Stop blaming yourself — or your kid.




The beginning of the school year is a period of great anticipation and anxiety for parents, especially if your kid is heading off to school for the first time. For many families, that anxiety quickly dispels, as your kid settles in with a new teacher, new or returning friends, and a routine that offers a mix of stability and challenge.

For other families, however — families like ours — that settling in never happens. When you have a child whose particular combination of gifts, challenges and personality simply don’t fit their school, the beginning of school (or the beginning of each school year) ushers in a period of crisis.

We’re now four years into that crisis, and after talking with a friend who’s just starting down a road that sounds like ours, I realize I’ve learned something about how to navigate the challenges of school with a kid who doesn’t fit the mould. (Here’s a short version of our story.)

If you run into challenges as your kid starts school — or if you’ve been struggling with school challenges for a while, as we have — perhaps some of these suggestions can help:
1.Listen to this podcast. I had long since set aside Ross Greene’s book when our child psychologist recommended his podcast. Listening to the very first episode is transformative. Seriously, you need to do this for yourself. The other episodes I’ve listened to are great too, but the first one is the one that actually made me feel better.
2.Remember that school issues are harder for your kid than they are for you. If you’re getting emergency calls from school that force you to leave work, or facing daily battles over getting to school in the first place, it can feel like the school struggle is your struggle. But if your kid is having such a tough time with school that it’s disrupting your work or family life, then your kid is probably having an even harder time than you are. Approaching this with empathy — rather than as something your kid is doing to you — will really help build and preserve the relationship you need if you are going to figure it out together. And believe me, that will be incredibly hard to remember at the moment that you are dragging a screaming 7-year-old to class so that you can make your urgent 9 a.m. client meeting.
3.Recognize the differences between school and life. One of the things we really struggled with was the sense that we had to make Peanut fit into school — instead of vice versa — because in the real world, you have to be able to follow the rules. But the truth of the matter is that school requires a lot more rule-following than life does. Adults have a lot of opportunity to find the type of work, workplace, and social context that works for them; school is mostly one-size-fits-all. Kids who have a hard time in school aren’t necessarily going to have a hard time in life. So don’t feel that making your kids fit into the standard school system is an indispensable part of turning them into happy, healthy, successful adults.
4.Look for flexibility. Your school may set the expectation that kids attend full-time or not at all, but in practice, you may find that they are willing to accommodate a different kind of arrangement. We’ve done half days, we’ve sent Peanut part-time to public school and part-time to enrichment classes, we’ve done homeschooling with supplementary classes at a private school. The one thing that our public school system was not willing to accommodate was the idea of sending someone other than a parent as an in-class helper, because it violates collective bargaining agreements. (I get that you can’t have well-off parents paying to send additional resources into the classroom, but it bugs me that this essentially privileges families that can afford to have a stay-at-home parent.)
5.Be the squeaky wheel. Part of what has made our guy so challenging is that he absolutely will not put up with a situation that doesn’t work for him: if he’s bored or frustrated he brings the whole classroom to a grinding halt. That makes life difficult for his teachers, classmates and family, but it also ensures he gets his needs met. But a lot of kids — especially girls — may turn their school problems inward, so that it manifests as anxiety, disengagement or tears instead of disruption. In either scenario, don’t trust that the school will sort things out: advocate vociferously for your child. Ask for a support worker to come in and develop a plan to work with your kid, and insist that the teacher actually follow it. Meet with the teacher every week, and the principal once or twice a month. Ask what they are hearing and seeing in the classroom, and tell them what accommodations or supports your child needs. Be prepared to be pushy, and make sure that the teacher and school follow through on any plans you discuss.
6.Go with your gut on who to trust. Schools, psychiatrists and other experts love to tell you that they know how to handle kids like yours. Maybe they do…and maybe they don’t. We spent a lot of time listening to and working with “experts” whose approach and perspective just didn’t gel. Over time, I’ve learned to trust my gut on who to work with: we’ve worked with two amazing psychologists, a wonderful developmental paediatrician and an incredible public school support worker who took a shine to Peanut in kindergarten and has stayed in touch (entirely beyond the call of duty) for four years. We chose Peanut’s new school in large part because I feel like the principal really gets him. I wish I’d spent less time working with people who never felt right to me, and just followed my instinct to find and work with the people who clicked.
7.Learn the lingo. If you’re plunging into the world of kids-that-don’t-fit, you’ll come across a lot of jargon and acronyms. A few crucial terms:
• ASD — autism spectrum disorder
• LD — learning disabled
