Being an Okay Parent
Being an Okay Parent I have a meeting with Wesley's teacher this
Tuesday. She wants to share with me a new fabulous reading
program for Wes. Bill jokes that it is the special education
class. We laugh at our deepest fears. I have already had the
battle with them over the special day class. Wes is not stupid.
He can just barely read, and for a twelve year old, this is
disconcerting for everyone involved. He has been diagnosed with
dyslexia, audio processing problems and speech impairments. He
has had therapy with a speech pathologist, a developmental
opthamolgist and a good, old, home-grown therapist for
counseling. He has done all the reading programs: hooked on
phonics, morphographs, reading from scratch, Fast ForWord, after
school tutoring and any other great things the teachers tried on
their own. He has read out loud to me diligently since
kindergarten, both times he was in it. And, I agreed to the
meeting despite having accepted that there is no fix for Wes. I
searched for a fix most of the first eleven years of his life. I
had his pediatrician test him for seizures which could be
medicated, solving his problems. I took him to a neurologist who
gently told me that apples don't fall far from their tree. Wes's
dad is undiagnosed, but dyslexic just the same. But, I didn't
hear the neurologist yet. I pulled him from public education and
put him in a private school which catered to his learning
disabilities. We make progress. Don't get me wrong. We plug away
and I see improvements, but when Wes is screaming for me to read
directions to him for his video game, or yelling from the
shower, "Which bottle is the shampoo?" I want him to read it
himself. A colleague at work, Tom, shared with me that he has a
student who never does his homework and is failing miserably.
The boy is special education. The assumptions teachers usually
make is that he doesn't have a family who is supportive. But,
Tom shares, this doesn't work with this kid. He plays baseball.
Tom sees the whole family come to his baseball practices,
including Grandma, at an age when most parents are reluctant to
slow down the car when dropping their kids off. Tom muses, the
support is there. I grimace. "They just don't feel like yelling
at him for at least an hour every night to get him to do his
homework. By this time, it has gotten old." I met a friend the
other day to discuss some letters she had received from the
school I work at. Her son and my son played football together
over six years ago, when they were both young and we figured
they'd eventually catch up academically with their peers. She
handed me the letters which told her what she already knew as a
good parent, that her child was behind grade level in his work
and she needed to provide him adequate homework space and time,
support during homework time and a good breakfast and dinner
each night. She was indignant. She has taken her child to
Sylvan, hired private tutors and supports her son throughout
school, and the letter felt like a slap in the face. "Okay," she
shrugged her shoulders, "this tells me Curt's problems in school
are my fault. I'm a bad parent. I wished I could send him to
some good parents so his problems would be solved, but that is
not an option." This idea resonated with me. When Wes couldn't
speak as a small child, everyone accused me of talking for him.
I was the controlling mother who silenced her child. When Wes
acted out in frustration at school, another parent was told we
were unapproachable because "his dad's a coach." When I refused
to make Wes go to after school tutoring which as a professional
I deemed worthless (read - do lots of worksheets), I was accused
of not giving him every opportunity to succeed. In Changed by a
Child: Companion notes for Parents of a Child with a Disability
by Barbara Gill, she calls this B.M.B.D. Disorder - Bad Mom Bad
Dad Disorder. If only this child had better parents... and I
believed this myself for years and expressed this to our family
therapist when we had Wes in counseling because our schools told
us he needed it, never admitting that they had created the need.
The counselor told me most parents are able to get away with
being okay parents because their children are easy; they fit in
the world easily and accept the world easily. But with a child
with Wes's needs, I have to be an excellent parent. And I strive
to be that parent, with all my human failings. It would be nice
to be able to send him off and let other parents fix him so I
could just be an okay parent. I wish there was a magic program
or medicine that would "fix" Wes. But when Bill and I
contemplate what we would give up for this new and improved
child, we both agree; there is not one aspect of Wes we would
change or give up to make him a better reader or a better
student, not his sense of humor, not his spontaneity, not his
friendly nature. We would definitely not trade in his empathy
for other children and adults who struggle each in their own
way. We would neither trade him in nor trade up when it came to
Wes. Will I agree to this new reading program? Of course. I
realize that my job as a parent is to accept and love my child
for who he is. As a teacher, my job is to problem-solve and try
my best to meet the needs of all my students. Wes's teacher is
trying to make Wes a successful student, while I am concerned
about making Wes a successful person with all the human gifts
and frailties that he has in this world.