My Child Is Not Stupid

My child is not stupid.  In fact, he is quite the opposite.  He has a larger vocabulary and has better spelling and grammar than many adults, and has since he was about 7.  He loves to learn new things, and has a special place in his brain for trivia and sports statistics.  He writes extremely creative stories, with a very intelligent sense of humor.  He can come home from a baseball game and tell you his stats off the top of his head, and after I write the equations out on a piece of paper, I can verify that he is correct.

He’s repeating 6^th grade.  He has taken the FCAT (Florida standard state test) for 4 years.  He passed the reading portion only last year, by the skin of his teeth.  He has never passed the math portion.

He is not stupid.  He has learning disabilities.

The spelling test lying on my kitchen table with the 100% on it makes me teary-eyed.  It’s not because it’s the first test he’s gotten every word right, he almost always has.  It’s because this is the first time he was not marked off for his y’s and p’s and q’s and g’s not going below the line, and his upper case letters being the same size as his lower case.  Those are symptoms that are, firstly, a documented part of his disabilities, and secondly, not indicative of his ability to SPELL.

Last year he was in remedial math.  He doesn’t get the “new” math.  And frankly, his mother who has won various math awards and got a scholarship to study Engineering at a large university (and, according to signatures in her high school yearbook, was the Algebra II teacher), doesn’t get it either.  I’ve taught him math the way I do it, in my head, and he can do the same.  Unfortunately, the lack of showing work and lack of understanding why there is a need to draw 110 blocks in rows of 10 to do a calculation when you already knew the answer 5 minutes ago doesn’t translate well on standardized tests.   This year, he started private school, which doesn’t have to “teach to the test.”  He’s been moved UP to 7^th grade math level.

He currently has a 100% average in all of his classes but one, in that one he is barely pushing a 98%, and he is disappointed by the grade!

He is not stupid.  I’ve always known that, but he just today realized that.  Really realized that. 

I have fought for him his whole school life, trying to find the best school for him, getting him private tutors, spending hours on end on homework trying to find a way he gets it.  I’ve told him how smart he is, and pointed out his abilities.  But it took me this long to realize that what he needed was a school that would teach him HIS way, who would see him for who he is and not what his standardized test scores were, who didn’t just write him off as stupid, and I feel like I failed a bit as a parent.

That’s why they have wine.  And this one is a toast to the little boy who finally realizes his potential.