But I need to put yesterday's progress meeting into perspective. Because the truth is, H has also made some amazing strides that are not to be dismissed.
When I got to the school I stopped at the front office & had the best greeting ever. Apparently one day, recently, a certain third grader took it upon himself to fill in for the secretary when she was away from her desk. He was only supposed to be delivering something to the front office, but he had bigger plans. The child was caught on camera & I had the pleasure of watching said video on the secretary's cell phone... of my son pretending to do her job. One of the aides captured a couple of stills, as well:
I am telling you he has nearly all of the faculty over there wrapped around his finger (naturally I am perfectly fine with this). I can't count how many times we randomly run into people from school-- just around town for example-- & we're told how much they love our son & that his picture is on their refrigerator. Over the years I have given many thank you notes & many holiday cards, to many people who work with him. And it's beyond heartwarming to know how many kitchens are adorned with his contagious smile.
So anyway, back to yesterday morning at the school... next stop was to the Child Study Team room where we were meeting. Fast-forward near the end as we were wrapping up our conversation, & I heard the most fascinating story...
Apparently H's third grade classmates from Gen Ed were in the library giving mini presentations about books they read. H wanted a turn too, but instead of giving any sort of book report he stood in front of the room & (so I was told) spoke about friendship... or the importance of friendship... & about his buddy J who he had brunch with the day before. They said he was articulate & confident, & that even the librarian herself practically had her jaw on the floor. He thanked his audience when he was done, & the 20 or so students that he was speaking to clapped for him.
There are about 50 levels of amazing right there in that one update.
But without even listing them, the other little background piece is that we ended up having a scheduling conflict for this brunch date (that he spoke so well of), which we had planned many weeks prior. It turns out that the t-ball program H joined with his cousin was going to be giving out awards that day, as well as taking a team picture, & enjoying a snack together after their game. There is still one more game scheduled for this Sunday, but long story short it was decided they would do all of this at the second-to-last game instead of the last game.
I knew that he would be missing t-ball, but my heart sank when I found out everything else he would be missing too. An email went out just a couple of days prior & that's when we learned all of this. But as quickly as I felt bad about it, I also got over it... because the bottom line is that I knew we would not be able to reschedule brunch before the prepaid ticket expired. (The children's brunch tickets had been donated for our location Education Foundation fundraiser, so they were purchased back in March at the time of the event.) And this kid from school is such a gem of a friend to Hayden that I really did not want to cancel anyway.
Brunch was amazing... our little family of three with their big family of five... & the kids were nothing short of awesome. And the fact that this little event ultimately led to my son standing up & speaking in front of his whole class...
I can't even. Absolutely priceless.
So like I said, yesterday was Hayden's last progress meeting of the school year. We spoke about his general trend of non-compliance lately & recent task avoidance.
But as you can see, as far as I'm concerned the meeting was a perfect ten.
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Wonderful post. You should be very proud of Hayden. Our Madison has Full Mutation Fragile X. She is in the 4th Grade and is having many of the same issues in school.
ReplyDeleteGlad I found your blog.
Donna