• 2E — twice exceptional, i.e. gifted + LD
• DS/DD — dear son/dear daughter, widely used to refer to kids online (e.g. DS9 = 9-year-old boy)
• Gifted/highly gifted/exceptionally gifted/profoundly gifted — gifted comes in a lot of different forms, and kids at the extreme end of the gifted spectrum have their own particular challenges. It’s worth figuring out (roughly) where your kid falls on this spectrum.
8.Get assessed. There are lot of different assessment processes out there, but the psych-ed (psychological-educational) assessment seems to be the usual starting point. If your kid is having issues, get in line for an assessment as soon as possible, with the best person you can get in to see. If you’re relying on the public school system to provide that assessment, it may take a couple of years before you get an appointment; if you have the means to pay for it, it may be worth having a private assessment sooner. If you have extended benefits, some parents have found psychologists who will split the fee (typically $1500–2k) across both parents and child (since the parents are part of the process) so that it can be covered by your benefits. But a psych-ed doesn’t fully assess for autism, anxiety, ADHD or other mental health/developmental issues, so you may need separate assessments with a developmental paediatrician, psychiatrist, occupational therapist or other experts. Keep all your assessments in one place (ideally a folder full of PDFs), because the chances are good that you’ll need them again and again.
9.Hone your own expertise. I spent a long time deferring to experts before I started reading up on 2E kids myself. Some invaluable resources: Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnosis of Gifted Children and Adults (a must-read); Dan Siegel’s The Whole-Brain Child; Ross Greene’s The Explosive Child (I hate the title, but apparently so does he).
10.Find other challenged parents. When you’re parenting a challenging child, it can be incredibly painful to be part of the everyday conversations that parents have, comparing notes on their kids. At a certain point I just couldn’t be part of those conversations anymore, so I sought out parents who were having atypical parenting experiences: friends with kids who had learning or behavioral issues, parents I met through homeschool programs, other moms I met on Facebook groups. It only takes one other family like yours — or one other friend who has similarly challenging kids — to transform the lonely experience of raising a challenging kid or navigating the school system. Facebook is a great place to find groups for parents with similar challenges, and there are also forums and email lists for just about every type of kid and family.
11.Let go of the one-school dream. When our son started kindergarten we were excited about having only one set of pickups and drop-offs, because he would be at the same school as his big sister. In retrospect, I wish we’d never entertained that one-school dream, because it made it harder for us to recognize that our kids have very different needs and might need very different schools. The hassle of two sets of pickups and drop-offs is a lot less than the hassle of constantly negotiating with a school that is a poor fit.
12.Rule nothing out. I would never have expected to homeschool, but it’s turned out to be the only viable option for us at this stage. Homeschooling doesn’t have to mean teaching your kid yourself; it’s shocking how many fully certified teachers are available on Craigslist for $18/hour. (Though in my experience, hiring a teacher may replicate the same problems you find in schools — because they are trained the same way. But there are lots of other kinds of tutors and therapists available, too.) My husband would never have expected to send a kid to private school, but when you have a kid who just can’t be accommodated in the public system, that may be something you need to rethink, too. The more you can stay open to a wide range of possibilities, the easier it will be to find something that works for your kid and your family.
13.Don’t expect anything to stay the same. Once you do the work of finding a schooling approach or arrangement that can work for your challenging kid, you may breathe a sigh of relief and thank god that you’ve figured it out. But if you’ve got a challenging kid, don’t expect your great arrangement to last forever. In the past four years we’ve had to reinvent our school, childcare and work arrangements every six months. That’s a problem in and of itself — I’m sure our kids and careers would benefit from more stability! — but it’s been an inevitable consequence of a challenging kid who needs skilled tutors and caregivers…the kind of people who go back to grad school instead of committing themselves to five years of working with our family. Accept the likelihood that you’ll have to reinvent your arrangements periodically, and leave enough wiggle room in your life that you’ll have the capacity to cope when you reach the next crisis, staff change or transition.
14.Don’t expect anything to change. For the first three years of our school struggles, we kept expecting to turn the corner and find the school, teacher, medication, parenting approach or developmental stage that would see Peanut settle into school. Once I stopped expecting the miracle cure, things got so much easier. I re-organized my work around the possibility that I’m going to have a very challenging kid for another three, five or even ten years. I started treating every day as a new day — not just to let go of resentments from a bad day, but even more importantly, to be prepared for a rough day even if the previous day or week had gone well. Best of all, I stopped seeing Peanut as a problem to solve, and actually just got to experience him as my kid — my fascinating, exasperating, amusing, suffering, loving kid.

