Not much dog stuff going on.

So since its a slow dog week, Ill talk about kids. Here is the first day of school picture of my kids. My son is in the 12th grade and my daughter is in the 10th grade. Its amazing that my son has almost made it through school. He really didn't speak until he was 3yr old. But we knew something was not right. My daughter, who was 2 years younger than him, understood things he didn't. We had him tested and he was a year and a half behing in speaking and understanding language. When he was 4 and you would asked him his name. He would hold up 4 fingers and say, "I'm this many". He was started in a special program to help with language skills. Then they thought he had hearing problems. But that wasn't it. He had an auditory processing disorder. One part of the test they hook electrodes to the brain and put a sound into his ear. They can watch the brain process the sound . It never made it to the appropriate place to be recognized . They said it just go lost. They were many parts to the test , that was just one thing. You really cant fixed an auditory processing problem. At school, the tried an auditory trainer. That is when the teacher wears a microphone and the student wears headphones to help get the information to the student better, that didn't work. But as time had gone on, you must learn to compensate. But I do think that is why he doesn't respond when people pass him and say "hi". Of course people think he is being rude. Even when you try to explain. He also can not hear an alarm clock. It can be on full blast right next him and he doesn't wake up. It will keep beeping until the clock shuts itself off. We are still working on this problem because he wants to go to college.

Then he couldn't learn his ABC's. I carried flash cards everywhere we went. I'm sure he just loved that. He even had a tutor in kindergarten. What kid needs a kindergarten tutor? He did. By the end of first grade he couldn't learn to read. The school had tested him and said he had a learning disability . So I'm sitting in the meeting at the end of first grade, my kid cant read. They say, "we don't know what else to do for him". Can you believe that. They are the teachers, councilors and psychiatrist. So I took him to be tested some place else. I found better information. He is auditorially dyslexic. He needed a reading program that taught phonics thought tactile and visual stimulation. So I found a program called auditory discrimination in depth and we did it every day , twice a day every where we went. To grandmas house, vacation etc..... I'm sure he loved that too. Sometimes I had to be really mean to make he sit those 15 min. sessions. First I had to teach myself the info and they teach it to him. But within 2 months he started to read. The first time he read a word, I started jumping up and down and yelling, "you did it". He didn't seem quite as excited as his mom. But today his reading is still above grade level and he reads constantly. Now to 3rd grade. Yes, he was reading but not learning in school. When ever it was time for a test, it was like he never saw the info before. Also he couldn't even spell the word "the". The letters of the alphabet were taped to his desk to help him remember. Then he had to answer a questionnaire about himself for school. The last question said, If you could have anything in the whole wide world, what would it be? Do you know what he said? "To be smart". Well that said it all. That day I started looking for schools for kids with learning disabilities. There were no schools in Knoxville so we knew we had to more. I loved living in Knoxville and I loved my job. But you love your kids more than yourself . So we found some cities with good schools and then my husband tried to get a job in one of those cities. That's how we ended up in Columbia, South Carolina. He spent 3 years in a spacial school and then went back into pubic school.

Going back to pubic school has been hard. He never really made any friends. More testing. He has Asbergers syndrome. Its a type of Autism where you have really poor social skills. And boy has that been tough. I worried a long time on this. He gets help at school to work on his social skills but I really haven't seen much change. Now I just don't worry that much because he seems happy enough. He is on the high school swim team, he just doesn't talk much and the kids are ok with that. He didn't pass his second year of German which you need to go to college. But geez if they knew what it took to read , write and speak English, which he hears all the time, they would understand. So he is taking German again. Other than that his grades are good and he has good SAT scores so hopefully college is in his future. Sorry to ramble on, just reflecting on his school years. Plus all this keeps dog stuff in prospective. If you dog cant keep a sit stay, its not the end of the world.