Unexpected Outcomes

(I wrote the below in February of 2020 right before COVId began, during a marathon IEP meeting that began in September, 2019 and did not conclude until May, 2020.  We met every couple of weeks and spent hours facing off.  Once the district people got involved everything just got worse as the stale mate continued.  They wanted to beat me into submission and I refused to give in.  This was the truth of what I was facing off against.  This was my reality.  I am not ashamed of how harsh this is either.  I didn’t publish it at the time as my circle would have frowned against it, but that circle is gone, and the truth remains.)

I posted this meme recently on my personal Facebook feed.

And while I wish I could say this isn’t really my reality, the truth is that it is 100% true.

I hate ARD meetings.  I hate sitting there, pretending to be nice to a room full of people I can hardly stomach, sitting there arguing for what my son needs from an educational point of view.  I hate their stupid questions, their smug faces, their assumptions, their ignorance and most of all I hate how that all compounds into adverse effects on my child.

I sit there and play the game.  I stay calm.  I go in poised and professional.  I never raise my voice, never call anyone names, never insinuate unprofessionalism or lack of caring on their parts.

I keep my cool, hold onto the emails, record every meeting, take amazing notes, have more than adequate ammunition for due process, and yet they sit there and think they’re smarter than I am, that they know more about dyslexia, about my child, about how to teach my child than I do.

They are the scum that builds up on scales on wanna be guppies sitting on pretend marble thrones in the pantheon of Olympus looking down at the poor pathetic parent asking for their child to be educated.

They are so oblivious to their insignificance in the overall scheme of things that their egos are overwhelming despite their complete ignorance, and stupidity + perceived power is the worst kind of hubris.

They are Cletus the Slack Jawed Yokel.

Yet they wield power created by a despotic system designed to torture and ruin my child and every single child like him.

They feign caring, they smile and coddle, and it all makes me sick to my stomach.

But, I continue to sit there and smile and pretend to be friendly and try desperately not to throw up on the floor in disgust at their apathy.

I choke down my laughter at the traps I’ve laid that they freely walk into.  I smile inside every time they’re stupid enough to put the wrong things in writing.  I revel in the thought that should I pursue due process, I’d win.  I enjoy how pleasurable that would be.  I enjoy the thoughts of how I would make them all eat crow, how I would shove their faces in their ignorance and chase them permanently out of education so they could never harm another child.

I laugh every time they tell me something is per IDEA, when it most definitely is not.  I laugh every time they want to pat themselves on their backs for my son’s wins which are only due to his effort, my tenacity, and my husband’s and my financial commitment to his remediation.

I try to be forgiving.  I try to be understanding.  I try to give them the benefit of the doubt, but every time I make such an overwhelming effort to find the good in them, they remind me who they really are and I shake my head and remember how disgusted I am by all of them.

I want to believe there’s good in everyone so I keep trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, but I just can’t do it anymore.  While I desperately try to hold onto my son’s youth, his innocence, his childish beauty, I also desperately pray for the school years to zoom past as quickly as possible with our sanity in tact and him having survived and thrived despite their evil machinations.

I can’t even compare them to Machiavelli since they’re not nearly smart enough.  They just read off of scripts written by other people and follow their pied piper of educational malfeasance to the doom of each child they touch.

But this is the game.  It’s a vicious cycle that, for now, none of us can escape.  My journey is not unique to me.  All parents suffer as I do.  All dyslexic children in the educational system suffers as my child does.  And truth be told my son is doing pretty damned amazing so he’s one of the lucky ones, and I pray that will continue to be his truth.  There are so many others, the numbers are devastating, that are crushed by this system that was originally created for the betterment of children.

Talk about well paved intentions.  Education in America is now most certainly the road to hell.

It takes more strength, more gumption, more heart, more tenacity then should ever be expected or conceived of by any parent.  A lot of parents don’t get it.  More parents understand though than will admit it and we’re all on islands alone.