that the boys haven't always been here, I mean not really, but things have been going just the way they have been going for so long, it feels like forever ago that it was any different. Anyhow, we realized that we were allowing for way too much 'slack in the leash'. No, we don't literally leash our children (although when we visit southern Utah and hike the red rocks we well may leash BoyTwo for his safety and I don't want to hear anything about it in that case), this is strictly metaphorical. Huz handled this particular situation because it was between them. This was a little hard for me because I am usually the disciplinarian in the family and it was hard for me to mind my own business. haha.

Monday led (obviously) into Tuesday and because of the previous night's events, it was pretty ugly for BoyOne. Which was unfortunate, being that it was Valentine's Day. I need to tell you how it broke my heart to watch BoyOne watching his younger siblings prepare for their class Valentine's Day parties. He will never have that. Yes, we had a family party. Yes, he bought some Valentines for a few people and passed them out. Yes, we tried to make it just as special for him as it was for the littles. But no matter what, it isn't the same. It was just one of those moments when it hit me hard that I can't take away the pain of his past or the fact that I wasn't there for it. :(

I dreaded BoyOne coming home from school Tuesday. He can be quite moody and it takes a lot out of me to deal with it. I was at the elementary (surprise!) and he got home from school about ten minutes before I arrived home. He left the house with the dog, which I wasn't super excited about. I knew he had jetted the second he saw I was gone so that he wouldn't have to see me until he wanted to. I was concerned because I was needing to leave again soon and I couldn't see where he was. He came home within about ten minutes and although he wouldn't really look at me or talk to me, I did get a grunt. He went straight up to his room (again, totally dreading this because I thought I was going to have to go get him because he was going to need to leave the house with me). As I prepared for the worst, he surprised me and headed down the stairs all on his own, carrying a Valentine for me. Long story (and post) short, he handled himself remarkably well. He interacted and played with his siblings during the afternoon hours, helped with his jobs, and was downright pleasant, although very much avoiding me. We have learned that when he is like this it is his thinking time. He goes through different phases of feeling angry then hurt, victimized, realizing what he did was wrong, feeling bad, feeling embarrassed, avoiding us while gaining courage to come to us and then in the end he comes around. Every time he goes through this process, he is more bearable during his phases. We haven't had to ask him to apologize for a long time. He comes to this on his own. Granted it may take a few days sometimes, but usually it only takes a day or so and it is his process that works for him.

By dinner time things were all good with the seven of us at home. When Huz came home, things were a little tense, but we still had a great evening together, all of us, eating our 'heart' meal. (heart shaped meatballs, heart shaped rolls, 'heart' of romaine salad, red stripey jello, and pink lemonade mixed with sprite bubbly in our mishmash of fancy stemware, followed by sugar cookies that were not dairy free, but totally worth it) Sure enough, a little later and on his own, he found Huz and apologized for what had happened.

As I watched him struggle through this all day, I noticed that he was growing up. Not just in his actions, but he is getting taller, his face is changing. It made me sad, yet again, that I had missed so much of his life.

Wednesday started out great! Until I received a few emails from teachers about BoyOne. Poor kid hasn't had the best week. But, he handled it like a champ. I had a couple of awesome friends that took my other kids for me so that I could go back to the school with BoyOne and BoyTwo (he just tagged along) to spend nearly three hours there working things out with teachers. I had to cancel my whole evening. Actually, his. He missed a soccer game and a church activity and a basketball practice. He was not happy, but again, handled it well. There were many sad tears, but no lashing out or raging. I was so proud of him. We have our work cut out for us academically. I will need to homeschool him two classes this summer and he will have to take one online course starting in a couple of weeks, but if we can get that all done then he can move on to 9th grade. Big sigh of relief from him (and me).

