When I look at my kids, I don’t think Oh, woe is me, my children have specific learning disabilities, everyone should tiptoe around them, walk on egg shells or handle them with soft, fuzzy gloves. I do get angry at school systems who are slow to acknowledge that there are better ways to work with children with SLDs and that since budgets are tight, sometimes they continue to claim ignorance or budgetary issues when the research is in and there is not a knowledge gap, just an action gap. Every time they do that they aren’t saving money, they’re failing our children, our future, but as long as those types of leaders can sleep at night and until we can get leaders in place that will make the necessary changes, this is what we’re stuck dealing with. I believe SLDs have made my children tough, thick-skinned individuals who readily speak up for themselves because they’ve had no other choice. Sure, they’ve had some really bad days when they’ve run into people who choose to ignore what helps make them successful in school and begged me not to make them go back to school, but I push them out the door anyway because in our house, you own your SLD.
It’s taken some time to get to where we are as a family in our understanding of special education. Time to come to the understanding that no one is going to help you get through the school system that chooses to misunderstand your child, so, you bob-and-weave all the way to the finish line and grab that diploma. Sometimes you get lucky and get a reprieve by running into an administration and staff that is all about working to understand how to make your child successful and at other times you start to bob-and-weave again. It’s a system that continues to beat down our children with SLDs and it is up to our children to decide to continue to get up in spite of that and become successful. So, if you are in a school that is supportive of your child with dyslexia, dysgraphia or dyscalculia, that’s wonderful and I know they’re out there because my children have lucked into a few of those themselves. If you’re in a school district that is continuing to fight you on helping to make your child with SLD successful, work as hard as you can to get your child to own their SLD and let them know that they're not the problem, the problem is a system that hasn’t taken the time to catch up with them yet.
It’s taken some time to get to where we are as a family in our understanding of special education. Time to come to the understanding that no one is going to help you get through the school system that chooses to misunderstand your child, so, you bob-and-weave all the way to the finish line and grab that diploma. Sometimes you get lucky and get a reprieve by running into an administration and staff that is all about working to understand how to make your child successful and at other times you start to bob-and-weave again. It’s a system that continues to beat down our children with SLDs and it is up to our children to decide to continue to get up in spite of that and become successful. So, if you are in a school that is supportive of your child with dyslexia, dysgraphia or dyscalculia, that’s wonderful and I know they’re out there because my children have lucked into a few of those themselves. If you’re in a school district that is continuing to fight you on helping to make your child with SLD successful, work as hard as you can to get your child to own their SLD and let them know that they're not the problem, the problem is a system that hasn’t taken the time to catch up with them yet.