Thursday, April 3, 2008

Hand over Hand?

I often have parents tell me that I'm doing a good job; and to hear that from parents of kids with CP is the highest compliment I could imagine. The thing that really baffles me though, is to see how so much work, to bring one conductor here for a while, produces next to nothing in the way of curious professionals. It's like the school system and all the therapists have eaten our kids alive and we can't have them back until the children are eighteen.
I am not excited, to say the least about waiting to see what horrible things happen to my son's joints, muscles, and motivation as all these professionals vampire their wages off him and write little reports. I think it was said best by a parent I know, who recently told me: "My son's SEA has very nice handwriting. She sends me a lot of her artwork." I too have a lot of "schoolwork" my son "did" that I keep in a large box in his closet. I just can't bring myself to put "his" work on the wall, or the fridge, or anywhere. It just doesn't look like his work. I guess they call it "hand over hand." That's how Canadian teaching assistants and therapists name the practice of making my son write what they want him to put on the paper. I think they should call it "hand over mouth."
I also suppose I shouldn't take it to the system so hard, but this is my blog; I have to say it somewhere. Seven years ago, I tried to give a videotape to my son's teachers. It showed him sitting at a table, holding onto a bar with no assistance, no belts, no buckles; for half an hour. The tape ran out of space before Blue (yes, his name is Blue) stopped holding; and that's accounting for him letting go with one hand a couple times and coming back to grip it again.
I might as well have eaten that videotape. That would have made more sense to them. My no-longer -repeated requests to the teachers about this odd, holding-on phenomenon that my son purportedly did once upon a time have ceased. I have learned my place, and it seems to be nowhere.

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