Penny’s Blog can be found at www.adhdmomma.blogspot.com

Penny Williams blog chronicles her and her family’s daily life with ADHD. It is a powerfully written blog which shares every day life in a compelling fashion. As a mother of a son with ADHD, I find her posts to be right on with what I am experiencing every day — and, even though we have never met, I feel a link with her through our common experiences. If you have a loved one with ADHD, her blog would be of great help to you.
 
A Mom’s View of ADHD
my everyday life with my ADHD son
 
Penny’s Introductory Blog can be found at:
http://adhdmomma.blogspot.com/2008/11/introduction.html
 
Introduction
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
 
In school, I remember thinking that LD students were unintelligent — incapable of what we normal students could accomplish. That was the general understanding for most of us growing up and it is still the assumption of most people not experiencing the LD system. A truly unfortunate assumption.

I began the journey to an LD “diagnosis” with my 1st grade son, Luke, this September when I realized his school performance was consistetly well below his exceptional intelligence. In kindergarten, Luke’s teacher complained about his behavior and lack of attention and lack of interest in learning. Our family found two reasons for this at the time: (1) his teacher returned from maternity leave at the beginning of 3rdQ with her infant in the classroom FULL TIME; (2) Luke’s birthday is the cut off day (Oct 16) in NC for entering kindergarten and we felt his immaturity played a role. There are many, many other small factors but these were the major players, in our minds.

Luke was very sad during most of his kindergarten year as seen in this photo from Easter. He often felt defeated. It breaks my heart to see him so easily upset and broken-hearted.

So, we made the decision to remove our children from the charter school our oldest daughter, Emma, had attended for 3 years with much success. We placed them in mainstream public school this year based on the disagreeable administrative decisions and “loose” environment of the charter school (the fact that an infant would be allowed in the classroom with its mother, the teacher, was appauling to us — the top priority in that classroom for that teacher was her infant, not her 18 kindergarten students). All summer I held my breath hoping for Luke’s success in first grade in a new school. I realized in the first two weeks of this school year that the change in school environment, in adminstrative policies, in teachers was not, on its own going to be the difference for Luke. He was again coming home almost every day with reports of disruptive behavior and inattentiveness in the classroom.

But the difference began this school year with Luke’s new teacher. She realizes that every student, no matter capability or performance, learns differently. She realizes that some children need their own space, need rewards daily instead of weekly, need to move to focus and learn, etc. She realizes that school should not try to put all students in that round hole no matter if they are a round or square peg or something in between. I cannot put into words the gratitude I feel for this teacher and the placement of Luke in her classroom!
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