Monster

It’s been a while. First, I didn’t want to write because someone was commenting that I struggled blocking. I didn’t want that negative energy in my life. Second, life has been busy.

We made the decision to homeschool for high school. We are now in our 2nd year of doing so.

Homeschooling has been both amazing and awful. This is a level of hard for me that I was ill prepared for. High school is where it all matters. K-8 doesn’t really matter, and what I mean by that is it doesn’t matter in the world of transcripts, specific classes for graduation, etc. High school is a totally different game.

We made this decision to step away from public school so that a) we could complete all remediation for dysgraphia, and b) so that my child could have the time and space to heal.

With a group of other moms we formed our own dyslexic homeschool co-op. We had big hopes and dreams and set out to remake the educational world in the form we knew we could create.

God were we naive.

The co-op fell apart very quickly and those of us who remained, all two of us, learned valuable lessons with each disaster. First, you really have to have kids the same age grouped together, and you have to take the varying levels of remediation, and trauma into account. First we tried to split the co-op across younger and older kids to account for the age differences, but then the remediation and trauma differences proved too hard to overcome.

There’s a reason for that too, but I am not there yet.

Then we ran into a litany of problems. First, even dividing the kids by age, and the older kids staying, the intentions of the teacher versus the intentions we outlined were not met. Second, communication was a real problem with one parent being vastly more respected than I was, and all communication virtually filtering through her as though she were the principal, because that’s how the teacher wanted it to operate. Then, third, her true character emerged…

…and, she revealed herself to be the monster we let in the front door.

I won’t even go into the fact that my child was a high school freshman, and we hired her to cover 3 subjects which were English, History, and Math, and the fact that she a) ignored history and English, b) only focused on math, and c) only focused on filling holes and completing math through Junior High, despite the fact that I asked her to complete high school geometry at a bare minimum. I won’t discuss the fact that she didn’t even touch high school geometry. I won’t discuss the fact that she willfully contributed to ensuring my child was falling behind credit wise and she didn’t care, she just wanted to do her thing. I won’t discuss abject disdain with which she communicated with me. I won’t discuss her appalling hubris, her condescension, her superior attitude. After all, you know just how much I love being spoken to like I’m Cleatus the Slack-Jawed Yokel, and she did ALL THE TIME.

No, what I’m going to talk about is the fact that she revealed her true nature and that is one of a histrionic abuser of children.

Her condescension didn’t just translate to me, no, it translated to the children. It was sometimes subtle, sometimes not, but the problem came in her unhinged behavior where MY CHILD was the victim.

I won’t go into the nitty gritty details, but I will say I’m so grateful I was home. My child hung up (all classes were via Zoom) and sat in his room and cried. I found out about the histrionic behavior because the other child told his mother who texted me; so I dialed into the Zoom as quickly as I could, only to also be yelled at by this unhinged woman. I had to reveal a personal detail that was none of her damned business to get her to shut up. I didn’t reveal the entire history behind that small detail as it was none of her business, and I didn’t want to sink to her level. I needed to be the adult in the room because she sure as hell wasn’t. I needed to communicate threat and to do so with a smile to make it clear I was angry as hell, and had far more emotional control than she could ever comprehend.

I hung up as quickly as I could too.

Three hours later my child emerged from his room and we went for a walk. My work day wasn’t finished but he was more important so I logged off and threw on my tennis shoes and out we went.

For the next 45 minutes my child dumped the entire content of the oceans on top of my head. He cried, he raged, he shared, and god what he shared broke me in new ways. I knew he had been abused by teachers who didn’t understand dyslexia and all that that word means in every single neuroscientific way, but I had hoped he hadn’t carried it to the extent he did. That abuse had emanated in the form of ignorant questions, assumptions, expectations, statements, and being exposed to the abuse by others because they just didn’t understand. My deeply empathetic child carried those wounds and many of them still bled.

But, then this woman, this monster, who slipped in the front door because she was invited in, because she said she understood because of her own personal family experience, instead of being even remotely sympathetic, took a knife and gutted my son, and she felt overwhelmingly self righteous in doing so.

“She specializes in children who are traumatized.”

Well, if that’s not the biggest crock of bullshit I’ve ever heard then I don’t know what is.

This was supposed to be a time of healing, a time of growth on my child’s own terms. She robbed us of all of that, and put him behind in school, and she didn’t even care.

We did get away. She’s not in our lives anymore. We threw her out the front door.

But….

It’s months later and she haunts us. My son can’t remember her name which speaks to the level of trauma she inflicted. However, even though he can’t remember her name her presence is everywhere. She haunts his thoughts and has exaggerated his anxiety culminating in panic attacks and task avoidance. In our second year of homeschooling, where no one is involved in this except for the two of us, her presence creeps in from the edges and he freezes, unable to move forward.

Now we have to work through the fresh trauma she inflicted and find a way to heal and move forward all at the same time. Yes, that’s life, but I feel sorry for him in this time where the clock is ticking and the expectations are high and she is the shadowy figure in the corner of every room. I never say the f word but I’m going to say it, it’s not fair.

As a parent who has fought and fought and fought for my child to have life on HIS TERMS, this was a huge blow. I cried uncontrollably one day to one of my best friends, barely able to draw breath and asked why is this education for our dyslexic children? Why even when we try to redefine it on the right terms do these people creep in and rob our children of everything they are? Why can we never get a break?

So even though she’s gone, now we must work on purging her ghost. It pains me beyond words when I see her shadow looming over my child. I have to stop what I’m doing, which I willingly do, and with love and compassion try to help him navigate through. I have to shine light into the corners where she hides and blast her shadow away.

It really is like a horror movie. The difference here is that it’s real life. That being said, we are stronger than she is, and through our love as a family and the support of a mother to her son, we will slay this monster too.