Recess

Did you know in 2nd grade here they are no longer given recess, they have quiet indoor time.  Batman would always come home and say "mom they never let me get my energy out".  I truly feel this was one reason he had such a hard time in school.  Needless to say, we don't have that problem at home.  We can take a recess whenever we need.  We have been having alot of rain lately so for "recess" the kids wanted to play in the water.  They had a blast!!

Rules

Because every classroom needs some good rules.  If the rules are not followed they have to write sentences.  They hate writing sentences, so lets just say they don't have to do it very often.  My favorite is #9.

Strides of Improvement

 As I said in the previous post, while Batman was in public school the teacher was having a girl in class dictate for him.  Due to the lack of strength in his hands he would get very frustrated with writing.  In general, he had a hard time remembering how to form letters correctly.  He has been doing lots of practice with writing his words correctly and neatly.  I never thought I would see his handwriting this neat.  Because of how he wrote this poem, he was so proud of himself and I was so proud of him for trying so hard today.

 

Why we started homeschooling

To really understand why we started homeschooling, I'm going to have to take you back to when Batman was in 1st grade in the public school system.  He started the school year out well, but about a month into it, the teacher came to us and recommended we take him to the doctor to talk about controlling what she suspected was ADHD.  So like any "good" parent we took him to the doctor and had him evaluated.  He was diagnosed with ADHD, and trying to do the best for our child, we followed the doctor's recommendations and put him on Concerta, a form of Ritalin.

The first time I gave him that pill I cried like a baby, I didn't want my child to be drugged. The first couple days were really hard as he started having anxiety over things he never had before and as time went on things didn't get any better. He stopped eating, sleeping, growing, and his anger was getting out of control. Our house was turning into a war zone, but he was doing better at school. There were still some areas of concern stemming from trying all school year to get him help but the administration continually refused to help him because he wasn't failing.  After about 8 months, at the end of the school year, we finally decided to take him off the drugs because of the increased anger issues he was displaying. Once we took him off the drugs it didn't take long for me to get my sweet, albeit hyper little boy back.  I loved it!!  I told my husband that I would never put him back on any form of Ritalin again because it turned him into someone so fundamentally un-Batman.  We had a fun summer, and maybe this is just being used to his craziness, but I really enjoyed having my child back to his normal self. 

Then 2nd grade started. We had already made the decision to not put Batman on medicine, and let's just say the school was not happy about that. After talking with his teacher many times, I got the feeling from her that the only way to help Batman was to put him back on some form of Ritalin.  I kept asking her how putting him on drugs was going to help the fact that, for some reason he didn't seem to know anything that was being taught.  He was getting straight Fs in all his classes except for PE and Music.  Surprise, Surprise!  We were spending at least 3-4 hours every night on homework and it just seemed to me that he didn't retain anything he had learned last year. His teacher was continually asking me if he knew how to read because he refused, for whatever reason, to read to her. The teacher also had asked a girl in his class to dictate for him because he would get very frustrated with the writing due the lack of strength in his hands; an impediment for which he was seeing an occupational therapist.  He was continually coming home calling himself an idiot, dumb and stupid; and when I would ask him where he was hearing those words he would tell me kids from school were calling him that.

I remember when we went to his school open house how sad I was to see that his desk had been pushed up all the way against the chalkboard away from everyone else, and when I looked through it, I saw all the broken pencils he had, (once he stabbed himself pretty bad) and feeling the sense of frustration he must have been feeling.  I told her that night that we were considering homeschooling him and she said she thought that would be the best for him because it would give him one on one attention.  We continued trying to get help for him and seeing if they could roll him back into first grade but they told us he would have to stay in second and struggle all year and then have to repeat if he didn't catch on.

Also during the year, one thing that made our decision easy to pull him out of school was that he was put on the wrong bus 3 times and each time we were told it was his fault and he should have known which bus he should have taken.  One of the times, he got home and a woman who picked up other children from the bus stop picked him up and took him home.  After she called the school to let them know of the dilema, the school called me and asked if it would be ok for him to just stay at this "stranger's" house.  That in particular was one of the most unnerving experiences we had.

As time went on, he was continually failing to bring home his homework and his teacher didn't seem to care.  We had him tested for learning disabilities and were told that he still wouldn't be able to get help even if he had some disabilities, and it would only serve for making the teacher aware.  With all these things considered, we decided it would be best to remove him from the public school environment and teach him at home where he would get the caring and attention he needed.