Defeated

“I feel like such a failure,” Wolfie said to me this afternoon, crying giant tears following a meltdown after school. It is in these moments that I feel like I have failed him. What am I doing sending him to school each day when mostly, it makes him feel like this? Really, what am I doing?

This thought goes through my head more often than I’d like.  I want so badly to take him out of school and home school him, but would that be better? Could I provide the learning environment that he needs? Is it fair to have Hammy in a school and Wolfie at home? Could I handle having them both at home all the time? Would I be stunting their social growth?

The trouble with all these questions is that it depends on who you ask. There is no right answer. It isn’t black and white. There is so much grey. I am not comfortable in the grey. When I really examine how I feel I have this horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that I will regret this public school decision. It comes to the fore front of my mind like someone punching me in the face when I hear my 7 year old son tell me he feels like a failure.

I want to celebrate the good things about my children. I want to praise them for and give them opportunities to utilize their strengths.  I am tired of hearing that everyone is special and that in order to be fair, blah, blah, blah. Our public schools are set up for the most common denominator. They aren’t set up for the uncommon. Individual strengths are traded in for collaborative group strength. What if your strength is one that doesn’t mesh well with the group? What if the group can use the strength, but you aren’t comfortable with the collaboration? Is it still valuable? The answer lies in the individual teacher and how he or she chooses to run the classroom.

This is precisely the problem with school. It is one transition after another and very little consistency. One teacher might offer many chances and another only gives one. One teacher may celebrate the children doing the right thing, and another places the focus on what you’ve done wrong. To a typical child this is confusing. To my aspie child it is maddening, more than frustrating.

He participates in the gifted program at his school and at the end of each day there is a sheet of paper to be sent home outlining the lesson and activity for that day. At the bottom of the page is an area for the children to rate how well they participated, listened, used their time, cooperated, and were committed to the task. The choices are 1, needs improvement, or 2, meets expectations. He gave himself 1 1/2 most of the time and a 1 3/4 for cooperation. The teacher gave him all 1’s. This is why he was so upset. He thought he had tried really hard, but saw from his scores for the day that it wasn’t enough. He said he felt like it was never enough. He said he felt like quitting.