The Summer As We Saw It.

"Joey did great! He's had a great time! He's really adjusting! He's going to be fine."

You'd think these words would be comforting. I honestly believe they were intended as comforting. We sent my child to four weeks of summer programming- an excellent summer enrichment program, by the way- to try to transition him to a new school and new people. We knew it wasn't going to be a waltz through the tulips. However, what I saw was not encouraging.

What I usually see is a happy Joey pitching in and hamming it up, grinning to be in front of people and showing off, or at least showing off for Mommy. You get used to seeing Joey having fun doing stuff, even when he isn't the most perfect or graceful about it (well, to other people. To me, he looks absolutely wonderful.)

I am not used to seeing this:


He then had to have the teacher come get him from my arms, and go for a walk with the special ed teacher. Oh, he had earplugs in; but it was all too much. Too many people, too much noise, too much to try to coordinate and do. The other child you see the teacher working with? He didn't get ESY services in his IEP, he's there as a "regular" attendee. I could rant on about that from several different angles. Let's just stick to noting that Joey is unhappy, and bolting- something that occurred all of twice at school all of the previous school year, but was apparently a regular occurrence during the summer program, and certainly has become a regular enough occurrence here that we are considering upping the security on our doors (he's figured out the keys, and soon will figure out how to reach them). I had been thinking our parking hangtag was going to be obsolete by renewal time, now I'm thinking, no, we'll be renewing it- and that is still two years away. About the time we will be transitioning to the next new school.

I love hearing that Joey is doing great and fine and having fun. But it would sure be more convincing if we saw some evidence of truth in it.