It’s 2010. The phone rings and I say a silent prayer that it’s not my child’s school on the caller id. Drying my hands on a dish towel, I grab the receiver, hoping for once that it will be a telemarketer. No such luck. It’s been another rough day for my son, Y. Another day of calling out and disrupting the class, another day of frustration for both teacher and student, and now another day of feeling like a bad parent for me. I get that hot prickly feeling on the back of my neck as I hang up the phone and grab my purse to pick Y up from the office. I am not looking forward to facing the staff as I take home my misbehaving son. I am not looking forward to once again having a conversation with Y about how disappointed I am in his behavior, and looking into his sad brown eyes as he says, “I’m sorry, Mommy.”
It’s hard to understand how last year’s home pre-school program went so well, and this year’s school nursery program is going so badly. We were unprepared for this kind of feedback. My child seems to spend more time in the pre-school director’s office than in class these days. I am often asked to come pick him up early. When there are special programs or changes to the schedule, I am diplomatically asked if I don’t feel it would be better for him to stay at home, since he doesn’t do well with changes to his routine. As a working mother, this isn’t an ideal solution. Y’s pre-school functions both as an educational outlet and as a means of babysitting so that I can complete my work projects. Once he comes home, it’s the 24/7 “Y” show, as he demands all of my attention, and I can’t work again until after he goes to bed.
After numerous conferences with the pre-school director, the nursery teachers, school social workers, Y’s speech and occupational therapists, it is recommended that Y not return for kindergarten the following year. Instead, they think it’s best that he go to a therapeutic pre-school program run under the auspices of Jewish Child and Family Services. This seems unthinkable. All of our other children have gone to our current Jewish day school, and each child has had their own journey. However, we have never been asked to leave the school. Well, maybe they didn’t directly ask Y to leave, just strongly advised. If we insisted that we were keeping him at his current school, it’s possible they would continue to try and work with us. However, stubbornly staying put would mean more frustration, more difficult meetings, and more tears.
Removing Y from the school was one of the hardest decisions we have ever had to make as parents. What does leaving say about Y, what does it say about our parenting skills, and what will happen at the end of the year at the therapeutic school – will he be able to come back? The sadness I felt sitting at Y’s nursery school graduation, as all of the kids sang songs and looked forward to returning next year as kindergarteners, can’t be described. My son wouldn’t be returning next year, and might possibly never be allowed back.
A few of my other kids had some academic issues, but they were not behavior problems and the school was more than happy to work with them. Behavioral issues are an entirely different can of worms. A teacher who has 15-20 kids in a class can’t teach effectively if there is one child constantly interrupting. It used to be that kids who acted up in class were thought to be doing it on purpose. It was the child’s choice to act out. It is true, that parents were often blamed for spoiling their children and letting them act like animals with no consequences. However, the more we know about child behavior, the more those concepts of control and blame are changing.
During Y’s time at the therapeutic school we inundated both him and ourselves with learning about what makes him tick. He went to the therapeutic school in the mornings, a socialization group at another therapy center in the afternoons, and his week was also peppered with speech therapy (a big issue that contributed to his acting out) and behavioral occupational therapy (learning how to control physical and verbal outbursts when he is feeling emotional). Any free afternoons were spent taking him to children’s museums, the zoo, arcades – places where he could informally practice the new social skills he was learning with other children.
My husband and I spent many hours meeting with Y’s support staff, going to weekly therapy sessions about Y’s progress, and learning how to understand and help him. The important message I got – Y’s behavior was nobody’s fault. There were a variety of factors, such as speech issues, OT issues, and impulsivity issues that contributed to his lack of control in the classroom. There were concrete solutions available to resolve these issues. With early intervention, Y could be a successful student in a few years, his current struggles a thing of the past.
When the year at the therapeutic school was drawing to a close, we wondered if he would be accepted back at his old school. We looked at other Chicago area Jewish day schools, and none seemed like a good fit. The one school that seemed like they might be able to handle his needs, already had a number of other children that fell into a similar category as Y, and they couldn’t take on another child with his requirements. Not having a day school for the fall caused me many sleepless nights. Finally, after meeting again with his old school, we worked out an arrangement for him to return with a full time aid and as part of their special education program. He continued his outside therapies as well.
After a successful year, Y was able to completely wean off assistance with his aids, leave the special education program, and become fully integrated in the classroom. It was a complete turnaround from a few years earlier.
I write this in 2013, after coming from another staffing at the school last Friday. When a child has behavioral issues, in Y’s case, impulsivity, there will be bumps in the road. It’s naive to believe in fairy tale endings where everything is happily ever after. Every year is a new classroom structure, new teachers, new subjects, new classmates, and new challenges. As always, we will do all we can to get Y the support he needs to become successful in the classroom. The one thing we won’t do, although it’s sometimes tempting, is stick our heads in the sand.
As a parent, hearing any critique of my child is more painful than hearing a critique of me. My kids represent my life’s meaning. They are the only tangible things I can look to and know with complete certainty, that in giving them life and being their mother, I have accomplished at least one thing that Hashem wanted from me during this go around.
While it is difficult to hear about problems and therapeutic recommendations for any parent, in the frum community, it is exponentially harder. No frum parent wants to hear that their child is different from other children. No frum parent wants the stigma of having to send their son or daughter to therapy or special education programming. No frum parent wants their child’s bad behavior to reflect poorly upon them. Often parent teacher meetings of this sort become contentious. Parents dig their heels ever deeper into denial as they stubbornly refuse to hear the negative feedback from educators. There is simply too much at risk to give credence to such criticism.
If we want our children to succeed there is only one path – walking through the fire. We must put our own egos and fears aside, and accept the analysis of professionals who are there to help our children. Teachers, school administrators, academic counselors, therapists, and parents must be on the same team. Long gone are the days when we assumed a child would “just grow out of it.” A struggling child left to grow out of their difficulties will only worsen and fall farther behind. If we catch the problems early, they will blossom. If we begin tackling the inevitable problems years later, it might already be too late.
We can’t afford to kill the messengers. We pay tuition for the expertise of educators in our day schools. If we are financially investing in our teachers, it follows that we feel their expertise is valuable. Consequently, we can’t then discount their opinions when they tell us something we don’t want to hear. We must assume that they want the best for our children, and under that assumption, work with them so that indeed, our kids will get the very best assistance our schools can offer.