Today two kids were home sick and I was feeling pretty crummy myself, but my sister is in town and wanted to come ski with us, so after basketball practice for the middle girls we headed over. We had the mountain to ourselves. Seriously. There were only about ten other skiiers/snowboarders. BoyOne is a natural athlete and is working on his 180 and 360 on his snowboard off of jumps. (one of my girlfriends told me to just wait until he comes home and tells me he pulled off a back flip. I seriously CAN wait. I about pass out from anxiety when he goes off these jumps as it is) One is catching onto snowboarding, finally. She spent the first half of the season bugged that her older brother was better at it than her. She did better tonight than I've ever seen her do. She even went down some jumps without falling. Way to go toots! Two, Three and BoyTwo are maniacs. They go straight down the hill. Full speed ahead. Every once in awhile they like to give me a heart attack by flying through moguls and going off jumps. Because they are all so little, they fly. Four is finally as confident and able as she was at the end of last season which makes skiing a lot more fun and less work when we go. My sister has picked it up remarkably fast and, like before, is far braver than I. I wouldn't try the rails this time. I still have bruising from when I attempted them last time. That and I'm pretty sure I'll need to wear a depends.

So, tonight we ate dinner at 9:30 and then everybody fell into bed. Except me:) Here I sit typing, in between loads of dishes and laundry, marveling at this life of mine. There are a lot of times during the day where I feel like I'm drowning. Like there is just no way possible that I can keep up or do all that is required of me. And then we'll have a really great day or evening together. I remember that while it's nice to have clean clothes to wear, it's not totally necessary. I remember that even though I'm a stay at home mom who is never actually home, I am in the business of raising kids and if that means the house is trashed and we eat at 9:30, so be it. The progress that I see the kids each making (biological kids as well) is inspiring. Most days it is depressing because it feels like we are taking nine steps back for every one step forward. I worry that I might fail them as their mom, the one person who is supposed to advocate for them and make sure they get as fair a shot as possible at life through the things I teach them. But, after a week like this, that has been really, really rough? I honestly see the beauty of the progress in it. It's like the harder it is to get through a situation, the more I appreciate the little victories. The one thing that really keeps me going (besides the good people I am surrounded by) is the Lord being ever present. He continues to show me His presence in my daily life, wether I deserve it or not. That's the beauty of His love and of the atonement. It's always there and never fails. Even, and maybe more appropriately ESPECIALLY, when I do.

p.s. the elementary put BoyTwo on the bus today by accident. I made them radio the bus and have it pull over until I caught up with it and got him off. I'm still not willing to take that risk. The principal was awesome. He (obviously) was very apologetic about the mishap and even offered to ride the bus with BoyTwo when the day comes that we think he might be ready. I didn't have the heart to tell him it might not be until high school:)

Another Week/Dyslexia

I was hoping to title this 'A New Week', but instead, it is simply another week. BoyTwo and I did a lot of talking and acting things out on Friday. We even had our translator come over and 'translate' just in case BoyTwo needed it in his native language. What we found out was about what we anticipated. He is losing his language. He understands a fair amount of what we say, but not all things. Unfortunately, sometimes it's the most important things he misses, thus the translator. Huz worked with him this weekend. We felt really positive about sending him back to school on Monday, as did the school.

Friday night was my nephew's first birthday. This kid is so cute! It was so fun to watch him attack his cake. My girls were so not interested in having their fingers dirty, so this was a fun sight to see. BoyOne especially likes little kids and is good buddies with my nephew.

The best part of this weekend was that my mom surprised us all and flew in from TN. It was super fun. She's pretty awesome. This summer she spent her time in a hospital trying not to die from complications with cancer. It was really hard to be on the other side of the world while that was going on. Somehow, during all of that, she managed to find time to make quilts for all eight of her grandchildren plus a great niece and great nephew. I can't even make my bed in the morning. How does she do it?!

Saturday was another party. My middle sister is having a baby!! We are pretty excited. My sisters and I threw her a shower. It was fun, but also a stark reminder for me that I am no longer in the phase of life where I can entertain. Instead, I'm lucky to just be able to get somewhere. It was great fun to be together and eat (non dairy free) food. (yes we were all sick after)

Saturday evening, my youngest sister came up our way to go skiing. It was her first time. We had a blast. The boys were super pumped to show off their tricks and the girls were having a great time racing straight down the mountain. I decided to be brave and try to use a wide rail. Probably not the best decision I've ever made. I totally bit it and have the bruising to show for it. Niiiiiiice. I hope that someday in the near future I will be able to kneel again. My sister did quite well and was far braver than I. We hope that she can make it back up here soon for another snow day!

Sunday was fine. BoyOne even spoke during one of our church meetings about how he is glad to be in America and that he likes (he called us by our first names instead of mom and dad, which was a little odd because he never does that), and that we take care of him. It was very sweet. I missed at least half of what he said though because he was talking quite rapidly. I tell you, it DOES help to speak slower to someone who speaks a different language!!

