My son is 15, soon to be 16. He is in 9th grade in an NPS school. He is SLD, no ED.
He is becoming depressed and talks about suicide a lot lately (yes, I am getting him help)
He hates the NPS setting, hates the kids. He is a non smoker, against drugs, alcohol. He is a good kid.
I am trying to get him out of this school but the LD schools won’t take him due to severe low testing scores and typically, kids at most LD schools here in California are gifted in other areas, he is too low on the Woodcock and at the last IEP, we asked for an AAA. The AAA makes my son feel like a “loser” so he is slipping further. I held him back in 5th grade, he came up 4 levels in 1 year and graduated with the presidential award and an award for most advanced. THEN, he was mainstreamed and he sould not handle it. The special ed woman was concerned with her daughters toxic shock and it caused her not to be able to do her job, hence, my son was then tranferred to an NPS.
His test scores have remained the SAME for 3 years. NO improvement.
Now, I have a son talking about how miserable his life is, and I cannot find a school that will take him and he said “I can’t handle a regular high school because it’s too fast mom”
Can I call due process and request a boarding school?
I don’t know what to do.
HELP
Sue
NPS means Non Public School. The norm : kids who do drugs, smoke, misfits of society, cut themselves, goth, death and gore is their thing.
Home school, no, he is already socially inactive.
Next year, same school, same non caring teachers, same nothing.
I just don’t know what to do. he is stuck.
I have called, gone to every school he might of had a chance to go to, no. I am desperate as is he, poor kid.
HELP
Dear 1tiredmom,
I am coming at this from a totally different angle. So as with all things, take it or leave it or just ponder it for a while.
I am questioning why your son is having so much trouble in school. He sounds like a blessing and does try hard. As you put it, he is completely down on himself and life. School can take the wind at of you if you can’t keep up. But why can’t he keep up? Are there neurological issues going on blocking his ability to learn? It is never too late to grow the brain. There have been even studies showing that 90 year olds can produce new connections in the brain.
I would look into two options:
http://www.icando.org/ (Who also take non-Christains like myself so don’t despare if you have a different belief)
or
http://www.handle.org/
My gut feeling tells that me that ICAN would better suit you.
Please do take a look at these sites and call these people. I am a mother doing a neurological ICAN program and am seeing terrific changes in my son. All the “experts” of tradtional methods, told me that it was all “hog wash.” It is not. I know of other moms getting great results with their children as well. I do know another mother doing a Handle program with success and her kid had basically no short term memory! Could only sing the first three words of songs and then la, la, la.
ICAN teaches me how to do a program at home and I “attack” the brain and change how it functions. It is amazing how my son can do things which he could not do before. He could not put together a logical sentence and now he comes up with “I will do that after I do that.” This is huge for our son.
My son is much younger than yours. HOwever, I have met families in the waiting room with young adults also doing the programs. They are improving - from the botton of the class to average or even to the top. Yes. I am not making this up.
I’d be happy to provide more info. Just send me a private email. I can also refer you to another site where other parents are doing the same thing that I am.
Let me know if I can be of help.
Joan
Re: HELP
Joan - I was wondering if you could give me more information about the HANDLE method. Maybe I was just tired, but I looked it up online and read a lot about why it works, etc… but not what they actually do. I was looking for a friend, but I’m also a teacher at a NPS for LD students and we are always looking for new methods that might help some of our students. Thanks.
Amy
{{{{{tiredmom}}}}} hugs at you first…
What’s an NPS school?
…can you find something *else* that he can succeed at? An outside interest?
Due process takes time - and it’s not cut and dried.
Do you have a boarding school in mind? ARe there other students who have been sent there from your district? (The boarding school personnel could probably advise you on that, without giving names.) But… I’m not sure you could get it to happen by next year. (I don’t know a lot about this - just what I picked up working at a private school where about 25% of our students were their courtesy of the public school system.)
It’s almost the end of the year… how does next year look? What are your options? Can you adjust his schedule / reduce his load? Does he have academic strengths so that an accommodation would help?
Can you scope out next year’s teachers… maybe find an ally in there? Find a way to focus on next year and make it hopeful? I found refuge by being a “lab assistant” for a period for a science teacher… a period off where I could do a little homework and run errands and things for the teacher. Other folks find refuge in that woodshop course - though unfortunately you want to avoid dumping grounds where they could be doing drug deals in the back of the room (or the front, for that matter). (Oh, I also taught in public schools.)
And don’t forget to think *totally* out of the box… homeschooling? Technical school? (But you don’t want it to be perceived as not being *able* to make it in school.)