After careful thought, meeting With Dr. Pattie and the excellent advice of my readers, it’s been decided how we are going to handle Gavin’s school work /homework situation.
I absolutely hate that I can’t trust Gavin. It breaks my heart.
This homework situation is out of control and it’s causing so much tension in the house, each and every day. It has to stop. The E’s are beginning to fear Gavin again and his tantrums are getting so much worse.
I’ve had to make the difficult decision to basically wash my hands of Gavin’s homework drama.
Lizze isn’t in a position to deal with this and it’s way, way too stressful for me. The E’s are paying a price as well and by wiping my hands of it, I can remove that that stressor from the house and out lives.
The truth is that Gavin is never going to be straight with us. Talking to him about this and expecting to get an honest answer has me literally besting my head into the wall. It’s simply never going to happen. So as of yesterday, Gavin was told that he and he alone will be responsible for his homework or schoolwork.
Of course, Gavin was just fine with that.
All we have left to do is explain to the school and see how that goes.
Getting the teachers to understand and accept who and what Gavin is, isn’t going to be easy. It’s never been something that we have really ever successfully accomplished.
No one likes to believe that a child is capable of doing the things that a child like Gavin can do, without a single thought.
Either way, it’s not about making anyone else comfortable with Gavin’s diagnosis or condition. We have to do what’s be for the family and right now, that means letting stumble and fall. It’s the only chance he has to learn.
This is absolutely a tough love situation and it’s not fun. It doesn’t feel good to feel like I’m not there for Gavin and to be honest, between this and Emmett waking up and not going back to sleep, I didn’t get any rest last night.
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i wish peace to your family. Especially for Gavin because even though he cant help it, all the trouble he may bring on himself has to hurt
rantsnrascals I totally agree with you. We wouldn’t give up on him. This was really well said. 🙂
I realize it’s a tough decision but you are not giving up or not being there for him. You are trying something new. You are letting him take responsibility and disabilities or not, he has to learn. However that being said, if this doesn’t work and he just doesn’t do it you can’t just sit back and say oh well it’s his fault, we are less stressed so it’s good. As a mom of a special needs child who has violent tantrums and threatens our household and dealing with a husband who has a brain injury, it’s my job to make sure my son not only takes responsibility but understands tantrums are not okay, won’t be tolerated and life choices are ours to make together. My son never asked to be brought into this world, he never asked for disabilities. Neither did Gavin. Take the necessary steps to do what is right, try the tough love approach but don’t give up. I know you won’t. You are only doing your best, and honestly as parents it’s a crap shoot, if what we are doing for our kids is right now. They didn’t come with handbooks so we are winging it!
:'(
Heleen Langdon this isn’t that simple. I would encourage you to read the post and it will give you some more insight into our struggle and why I say what I do.
You can not trust kids. They are going to lie and make mistakes. At the end of the day mainstream or special needs they’re still kids.
Ruedii This sounds like a great idea. Hopefully, the teacher will agree with this request but this would make it easier so that you know what assignments he has and doesn’t have. I am sorry that your having to deal with this.
So sorry for this Rob. Hope by letting this go you and your family can carry one less burden. I’ve had to let go of a lot of the problems my older son has being autistic, even if it means he may never well function in society. But he is going to do things his way and I can only love him for who he is. Sorry to hear how hard this has been for you…bless you!
On a separate, less about my past, more about your situation.
On someone like Gavin you run into trouble. You don’t know if he’s being honest, so you don’t know if he understands that he has homework, or he’s just deciding not to do it. Your best bet it to have your teachers send the homework assignments to you by email. You give them to Gavin so he can’t lie, and set aside time for him to do it. If he doesn’t do it then, you’ve isolated his responsibility.
You don’t want to be stressed, but you don’t want the teachers to think you aren’t taking every measure that doesn’t completely stress you out.
There is a problem in many schools of one particular part of the IEP not being followed:
When a teacher is asked to hand homework assignments to students with Autism because they can’t take the cue to read it off the board, teachers rarely comply. They have trouble grasping how in their mind a child with autism should receive special treatment on this.
Of my teachers, about one out of every twenty complied with this request, despite it being the number one request. The only request in my IEP that was obeyed less was “give reduced homework” which many teachers openly spoke out against right in front of me.
It got to the point that we stopped bring up the non-compliance at my IEP meetings because we just wanted to “Choose our battles” and it was far more important to have teachers not let other kids constantly harass me then to have teachers hand me my homework assignment.