Just Simply Jen

I am so happy. For two days this week I have gotten the most wonderful reports from my son's teacher. I'm going to preface all of this to say that I am not being a bragging mom. I am a relieved mom. What follows is very little of my doing. It just is what it is.
I'm not sure I have mentioned it much on here but last September my son was diagnosed with Autistic Disorder. He is extremely high functioning but is still on the spectrum. He also was diagnosed in May or June with ADHD. Not the biggest surprise but then again none of this was to me. I say all of this only to express the struggles he has had in school. He went into school knowing very little and having a horrible speech issue that made it hard for anyone other than me to understand the few words he did say. At 6 years old he still babbled mostly like a toddler. He struggled but with therapy has made great strides. It is really impressive but he is still behind. Imagine trying to learn the one thing you learn usually in Kindergarten, reading, when you can't even say half of the words you are supposed to read. It's not a big wonder that, at 8 years, he is still struggling to learn to read.
His big thing with reading is to tell me that he can't do it, but I'm stubborn and don't like the word can't because I know just how smart he is. I push him. Maybe a little harder than I should but I do it anyway. At home he reads little clips for us when we make him but not much otherwise. He will read random things that shock us but then swears that he didn't read it, just heard it or saw it before.
Imagine my total shock, and joy, when his teacher walks out to meet me after school and tells me that he read a book to her that day. A book! Now it's a kindergarten level book but I don't care because for the first time ever he took a book and read it to her all on his own! I'm sure she thinks I was less than impressed because my face was pretty blank but I was just in shock. My son didn't make a big deal of it but I made sure he knew I was impressed. I won't lie, there was a part of me that worried he had just memorized the book. I was thinking it was maybe 10 pages long with three or four words a page so it wouldn't be too out there for him. He has excellent rote memory which isn't that unheard of in children with Autistic Disorder. I was giving him the benefit of the doubt.
Well yesterday my husband picked him up and when he came in the door he prompted my son to tell me what he did that day and more good news came. The school has a thing where the principal will pick a student to read a story to her. That person gets their picture taken with the principal and it is put on the bulletin board in the hall. They also get a bookmark and really just to feel good about themselves. Yesterday, she chose my son! He read the same book to her that he had read to the teacher. That made me feel like maybe it wasn't all memorized because she is a nice person and encouraging but will definitely push them to do their best.
All of my concerns about it just being memorized were pushed aside because they sent him home with the book to read to us. Now it was maybe 15 pages but instead of just a few words, each page had a sentence or two and not a two word sentence. It was actually a good bit for him. He read it to us happily and as he read you could tell a few things were memorized but he had to stop and take the time to sound out/remember a few words. I seriously was in tears by the end of it. This was a goal I had set for him but expected it to be the end of 2009 before it was accomplished. I am so happy!
This school has been such a boost for him. He went from self contained to fully mainstreamed. He has exceptions like taking his tests outside of class to give him more time and to minimize distractions and he goes to speech and resource outside of the class as well but he has the same curriculum, with the exception of spelling, as the rest of the children. This school is very advanced in the math department and definitely years ahead of Hawaii so he was at a distinct disadvantage coming in. I was so doubtful when they told me they were sure he would catch up, in Math especially. He has proven me wrong every step of the way. He has gone from basic adding and subtracting to learning some algebra concepts and has succeeded. I feel so blessed to have this school because they have given him what I couldn't. The pulled out their bag of tricks and found the tools to teach him how he needs to be taught. I don't think there is enough gratitude in this world to express how I feel.
Progress, in a child where regression is not uncommon, is a wonderful thing!