The Education

Often through Alex’s seven years of formal education, I’ve had to learn why he does what he does in school. A few years ago, I was unsettled by the amount of coloring homework he brought home. How was coloring ever going to help him get a job, especially since he could rarely stay within the lines?

Image: sxc.hu

Then we went to a parent-teacher conference and I chatted with his OT. “When Alex does his coloring,” she said, “make him do it standing up, with the paper held against a wall. This strengthens his arm for writing.” I’d never thought of that. Were we correct in how we were teaching him how to write during homework? Well, no. We used markers at home, and his teacher called them “cheating, because they make the stroke evenly for you.” We should also have let Alex use only short pencils, she said, about the length of those you’re issued on miniature-golf courses, because they also prevented him from holding the pencil too far up.

One of Alex’s recent IEPs contained, at my insistence, teaching him to use a fork and teaching him to blow his nose. The fork’s a work in progress, but somebody sure taught him in the last few years how to use a Kleenex, and his number of respiratory infections has since plummeted.

The Alex in school, even special-needs fifth grade, is not the Alex at home. Once upon a time he would only cling to us when we visited his classrooms, and cried when we left. Then he went through a period of eying us askance when he found us there, then studiously ignoring us. Now he comes up and takes our hand but only for a moment, then heads off to his morning’s work the way anyone might if their parents popped into their office unannounced. This I find encouraging.

Jill and I were in a typically over-shopped Manhattan grocery store the other day. The shelves were disordered, and while Jill picked out her cans of chicken broth I straightened one part of a shelf, and a thought stuck me of Alex flawlessly sorting shapes and colors from about age 2.

Too bad he can’t pick the right stocks instead, I said to a friend then.

Maybe he can do that, too, she replied.

The thought came to me of Alex today, arranging toy animals by height and color on our living room rug. “You know,” I said to Jill in the grocery store, as I placed the green beans back where they rightfully belonged, “I have no doubt Alex could stock shelves some day.”

Alex can do much more, we’re coming to think, but we’ll find out what that is only as our education continues.

Learn more about IEPs at http://www.wrightslaw.com/advoc/articles/iep_guidance.html and http://specialed.about.com/od/iep/Individual_Education_Plan.htm. And Google “SEPTA” and find out about local special-education PTAs nationwide.