Born to be Free
This is the first blog in a nine-part series.
The following blog post was written by special education advocate Robin Beauchemin.
Welcome to my nine-part blog series! My name is Robin Beauchemin, and I am a mom to an amazing young man with dyslexia. In this blog, I will tell the story of our journey which started with a diagnosis of ADHD in 2nd grade and continued with a diagnosis of dyslexia in 8th grade.
It was early on a Tuesday morning. Dad and I had been up all night anxiously awaiting your arrival. You were a stubborn little guy right out of the gate. Clearly you were in no hurry to come out of the cozy little home you had for the last nine months.
After a long 23 ½ hours, there you were. This perfect, adorable, precious little boy. Words cannot describe how much we loved you within seconds of meeting you for the first time. That love is what has guided us on our journey together. A journey we had no idea we were in for, and one I never imagined we’d be on.
You were four months old when I found out I was pregnant with your brother. You were such an easy, happy baby. Admittedly, I felt guilty giving you a sibling so quickly. That guilt turned into gratitude as I watched my two boys form a bond so incredibly tight. That bond was a big part of your journey.
You conveniently started walking just before your brother was born. You weren’t even 1 yet! I knew then that this would be a challenging time for us. Your dad was still traveling for work, and we did not have family close by. But somehow, we made it through, like we always did.
Your dad came home from work one day to find me sitting on the floor, and all the couches turned around facing the wall. When he asked me why I chose to rearrange the living room, I shared with him how you had spent your day diving from the couches like a WWE smackdown at the young age of 14 months. It was at that moment that the pack ‘n play jail was created, solely so I could nurse your brother.
I was 7 months pregnant with your sister. We had just returned from a trip to the grocery store. I put you and your brother in the living room that had no sharp edges, the heating vents had been securely screwed to the subfloor below, and all shelves were anchored to the walls. I continued to unpack the groceries, and it hit me: “Oh dear, THEY’RE AWFULLY QUIET.” I peeked around the corner into the living room and there you were… You somehow managed to climb onto the sill, unlock and open the window, and empty every basket of toys you had onto the front lawn. YOU WERE 3! And I was the crazy pregnant woman throwing toys from my lawn, in the rain, into a big black garbage bag that I swore you would never see again.
Dad and I went on a trip to Home Depot to secure every window in this house after that. Lots of wooden dowels entered our lives at that time and quite a few chuckles from the guys at Home Depot as we all brainstormed together.
This is when our creative parenting journey began……
Big Boy School
This is the second blog of a nine-part series and continues from Born to be Free.
Time for you to learn to read and write. A day chock full of science and social studies. I was anxious because at home, you clearly had some sort of internal motor that nobody could see with the naked eye – if I could have seen it, I FOR SURE would have hit the off switch. Perhaps if I found that off switch, we would not own so many wooden dowels and you would still be playing with your toys that were in the big black garbage bag. However, you successfully made it through preschool and kindergarten, so I was hopeful that the rest of your school years would be a breeze.
In first grade I became increasingly worried about your motor without the off switch. I worried about the fact that your handwriting was atrocious, you were writing letters backwards, there was no spacing between your words, random spaces within a word, and it was like the lines on the paper were invisible to you. Your school held a meeting where I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew my concerns were valid. The school assured me that you were fitting right in. Academically you were where you needed to be, and you were well behaved in class. Hmmm…. I did not give up.
They finally had the occupational therapist “unofficially” work with you because clearly, I was not going away. This entailed letter formation and spacing, and a prescribed sensory diet. Unfortunately, you continued to struggle through all of 1st grade.
In second grade I took matters into my own hands, and had you evaluated at the Center for ADHD where you were officially diagnosed. I took the evaluation report to your school, had another meeting where I did not know what I was doing, and they gave you a 504 plan. Your OT sessions ended because kids with ADHD “just don’t like to write” and guess what, you continued to struggle. If I could’ve traded places with you and took the weight off your young shoulders, I would’ve in a heartbeat.
3rd, 4th, and 5th grade were disasters. You hated everything about school. Reading, writing, math, science, social studies…. Your attendance was poor, but your school kept telling me that academically, you were at or above grade level. You spent those years writing stories that remained a mystery because nobody could read your writing, chewing big wads of bubble gum, and tattooing yourself with expo markers. I bought your 5th grade teacher a big bottle of wine that year after the unmentionable slime incident. I bought myself one too. Ok fine, maybe I bought myself more than 1.
All I knew was that middle school was on the horizon, and I hoped with all my heart and soul that it was the answer we so desperately needed. Elementary school robbed you of a happy childhood despite the accommodations you had in your 504 plan. One where you should have been carefree. Instead, it killed your confidence and made you feel worthless. And as much as I tried to stop it, I could not. I was stuck sending you back into the exact environment that was dragging you down.
Middle School: Check-In and Check-Out
This is the third blog in a nine-part series and continues from Big Boy School.
Breathe in, breathe out….. It’s going to be ok. This new adventure has got to be a better experience than Elementary School. I was hopeful that switching classrooms every 43 minutes would be a good thing for you. But oof…. A bigger school means bigger kids. And bigger kids means more judgement. A much bigger challenge to fit into an environment that was not built for a neurodiverse kid.
I think you took a piece of my heart with you to school that morning. All I ever wanted to do was protect you. And for you to see what an amazing kid you were. You were entering this new school broken from your experience in Elementary School, and I was just hoping that it wasn’t too late to repair all that trauma.
It took a while before the “honeymoon” period wore off. You were always good at giving us false hope at the beginning of every school year. And then it began, phone calls, emails, lunch detentions. Things like blurting out in class, inappropriately playing with the fidgets your poor guidance counselor poured her heart and soul into finding for you, losing passes and assignments…. Your locker looked like a junkyard. Let’s face it, you were a hot mess.
Somehow you managed to make honor roll. I’m not using the word somehow because I ever doubted that you could achieve good grades, but because you lacked the executive function skills necessary to be successful. And your writing…. I was always amazed that teachers could make out what you wrote on a piece of paper. I never really bought into the fact that ADHD could cause such poor handwriting, but that was a battle I had lost. In hindsight, I should’ve fought harder.
I called what felt like our 1,877,765,886 meeting to discuss your 504 plan and see if we could add some supports to help you be and feel more successful. This time dad and I paid a private psychologist, who was very familiar with you, to join us and help advocate for better services. One of his suggestions was to add a check-in/check-out. He explained that bringing awareness to your behaviors by discussing how your day went, how you think your day went, how your teachers think your day went, and how you would handle the next day, would be beneficial. Could it really be that easy though?
The answer is no. It didn’t help and you once again fell into the familiar pattern of struggling. But this time your confidence was rapidly diminishing. And once again I found myself feeling so incredibly helpless. But the end of the school year was approaching, and I was hoping that maybe something good would happen over the summer. Maybe puberty would look good on you. Onto 7th grade…….
This blog series continues with Middle School: Spell it Out.
Robin Beauchemin is a non-attorney special education advocate serving clients throughout the state of Connecticut.