School

I have lost the charger for my camera battery so you will just have to picture Anthony in your mind for now, he's as cute as ever.

I've been thinking about school so much lately.  Anthony is - he seems to be stalling at school and not making any real progress, to me.  I talked about it with one of his therapists and I guess he probably *is* making progress, it's just the teeny tiny progress that you can't see very well.   You certainly can't see them through all these tantrums, that's for sure!  I think, well, maybe he's not at the right place, maybe a traditional school would be better for him and then I think, maybe this is just what he's capable of, right now.  Maybe he's ... I hate to say it - maybe he's more severely affected than I will allow myself to think, maybe he's not making much progress because he just can't.  It's hard to know where to draw the line - I don't want to move him around and keep pushing, I know he is trying as hard as he can, I just want to be sure *I'm* trying as hard as I can, too.

A long time ago, a friend of mine was talking about her daughter, she was saying how mean she could be.  She said that her daughter was having a birthday party and she didn't want to invite this kid with autism.  My friend told me that her daughter said, "he's not going to know!".  At the time, I remember thinking, "good point".  But now I think, I bet that kids mother knew.  And maybe that kid DID know.  And if I send Anthony to a public school and he visits a regular classroom or whatever, or if he ever gets mainstreamed but can't actually BE part of the mainstream, is that going to happen to him?  And then my head explodes from sadness.

I keep reading this thing on Facebook, where apparently it is SPECIAL EDUCATION WEEK every damned week, where it says something like, "won't you please be kind to these kids with autism, who will surely be bullied and treated badly?".  I think, really?  Why is it just understood that if kids with autism, if MY kid with autism, tries to go to PUBLIC SCHOOL that he will be bullied?  Boys will be boys?  Kids will be kids?  Humans will be GIANT jerks?  Ugh.

Anyways.  It's going to be summer soon and I feel like we have to make some choice, every fall, about how Anthony is going to continue.  I wish I felt like he was making more progress at his school.  I'm going to mark how he does in this camp this summer, away from school for two weeks, and maybe decide from there.  He is so unhappy, he seems so unhappy and I wonder what is he trying to tell me?  Is he trying to tell me he's sad?  Or is this just the way it is?  What I want to know, Lassie, is if Timmy is down the well or not, ha!