Advocating for change can be rough and challenging there are so many different things that you have to deal with and a lot of it doesn’t make sense, at least to me because it has nothing to do with helping our children. We’ve worked hard for a long time to change things for the children that will follow our children in school. The work we’ve been doing isn’t going to help our son, but it may help other children. We push and push with no other goal than to change things and that seems to irritate some. We represent no organization, we represent our son and children like him, that’s it. We’ve been pretty successful in the few states we’ve lived in and that’s because we don’t listen to the noise that vibrates around us. There’s always noise of the people or organizations who like to question the work that you’ve done. You know the ones I’m talking about, they’ve never been able to talk a legislator into introducing legislation that will help dyslexic children but they want to nit-pic and find fault with the work your family has done. I like to give those people the finger… in my mind. {Wink}
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Simply, don’t take no for an answer, at least not the first dozen times. I remember when we first got started trying to get some sort of legislation started for dyslexic children like my son and really had no idea what we were doing. A legislator responded to me and let me know that she forwarded my letter to someone on the state board of education. The state board of education person responded promptly about IEPs and my child’s rights which I appreciated, but I knew that stuff, I was looking for this legislator to help but she wouldn’t commit one way or the other, she just kept forwarding my emails to others which I knew because of the email responses I was getting. Finally, I asked her, to please stop forwarding my emails to others because she was the one I was looking to connect with to see if she would help dyslexic students. At that time the only information I could find about dyslexia legislation: a Texas Dyslexia Handbook, New Jersey had a reading task force and Hawaii had a resolution. I sent her a copy of Hawaii’s resolution and asked her if it was possible to have a law like that in our state. She decided to educate me about laws and resolutions and it was done in a way that may have made some feel like a dumb-ass, it was mean but in a highly educated and professional way. The problem with that, I’m okay with being a dumb-ass and she really did help educate me on laws and resolutions, even if that wasn’t quite what she was trying to do. I gave her the finger too…in my mind. I found out later through another legislator that dyslexia was added to a resolution which had a big list of other things involving the brain but it made it onto the paper.
***
You have to train yourself to not roll your eyes when you run into someone who is so rich, they sweat money and they like to act like they understand what dyslexic children in the public school systems are enduring. How could they possibly understand when their children are in private schools? We’ve run into some of those. One even called us street-smart because she was impressed with what we knew and had done, guess our working class vernacular gave us away and the fact that during some small talk, Neil shared something about a plumbing issue he had to fix at our house recently and her response was that she didn’t know people actually did that. She just thought we were wonderful and didn’t understand how we had accomplished what we had. Maybe she thought you could only buy change with big money, but time and hard work can do the same, just takes longer. You guessed it, I gave her the middle finger too….in my mind.
***
One year there was an organization that should have been thrilled that my family was able to work with a legislator who introduced dyslexia legislation that at least started the conversation about dyslexia in schools but they weren’t. I found out that they were actually thinking about taking a position against the legislation. Figure that one out, I didn’t try to figure it out, but I did give them the finger…in my mind.
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By the way, I don’t really have anything against people who are so rich that they sweat money, they just shouldn’t call someone street-smart when they probably don’t know what that even means. It will make you look like a pompous ass and you just might get the finger…. for real.
There are many people just like us who are working for change for their children too, legislators who are wonderful, they listen to you and join in working toward change and even some nice rich people. I wouldn’t give them the finger…just a smile and a big thumbs up.
***
Simply, don’t take no for an answer, at least not the first dozen times. I remember when we first got started trying to get some sort of legislation started for dyslexic children like my son and really had no idea what we were doing. A legislator responded to me and let me know that she forwarded my letter to someone on the state board of education. The state board of education person responded promptly about IEPs and my child’s rights which I appreciated, but I knew that stuff, I was looking for this legislator to help but she wouldn’t commit one way or the other, she just kept forwarding my emails to others which I knew because of the email responses I was getting. Finally, I asked her, to please stop forwarding my emails to others because she was the one I was looking to connect with to see if she would help dyslexic students. At that time the only information I could find about dyslexia legislation: a Texas Dyslexia Handbook, New Jersey had a reading task force and Hawaii had a resolution. I sent her a copy of Hawaii’s resolution and asked her if it was possible to have a law like that in our state. She decided to educate me about laws and resolutions and it was done in a way that may have made some feel like a dumb-ass, it was mean but in a highly educated and professional way. The problem with that, I’m okay with being a dumb-ass and she really did help educate me on laws and resolutions, even if that wasn’t quite what she was trying to do. I gave her the finger too…in my mind. I found out later through another legislator that dyslexia was added to a resolution which had a big list of other things involving the brain but it made it onto the paper.
***
You have to train yourself to not roll your eyes when you run into someone who is so rich, they sweat money and they like to act like they understand what dyslexic children in the public school systems are enduring. How could they possibly understand when their children are in private schools? We’ve run into some of those. One even called us street-smart because she was impressed with what we knew and had done, guess our working class vernacular gave us away and the fact that during some small talk, Neil shared something about a plumbing issue he had to fix at our house recently and her response was that she didn’t know people actually did that. She just thought we were wonderful and didn’t understand how we had accomplished what we had. Maybe she thought you could only buy change with big money, but time and hard work can do the same, just takes longer. You guessed it, I gave her the middle finger too….in my mind.
***
One year there was an organization that should have been thrilled that my family was able to work with a legislator who introduced dyslexia legislation that at least started the conversation about dyslexia in schools but they weren’t. I found out that they were actually thinking about taking a position against the legislation. Figure that one out, I didn’t try to figure it out, but I did give them the finger…in my mind.
***
By the way, I don’t really have anything against people who are so rich that they sweat money, they just shouldn’t call someone street-smart when they probably don’t know what that even means. It will make you look like a pompous ass and you just might get the finger…. for real.
There are many people just like us who are working for change for their children too, legislators who are wonderful, they listen to you and join in working toward change and even some nice rich people. I wouldn’t give them the finger…just a smile and a big thumbs up.