Today I started out the day talking to the school about my frustrations from Friday- about his recess being taken away & how important I thought recess was for him.
She wanted to know about how the Dr appt went and if there has been any more activity since then. I told her that he was diagnosed with ADHD, and we were exploring non-medication methods of treatment (not elaborating what they were) and that we had seen great improvements at home. She commented that he doesn't have all sorts of negative influences that challenge him at home. And that he keeps interacting more with boys in his class that he has been having problems with. That it is a two way street, and if he would stop egging them on (making faces at them and such) that they might stop picking on him back. I stated that it didn't sound like Matthew was all to blame about it.
I shared a point that Mike reminded me that the Dr had made... The Dr stated that usually you don't hear much positive input back from the school from treatment, because the school always seems to be looking for the negatives, rather than the positives... She was taken aback by that comment and asked me if I really thought that about their school... I told her I did, I rarely hear about any improvements he is making - only one tidbit of a story sharing two nice things he had done in class a few weeks ago... no feedback on his academics at all... She stated that she would check with the teacher about that and try to get her to provide more feedback.
I said that it was discouraging because we have seen so many positive changes at home and we don't hear anything good from the school.
She said that there were a lot of things that are hard to change when they have been habits. Like always egging on other kids in his class when he is up walking around in the class... I brought up the possibility of a fresh start being good for him & she agreed, stating that she had been thinking about that idea for Matthew over the weekend as well... (which I found sweet in a way) I told her that it may be just the thing Matthew needs to get past this problem. She asked me if I was serious about wanting to change, and I stated yes, and she said that she would get the ball rolling to discuss it with the principal and the counselor, as the principal is the one that makes that sort of decision and the counselor should definitely be involved as well...
I told her that sounded great & wanted to clarify that we were not trying to do it to change teachers, just the student set that he is in class with... She understood...
We talked more about recess & I let her know that I was confident that he would make good choices at recess and that he had asked to be able to have recess because he wanted the exercise he could get from running around... She told me she would let him have the chance today...
I felt pretty good about the whole conversation...
Until hours later when I got the email that stated that he got a referral at that recess that I had fought for her to allow him to have...
The referral stated that Matthew threw dirt into another student's mouth... Which that by itself sounds pretty bad... Until I talked to Matthew and learned the rest of the story...
There were several other kids involved and others threw dirt as well - and Matthew was not the one that started it... No, that doesn't make it right, but it is a different story than was portrayed on his referral form... This frustrates me... As do many things... but one battle a time I guess...
He is back in at second recess, until a conference can be had with us (his parents) and the parties involved at the school. Hoping to be able to resolve that this week and hopefully address the classroom change at the same time.
Oh for a crystal ball to see into the future and see if this the answer we need to help him succeed.
My plan for now is to try to move forward with the classroom change for him and to work through some workbooks on behavior modification (made out for ADHD kids) and see if we can help him learn to make better choices.
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