Deciding To Homeschool part 5 "The Public School Years" To Label Or Not To Label

....THAT IS THE QUESTION

When I first started telling my story, I did not realize that it was going to be so long!!!! It has been good for me personally, though, - therapeutic in a way- to get all of this written out.  But now, that I have had over half a year to decompress from the stress of the Public School Years, it is almost as if I could just leave the last parts unwritten. Still part of me insists that I cannot truly move forward without completely telling my story as a way of leaving it all behind. Hopefully, I can wrap this up in about two more posts so I can get to blogging about the Homeschooling Journey. :)


Just a little recap, in case you are just joining my story: In the 3rd Grade, I had talked to Padawan’s teacher about my suspicions that he may be on the Autism Spectrum or something similar. He was observed by the school district Psychologist.

At some point around this time- knowing how much our society likes to put labels on people and things, I had asked her about the importance of getting him LABELED.  I explained to her that Padawan’s father and I did not need for him to have a label to be able to parent him, but I wondered if getting him LABELED would help with his school problems.

In her explanation, I could tell she was choosing her words carefully, maybe because of legal reasons. I’m not sure. She explained that in the upcoming years the expectations and work load would become increasingly demanding for Padawan. Then she basically told me that “if” Padawan was “diagnosed” with “something” that it “could” “possibly” help the teachers in the future to know how to “handle” or “deal with” or “figure out” the best way to teach Padawan and “handle” his lack of maturity.

- Teachers were always telling me how bright Padawan was, but they would also point out to me just how immature he was too. Since he was an only child and I had no one to compare him with, I took their word for it. 

After that discussion, I could tell that that something needed to be done about getting Padawan LABELED if there was any chance of things getting any easier with the whole issue of sending Padawan to school..... and since the plan with the school Psychologist didn’t seem to tell us anything at all, we were seriously considering finding a doctor to evaluate our young Padawan over the course of the summer.

However, I guess the Good Lord had other plans. Due to extenuating circumstances surrounding my disability, my husband being laid off from his job the previous fall, and him suffering with a stuck kidney stone the entire summer (this was because our recent lack of health insurance made his doctor of many years stretch out this very painful situation out of fear he would not get paid), getting Padawan evaluated just didn’t happen. Let’s just say it wasn’t a very good or fun summer for us as a family, but we made the best of it.

Well, time for school came around once again. As usual, we went to orientation and gave the teacher and her co-teacher the low down on Padawan. We explained to them about what what we had observed, what his pediatrician had told us, and about the evaluation from the previous year. We told them that it just so happened that when the evaluation was done, Padawan had been having an unusually good day, so there was not much to report. We also let them know that if at any point during the year they felt it was necessary for us to pursue getting a LABEL for Padawan, we were more than willing to go that route.

To be continued...

Part 1- Accidental Homeschoolers
Part 2 - PreK and K 
Part 3- 1st & 2nd Grade
Part 4- 3rd Grade


Part 6- 4th Grade