Life's ups and downs...

Something that I haven't really blogged much about, because I needed to get my head around it and I needed to get all my facts straight first, is Jake's schooling.  Jake has always loved school, he's always done well and he's a pretty sociable child, so enjoys the time with his friends.  So, it's come as a bit of a shock to me that he's not doing as well as I thought he was...

I only realised to what extent he was battling, when he brought his books home from school a couple of weeks ago and I saw how many of his tasks he is not managing to complete in class.  Like I said, it came as a shock, because my child is brilliantly perfect, of course.  He did really well last year and scored above average on his reports throughout the year.  So, I was totally blind-sided, after having seen his teacher, when I was given a note saying that they wanted him to go for a remedial assessment.  Remedial?  No ways - my child is perfect, remember?  He went for the assessment and I met with his class and remedial teachers this morning to discuss the results.

Turns out that my child's not perfect, that he does have problems.  Especially with visual spatial integration, which is basically his perception of spatial relationships between objects in his field of vision.  This affects reading, writing, maths, copying, puzzles, problem-solving and understanding of how to tie it all up together.  He also has fine motor co-ordination problems, which can be linked to the visual spatial problems, which is why his handwriting is such a mess. The teachers both agree that his intellectual ability is above where it should be, which would explain his frustrations in class at not being able to do the things his friends are able to do so easily.
So, the hard work begins from here, he has to go for Occupational Therapy and he will be starting up with remedial classes (they fall within school time) as soon as they have a gap for him.  He is also spending time doing homework twice a week with his Auntie Tam, who's also a remedial teacher. 

He is lucky that he has the wonderful teacher that he has this year.  She has been kind enough to pay close enough attention to him and to realise that he's not keeping up with the pace.  He is blessed to be at a school (public, not private), that has excellent remedial facilities in place and that they are able to help him find his feet again.  He is blessed to have a wonderful auntie who is excited to be able to help him and who has been spending hours researching games and exercises that she can use to help him.  He is so blessed in so many ways and instead of being upset about all of this, I'm so pleased that I am in a position to be able to help him when he needs it.  I am excited to get started on all of this with him and I am excited about getting him excited about learning and about school again.  That's the most important thing for me, not that he excels, just that he enjoys school.

It's hard enough accepting that I'm not perfect, but it's even more difficult to have someone telling you that your child's not as perfect.  I just have to keep focused on the blessings in our lives and how wonderful it is knowing that we have the most amazing support systems to help us deal with life's little problems.

Love,
Sue X

PS.  You can read more about  visual spatial problems here, if you're interested...