Monday was not fine. (that would be today)

I drive carpool for preschool Mondays and then go straight to the elementary to volunteer and be available ICBE (in case of BoyTwo emergency). Unfortunately as I was walking through the stinking door, I was met with a certain little boy being brought to the principal's office for kicking and hitting.

AREYOUFREAKINGKIDDINGMEDOYOUNOTHEARA_____THINGWESAY?!

I chose to not deal with him as I desperately needed time to collect myself and begin to think in trauma mama mode instead of pissed off Stephanie mode.

At 11, he was still in the office and we had come up with a game plan. The kid can't do recess. He was doing so, so great for a few weeks and has been quickly sliding backwards. He loves recess. LOVES IT!! But it is too big of a trigger for him. He simply cannot control himself. He is so incredibly impulsive that being with him will make your head spin. So back to private recesses we go. We do not necessarily make this punitive. We do tell him that because he is hurting people, he needs time to practice playing and time to learn to be safe. It is directly tied to his actions, however, and is hopefully putting him in a frame of mind that will allow some teaching to take place.

Then, it was lunch time. He ate in the office (this is part of the recess deal. being around so many kids is a trigger for him and is just plain not safe right now) and then went into the lunchroom to throw away his tray. The administration realized too late that they should not have allowed him to do this. I do not fault them at all. All the time I think that he should be able to handle doing simple little things, but then he surprises me and cannot. He enters the lunchroom to discard his tray and takes off outside to recess. The admin is hot on his tail. The recess teachers see him enter the playground and head over to him to round him up and escort him inside.

During this brief (seriously, what could it have been, two minutes???) span of time, he picks up a snowball, chucks it at some icicles. The icicles break and fall. He picks up the ice. (Now he's doing something else that is absolutely against policy and he is well aware of this, but again, lack of control and impulse) He throws said ice at the head of a girl who he thinks may someday say something mean about him. Well, thank you very much BoyTwo, now she has reason to say something mean about you. He hit her square on the forehead and she has a small cut and goose egg to prove it.

He has never spoken to this girl. He has likely never even noticed this girl. She is in a different grade than he. She was playing away from him with her friend. She had her back to him, until she felt snow and ice pelting her and turned to see what was happening.

After I dried my tears of frustration, exhaustion and whatever else is going on while locked in a stall in the girls bathroom, I took him home. Another frustration I have is that he completely lied about what had happened. Even though what he did was much less of an offense that what he said he did, he chose to stick with his crazy story. Even after I told him that I knew he was lying, he sheepishly laughed and said, 'I know lie' (translation: I don't know why I lie), and continued to dish out tale after tale.

And someone was buying it!! This did not help. At all. This kid is King Manipulation. If there is one thing he mastered during his time in Ukraine, it was how to manipulate people into getting them to do what he wants them to do, think what he wants them to think, and how to get himself out of situations.

After several LONG conversations, I think we have a plan for tomorrow, but it is one that I'm not sure will continue after that.

PART 2

Does anyone know anything about dyslexia? I highly suspect one of my daughters is dyslexic and the school is suspicious. They have told me that they can test her to qualify her for special ed type of assistance, but that they can't diagnose. I also was not super thrilled with what they have said they would provide help with. I believe it should encompass more than just help with language arts, as reading is an integral part of math, science, etc. But I'll fight that battle when I have to. In the mean time, the school cannot/will not 'diagnose' her. Which is fine. They should not have to. They are not medical professionals, they have to be really careful what they say/do. I called my pediatrician. They do not diagnose dyslexia either. They referred me back to the school.

Who diagnoses dyslexia??? Nobody seems to know. There has got to be someone! This is not just something that you say you might have your whole life. 'I'm pretty sure I'm dyslexic,' or 'I might have dyslexia.' It just bothers me, probably more than it should, that nobody wants to find out if this is really what is going on! Sure, the school will do testing with her and make an official referral for special ed, but based on what?! That she needs help because something might be wrong with how she processes things?! Good heavens. Think about it. If somebody told you your kid might have cancer, let's start the chemo and radiation, wouldn't you like to know what's going on for sure?

And now, it's time for me to try to go to bed. My ranting is getting me all riled up again.