Holy crap this has been a rough few weeks. I don’t know how I could have gotten through it without you.
This assessment process has been absolutely brutal, as I get an hour with different experts to convince them of my boy’s potential and try to explain the bundle of obstacles and eccentricities that explain his performance. There were many many moments where I felt completely defeated and that I must be that awful mother who is convinced her child is perfection while everyone else sees reality.
But I did learn a few lessons and I have a few new priorities to help Atti accomplish as much as he can. I think his vision is really affecting things, so I need to get back to the eye doctor as soon as I can. As I watched his performance on these tests, I really began to suspect that he has limited depth perception. Particularly when it came to distinguishing a 2D object.
I also found a problem area that I was completely missing – he has trouble responding. He talks so well when it’s his idea that I hadn’t caught on, but he won’t answer a question. This could be because he’s a little butthead sometimes, it could be straightened out in speech therapy, or it could be a sign of brain damage. There’s no way to know until he reaches a limit.
Gearing up for this process, I had my heart set on a program where typically developing kids make up one half of the students, and kids with a variety of needs make up the other half. I know this little guy is bright, and I didn’t like the idea of having him in a Special Ed class exclusively. The special ed’s of my childhood still live in my brain and I didn’t want him there. I don’t want him ostracized, ignored, or ‘different.’
But then we went through test after test and I saw how there are significant gaps in his development. He doesn’t know his colors. He won’t look at a picture and tell you what it is. He won’t stack blocks. But he can count to 20 and knows his letters by sight. One specialist was telling me he was intellectually disabled, one told me he was developmentally disabled, and I began to doubt that I knew best. Maybe I didn’t know my child the way I thought I did.
One of the rounds of tests Atti had to do was academic placement. I had no idea who the man was administering the tests, I had given up trying to keep everyone straight by this point, but I assumed he was another psychologist or something. We went to our second appointment with him and it was just in time to meet the other kids on their way home and discover that he was actually the Special Ed teacher. He gave Atti the test and was so positive and supportive that I burst into tears there in front of him.
After a solid week of fighting to prove that my child was bright and capable, having this man say, “He’s so bright! His language blows me away!” reduced me to a red-faced puddle. Suddenly, I didn’t care what label Atti had to wear or what interaction he’d have with typical kids, I wanted him to be taken care of by this man.
Having a teacher who I felt actually saw my child made me abandon any other plan I had.
We had one last appointment with the psychologist today and at the end of our meeting we talked a little bit about Atti’s future. I told him how I was still convinced of his potential and would want re-evaluation in the future. I believe Atti will be able to catch up. I told the psychologist that I have been so focused on developing Atti’s motor skills that many of the concepts he was being tested on were pretty knew to him. Atti just doesn’t play the same way other kids play. The psychologist asked me what Atti would have been like if I hadn’t done things that way and the realization took all that sense of defeat and swept it away.
The answer came immediately. If I had done things differently, Atti wouldn’t be mobile at all. It was the right thing to do, no matter what the test says.