Raising a Dyslexic Child - part 2  

As I discussed in my previous article, once Peter was on his medication, he became a totally different student. The doctor started him on Ritalin and he was later switched to Adderall which seemed to agree with him better. The only side affects we noticed with Peter, was a small lack of appetite in the beginning, although he was never a big eater to begin with. After about 2 years in that small East Texas town, our situation changed and we moved back to the Houston area and Peter went to school where my mother in law was a counselor for the 5th and 6th grade. He was thriving in this environment, making A's and B's and just enjoying life. That was short lived; however, once Peter hit Puberty (around 12-13 I guess) his attitude towards everything and everyone did a complete 180.

My wife and I had been doing fine financially over the previous 3 years, and right after the start of 7th grade, we were able to move out of our apartment and buy our first house, which, unfortunately meant having to move to a new school district, where Peter was not familiar with the other kids his age. Peter had always been a very easily influenced child, and soon he started wearing the "gothic" clothes and his behavior, as well as his school work began spiraling downwards. We tried getting him involved in school activities, and he was in band for most of the 7th and part of the 8th grade, but he soon grew disinterested in that, he was becoming more rebellious at home, both with my husband and myself and just didn't seem to have any interest in doing anything. Once he began 9th grade, (start of high school), we made it clear to him that the path he was on, was not going to continue, that if continued to make the bad grades and not try, we were going to be forced to place him in a different environment (we looked at military school, but that was not a realistic option due to the finance portion of it), probably involving his moving in with his grandparents. Well, both out of defiance or disbelief, Peter wound up the first semester failing most of his classes, just as we had warned at the start of the school year, we moved Peter to his grandparents and he started school in January at a new school.

Peter was a little shocked at this and while his attitude over the school and his grandparents was fine, he was, hostile towards me and my husband over this change. I had to sign part of my rights over to my mother in order for Peter to go to school in this new district. After about 2 months of living in this situtation, were able to locate a house in the new school district and move. Peter continued to go to my parent's house after school so that she could continue to both tutor and mentor him as well as provide additional support. The doctors also switch his medication, this time to Strattera, but that didn't work at all, in fact it seemed to make him sleepy and had no affect on his attention span. Peter would spend hours working with his grandmother on his various homework assignments each day. But then when the school issued the 6 week progress reports, he was still failing most of his classes. When we questioned Peter about this, he replied that he just didn't turn the work in. Apparently this was to "get back at us" or to show us that he controlled the situation and he would make us pay for it. It wasn't until a couple of years later, that I believe he realized that the only person he was hurting/affecting by doing this action was himself, since it wasn't me or his grandparents that was suffering from his bad grades, it was Peter himself.

My wife and I believed that a lot of Peter's "issues" and rebellious attitude involved the non-involvement of his father, who I had previously mentioned, had left the state when Peter was 3 and had little contact with over the previous 10 years. It was our belief that Peter's lack of desire in school and life in general was maybe due in part to his lack of contact with his dad. Even though my husband was a good step-father, he was not his real dad, and we both thought that it could do some good. Due to the fact that I work in the "Court system", I had a friend who was able to do a search on the Internet and provide us with a starting point in locating Peters dad. We took a road trip one weekend, and much to our surprise, was able to find him on the second telephone call we tried from the list. We met with his dad and he agreed that it was time for him to try to re-connect with Peter. I warned him that if he was going to contact Peter, that he had better make sure he was in it for the "long haul" and not to just call or come visit a couple of times, but to stay a constant part of it. He agreed and has, for the most part stayed in contact with Peter, including coming to a couple of parties, sending money so that Peter could ride the bus to visit him and calling on the phone. It has not been a everyday or even weekly contact, but it has been better than no contact whatsoever.

Since it was obvious Peter was not adjusting to life in a normal structured school, we talked to the high school counselor and decided that Peter needed to be in a smaller, more controlled environment. There were really only two choices left to us in our school district, one was really a school of last resort, while the other was an "alternative" school that offered smaller classes (about 20-22 students each), providing more one on one mentoring, and a "no homework" policy. The school also had a zero tolerance policy, both in regards to drugs (thank God that Peter has never been involved in that), and school work. Well of course, it now being in Peter's nature, he was going to test out this rule and within about 3 weeks of being in this school, they did in fact suspend Peter for not completing his work and failing a class. This apparently was the "slap in the face" that Peter needed as he was forced to meet with the counselor and principal to discuss his attitude and a change is his behavior was slowing beginning to emerge. We also had the doctor switch him to Adderall XR and it helped in his focus and attention. Peter was able to pass all of the required TAKS tests during his junior year, so that was one less worry on our part for his senior year. We were hoping that Peter would "see the light at the end of the tunnel" and make a dash for it in his senior year. Of course this would not be the case, as he once again failed a class the first semester and was forced to double up the second semester. He apparently "got it" that second semester as, not only did he pass all of his classes, but he even was able to maintain an overall "B" average for the entire semester.

I don't believe that neither myself nor my husband has ever been as proud as we were on that Saturday morning of May 27, 2006 when Peter's name was called by the school superintendent as a member of the graduating class of 2006. Peter is currently working for a contract company at one of Texas' largest oil refinery's, working a steady 40 hour plus work week. I guess this just shows that with a lot of work, sweat, pain, tears and sacrifice, all things can be accomplished. In closing, I hope that this story can help someone who might be in a similar situation, don't give up, it can happen.

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See ya soon!!!

About the Author

I am a happly married mother of 4. I have been married for 10 years and hope that I can give you help and advice relating to keeping a happy home. you can visit my home page at http://helpful-homemaker.blogspot.com/