This post originally appeared on alexandrasamuel.com. Do you have suggestions or comments? I’m @awsamuel on Twitter.

wonder why so many foreign letters appear in any articles posted here..

ya ever notice that?

Great topic.
I wanted to homeschool, but my child was far too strong willed/fiesty. Mental exhaustion made me send her to a private school.
At 11 she was deemed unteachable and had to spend her days in the Principal's office.(She always challenged and questioned her teachers too much)'
I withdrew her and took her to another school, where the Principal said she was the worst student he had had in the history of his schooling :(
Anyhow, to cut a long story short, I put her on home correspondence where she learnt via tutor home visits, the internet and telephone conversations with her tutors.
In hindsight, I should have put her in a school where the child's learning is based on the required curriculum and their personal way of learning and their interests.
Some children just do not fit into the school system, I never did and neither did she.

It is the speech marks.
After posting, you have to go back and change them to the apostrophe and then the 'foreign letters' are no more.

I am lazy when it comes to editing articles ..sorry :)

Your daughter sounds like she is very intelligent. My five year old son is pretty good at giving the teachers a run for there money he is really good at convincing people to believe him about pretty much everything. I think he will make a good lawyer or politician lol

Oh my goodness!! Well said!! I've been fighting public schools for 3years to evaluate my severe ADHD son. With no results. He is super intelligent however due to the fact he is disruptive and gets bored easily kids truly bully him. I'm so glad to hear another parent address this. I pray this will be the year that he is able to get the IEP he needs to succeed. I thank you for your post!!!

Ha ha, the little love of our lives may be challenging, but have all the capabilities of being phenomenal leaders/artists/business owners etc.
What you sow in tears you reap with job later.

Getting my oldest who is 12 on an IEP was a night mare. At first the school said that he was ADD their is a questionnaire that the school does then one is sent for home.

A doctor follows up on the results he was put on medication that did not change anything. So I had him tested for Central Auditory Processing disorder he has that not ADD. Good by meds hello IEP eventually they even gave him a lap top because my 12 year had occupational therapy to help with his printing. The reason he was able to get occupational therapy is because I new someone who talked to a person that worked with schools.

Even though my 12 year old is on an IEP program I still had to get him a tutor geared to teach him for his needs in order for him to do well in school. So yes it is a constant battle.



I went at things at a different angle for my five year old the Early Years Center recommended that I get a Community Living worker

The community living worker was great she worked with my five year old as well as my daycare for about two years he also went to the Children's Centre until he was ready for school. He is now in SK and doing pretty good he is supposed to be monitored by the schools resource teacher but I am not holding my breath.

They will thank you for all your sensitive hard work one day.
I laughed when I read in the article about how the mother felt isolated around other parents whose children fitted into the school system.
When called into schools by the teacher's/principal's or personally addressed with my child's behaviour by other parents, I used to feel they were looking for bad parenting skills to justify why my child was 'different'.
The simple fact was, she was gifted, it was noticed by the age of 2 when at daycare she remembered every parents/child's shoes and lunchboxes and would help them leave at the end of the day by retrieving them.
What a delightful soul she was and is now at 16.
Good luck with your future 'schooling'

Your doing a great job a pat on the back :) Your daughter is going to make a great adult but I hope she is enjoying being 16 it will fly past in a blink of an eye.

The school gives me a hard time with my youngest as well. I know what you mean absolutely. Sticking up for my kids constantly has led to the teachers not liking me very much ..oh well.

Sure hurts my heart that laws I helped write years ago (94-124 Equal, Appropriate, Least Restrictive, is still such a hurdle for young families to get enforced.

