Love the Kid you’ve Got

How much time do you spend being frustrated about what your child cannot do? How much anger do you have over what your child refuses to do? Is it serving you or is it draining the strength you have to handle the things that are within your control?

During COVID

Michael is a kid who thrives on routine and who is soothed by clear expectations.  There are different expectations at home and at school and he is okay with that. But, during COVID, he was expected to do school things from home and that was very tough for him.

At first, I tried hard to get him to log onto zoom classes with his special needs buddies. Michael hated it. He had a student in his class who had trouble sitting quietly and she had a stutter, so she was making noise almost constantly. He couldn’t attend to what his teacher was saying, and he wasn’t getting anything out of it. Even his one-on-one therapy sessions were very hard for him to follow.

Leave Meeting

Quickly, Michael began clicking ‘leave meeting’ as soon as he became frustrated or bored. Rather than fight it, I decided to speak with his teachers. I explained that it was extremely unlikely that Mikey would need to know how to participate in zoom meetings or classes in his adult life.  The schools were trying, but for Michael (and lots of kids like him) there was almost no value in zoom school.

So

I opted Michael out. I told the school it was fine with me if they re-wrote his IEP to include only things I could do with him at home like laundry and other daily living skills. Will needed to do zoom school so he could graduate high school and go on to college. Mikey did not.

I was expending tons of energy trying to force Mikey to conform to a system that (in retrospect) was not even serving typical students well. I made the decision that Mikey was absolutely correct – he had no need for what school was offering during the pandemic and we collectively clicked ‘leave meeting.’