School and disability

This blog has been such a good thing to help me process my life, my experiences, it’s given me a voice. Writing is such a joy, reading is such a joy. I don’t usually have summer goals but my son Eli and I have summer goals together, one is to spend time each day reading. Eli is autistic, he also is developmentally delayed, and he has struggled with reading. There is pressure to perform in school settings which is overwhelming for disabled/autistic children.

Eli’s grade 8 experience was challenging, we’ve found there isn’t a lot of support in school for disabled kids, they had one teacher and she spent most of her time with one child, and the few other disabled kids were kind of neglected. School is already a lot for autistic kids, not having the proper support made this past year kind of difficult. He really didn't want to go, it was a battle until my spouse and I decided for it not to be. We chose to have him home and try for school 3 times a week. Sometimes with disability expectations need to shift. I spent much of my school years feeling tired and lost, and barely made it through with zero support through highschool. I don’t want that for him. . Schools approach to disability really needs updating, it seems not much has changed since I was in school. I had many similar challenges to my son and very similar solutions. It’s easy to feel like a failure as a parent when your child struggles with going to school, I remind myself school is important but it’s not everything, it’s part of life not all of it, so much learning happens doing every day things. Our goal this summer is to spend time together reading without forcing it or pressure. Small goals, small wins, the big win is time together.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/60855c_5c1be8f0e1a44a75a93370836dab2f57/file