Having moved around many times I had to deal with at least a dozen school systems and writing IEPs for pretty much my son's entire educational experience; even as and adult at the college level. So I know how draining it is just dealing with my own not to mention watching a child you love suffer through it.

I would recommend the following.

You get to be on the pity pot only about a minute a day.

Cry, pull your hair, stomp, and be bummed out only in small doses. You may be cheating the normal grieving process, which does take a toll but you really don't have the time or energy to get bogged down in that and neither does your kid. Especially as each new stage comes along you get a new set of challenges so it is not over for many years to come. Write a journal and cry about it later.

Remember "You are the only true expert when it comes to your kid".

That is if you make yourself a professional in their care. You get and easy kid you don't have to learnt he vocabulary, study the modalities, learn about the easy outs that some of the popular cures throw out there before they are really tested, medication being a big one, and you can buddy up with just about anyone for peer support. You get a kid who is the Exception well you have to up your game. Your local hospital is likely to have a good library and you get a real good relationship going with the local librarian because the books are expensive. (Many of which are available at Good Will or Peer Support Group swaps.

Learn from yesterday, live for today , plan for tomorrow.

You may find some of the same problems reoccur over and over but you can get better with practice on what you have learned. Not torturing yourself for yesterday and or borrowing trouble from tomorrow is going to make getting through one day at a time is a lot easier. HOWEVER looking ahead and asking for experienced mentors to help you address upcoming problems is helpful. Yes with each generation things do improve and some problems are considerably lessened a lot of things can be "worked toward" and learned in baby bites. And some of the things kids do at some ages may be delayed for years or even not happen for decades. Things like being sexually active, dating, driving, and holding and independent job, or living independently may take decades. Plan accordingly. But looking for options very early can adjust how you address situations. Example; bus training. Kids with major medical expenses have a hard time affording a car even if they can learn to drive one. If you are going to have a kid who has to come home from school on melt down days you have to plan for alternative transportation. In the real world that may take some serious networking or expensive intervention care. Finding that person is worth the effort. Sooner or later you will need it.

One person can not challenge a whole school system budget; take a team.

Especially one that does not want to spend the money it is going to take to educate your child. But they know what the budget is and you have every right to force them to come up with the money. But it helps to plan for it; and if you help the school district pursue funding from any and all resources your chances get better. Sometimes creative solutions and being on the schools side in force with every neighbor, friend, church family, relative, and all your elected officials when they are asking the district, state, feds for money they are a lot more co-operative.

You can't take on a school district when the odds are overwhelming.

So you have to build a team. And have a play book memorized before you ever get there. Better yet an IEP with justifications written before you arrive. Definitely having the free federally funded advocates and elected representatives you have. Fortunately you get to take as many vested interest people as you want to an IEP meeting as you like as long as you give notice in advance. The cool thing is if you make the effort to find them you have plenty of advocates to make the best interest case for your child thanks to many systems including the school system but surely not limited to the school system.

Make time, the calendar, your friend.

You do NOT have to wait until the current school to start roughing out the plan. Get a jump on your "battle" plan. I would request the next year IEP the entire summer before while you have a chance to reserve the resources and collect any current information. The school district does not get to keep secrets about your child. Ask for everything. The school can only wait 45 days to get started so the sooner you ask the better. School does not have to be in session. IEP's are federal laws. And through Freedom of information act they are published for free and you can request a copy.

Your kid is also and expert when you are writing and IEP.

Talking to your kid can be very revealing when it comes to writing and IEP that will work. Sure sometimes their ideas are "kid stuff" but a lot of times they can help you figure out priorities and engage their co-operation when they feel they have some control. Especially when school is a lot more about the whole environment than just the classroom. Sometimes something as simple as just changing when medication is given and how your kid tells you they feel successful can help you jump over hurdle's or avoid walls.

Combination solutions are usually the best solutions.

Homeschooling or all day school does not have to be the only answers. If a chaotic playground or lunchroom are your kids undoing you have options weather it is and after school YWCA visit or a lunch in quiet room with a senior volunteer that likes your child and won't contaminate your child's diet.

Your kid is not the only Exception in the world. You are not alone.

