Lucky

It's been a few days, eh? We've made a dent in the Halloween candy... mostly just the chocolate. Seems we are all big chocolate lovers. We handled the switch back to regular time Ok. The boys did better than me... I was asleep in the chair trying to read a magazine last night by 7:15pm. Oops. Finally gave up and went to bed before 10 and woke up before 6am! Hopefully that'll straighten itself out a bit...

Last Friday, I spent my morning as usual in Tyler's classroom. Normally I get to work with all the kids, helping them with spelling words and sentences. This particular day, however, Ms. Patterson decided I should sit at a table with four kids who are struggling a bit and only help them. One of them, M, seemed to mostly have a hard time paying attention and focusing. If she could remember what she was supposed to do and not get distracted, she really did Ok. Same with A, though she mostly wanted me to help her. I think she likes having attention from a girl... she also liked to stand by me and followed me all around the room. I think she could have done more on her own than she gave herself credit for. B wanted to worry about everyone but himself. He had a hard time watching the other kids make mistakes without correcting them. He is hard to communicate because he mostly grunts and doesn't speak clearly.

But C... C was the biggest challenge for me. He has some sort of learning disability and I'm certainly not equipped as a mom who has had zero education towards a teaching degree. He would write T B W T T Z and would read it back to you as "The boy went to the zoo". In order to get him to write one sentence that was legible, we had to sit and concentrate for about 15~20 minutes. This boy clearly needed more help than I could give him and probably needs to be tutored more than he needs to be in class ~ or some situation where he can have one on one attention to focus on what he needs to learn.

By the end of the day I was spent. And I don't think I've ever wanted a glass of wine more. :) But alas, there were groceries to buy and laundry to do and dinner to make.... so I had to resist.

But I went away feeling very very lucky. My boys are handsome and sweet and sensitive and smart. They learn easily and things "click" the first time or two we explain them. They rarely have a hard time focusing, as long as things stay relatively interesting... Really, my job as a mother to them has not been that difficult.

Could I have handled a child like C? I'm not sure I have the patience... 3.5 hours was hard for me to handle. I'm sure there will be other issues that require patience and possibly they'll be more difficult than a learning disability. So all I can do for now is just be thankful for how lucky I am.