Back to school woes...again

When you put in a courtesy call to the teachers and coaches to let them know that your child is from care and is diagnosed with several different mental disorders to make sure they understand what they are working with, and they say something along the lines of, "I've been an educator ## years, I'm sure he'll be fine" or "That sounds like normal kid stuff to me" or my personal favorite, "He's a boy. Boys like to do stuff like that" LIKE ALL THE TEACHERS DID THE YEARS BEFORE and you want to reach through the phone and grab them by the throat and scream ONCE AGAIN, I AM BEING DISMISSED AND DAMNED TO REPEAT ANOTHER YEAR OF THE SAME BULLSHIT BY A NEW TEACHER. (Not that throat grabbing is appropriate or that it would even end up with anything except with me catching an assault charge, but it seems like it would feel good to do in the moment.) Then, just as it happened the year before, like clockwork, halfway through the year in comes the calls discussing my sons behavior that they have no idea what to do about and suddenly would appreciate my advice on how to deal with, that I so kindly tried to deliver at the very beginning but was dismissed. I'm sure that anyone whose ever adopted an older kid from care can totally understand what I'm saying here, because their behavior is far from normal and we wouldn't waste our time trying to form a relationship with the teachers, who have our children for eight hours a day, to advocate for our child if it were NORMAL FUCKING KID STUFF. Excuse the language, that's just where I'm at right now.

Can y'all tell I'm sick of doing this?! I wish there were some sort of continued education course on trauma informed teaching, because this is really ridiculous and is doomed to continue unless something changes. Or maybe there is a course about that, but not everyone is interested in taking it, I don't know. I just know that after three years of having my kids in the same school district, not one single teacher of either of my boys have glanced at their files to see what their teachers have said the year before, or looked to see if they have diagnoses/history of any sort that would be pertinent to successfully teaching my child. And I should also point out that NONE have honored their IEP's and 504's without me letting them know they have accommodations in place later on. Yet for some reason, every one of them issue the same lines, as if they feel that they are putting me at ease by telling me how much experience they have teaching, how well they know children, and how 'normal' they seem to be, as if I've finally found my own 'Annie Sullivan' from the Miracle Worker or better yet, 'Jaime Escalante' from Stand and Deliver. Baaahahahahaaaa!! Jaime Escalante...P-LEASE!! 😂😂😂 Sorry, I'm not saying they all suck at teaching, because I know most of them are great teachers and lets face it, no one goes into teaching if they're not passionate about children. I know they mean well, I'm just saying that in my experience, they've all said the same dismissive things and fold halfway through the school year, beat down by my kids because none of their tools work. Look, if you're a teacher and you're reading this, please heed my words. This was not written to degrade you or to insult you, this is simply a frustrated parent of a kid from hard places, who needs to be heard and understood. We know how hard our children can be and we honestly want to work with you! We want to make sure you have a pleasant year with our child because we know first hand how difficult it can be. But we need you first to listen and understand that we want the same things you want for our kids, it just has to be accomplished with different tools, out of the box ideas, and working closely with us.

Anyway, there's no real lesson here, I'm just tired of the same old crap and needed to vent. So here's to all the parents of children from hard places enduring yet another school year. I hear you, I personally know what you're going through, and I wish you the best. One day we will be able to rest in knowing that we did everything we could to help our kids be successful, I just know it.

Peace and Love,

Hannah