Go to school , get on line, go to regional and state parent conferences, adapted summer camps, and support groups to find yourself and your child peers. It is amazing how much easier it is not to take so much of the insults of being different personal when you are not alone in the row boat. That does not mean write of your "normal" friends and become part of a subculture but no one likes slogging along in a world of Einstein's, Super Models, and Donald Trump types. Everyone needs friends.

Run your kids needs like a business.

IEP's are a business contract and you have to basically justify the capitalization of your business with business tactics. You need a file cabinet, a book shelf and most likely a good quality printer besides a good office program. Habitat for Humanity Restores are a great place to get your office furniture on the super cheap but sometimes churches or even high school senior Eagle scouts can help make a need a reality. The key is knowing where the things you need are and putting in the time to be organized and keep up with the paperwork/reading with out exhausting marathon stints. I kept a box of "lite" reading in my car for the endless hurry up and wait that goes along with an Exceptional child.

Your mailbox, especially a PO box, is your friend.

Amazing what you can learn if you make your mailbox your friend and get on mail lists so you are not the last one to hear about something at the last minute. I do NOT recommend passing out your home address but a medium size PO Box is worth it's cost in the trips it can save you. Carry a couple of self address stamped envelopes even if you carry them in your car it is way less hassle than having someone want you to get something the next meeting. This is also a great way to make it easy for a teacher to give you a heads up.

Never underestimate the help that someone will volunteer to you.

Keep a little notebook to scribble notes if someone starts rattling off resources too you. It will happen when you least expect it but you are not the only frustrated parent out there and every so often you will trip across a generous soul who will turn you own to something your doctor doesn't know about and is definitely worth being attentive enough to listen to. Be profuse in saying thank you and follow up with a Thank you note if they actually give you appoint of contact. nurses and bus drivers know a lot; try to be their friend.

Thank you

Your right there is a lot of paper work involved and a lot of the time it feels like I am sitting in an avalanche of frustration.

I put so much fight in for my oldest and you are also correct even though my oldest is on an IEP program it is another fight to keep him on it.

I have joined support groups that helped with my 12 year old also with his tutoring. This is a good group http://ldaniagara.org/

My five year old had a community living worker advocate for him and also went to the children's center for extra help. Now that he is in school life is another story.

Your right about melt downs my youngest used to get them often but not so much as before thank goodness.

Watching my kids struggle is hard but they also learn empathy of others struggling and when they can help. Helping others is important agreed.

Well I( root for all parents but I have a soft spot for people who have walked the long road with and "Exceptional Child".

Which is a great magazine I strongly recommend.

Also reading Robert Persky. His books are older but worth looking for.

And going to the Association of Retarded Citizens or People First. Granted Mental Retardation is a different cognitive constellation but they are the long term Veterans and they have great resources and publications.

You are on a short road to age of majority with your oldest child and that is a whole another ball game I would do some reading on Guardianship and attorney Ollie Barber is where I would start since he wrote and excellent book on the subject.

I am guessing retorted meaning Autism ? My youngest is high functioning since he received help early he is doing very well. There was an article that read that parents with children with mild Autism which is a blanket term who work with their kids properly lesson the symptoms of the Autism.

There are several causes of reasons why kids may be delayed some catch up some don't. It seems that early intervention is key. In my oldest cause what was thought to be ADD was central auditory processing disorder so not everything as it seems and kids get misdiagnosed. I think that parents worry to a child being delayed does not mean they are not smart they just learn differently.

The thing that I learned the hard way was not preparing for the time when My child reached "legal" adulthood but still did not have adult maturity or skills in some very important areas such as reputation, social manipulation, driving, credit, parenting, financial management, even enlisting in the military or college but sure had long term ramifications. If I would have had even a minimum ability to intervene with a guardianship I could have possibly avoided many of the hardships he endured. Still endure.

Unfortunately a young disabled adult is often a walking target for those who want to have that "subsidy for life" and will actually exacerbate failure to guarantee it. This particularly true if your child can procreate because that baby is a way more secure meal ticket collecting social security. And if they marry then it doesn't even matter if the child is biologically your child's child if is conceived during the marriage. If your child has employment even high tech employment they can be manipulated into doing things that get them in serious trouble. Not always do they know the difference in what is best interest and just a burning desire to appear normal.