lizatola

Ok, so most of you know that I am going back to work next week. The summer will be a good test as to how I handle a job along with how my son handles staying home alone all day.

My son has learning disabilities, ADHD, Tourette's Syndrome, and anxiety issues. He is 16 but does not perform like a 16 year old. He is not academically motivated and has serious test anxiety as well as has issues with just school, in general. I've been able to make accommodations for him all these years as well as gotten him help with very expensive math tutoring for the past year. I've seen a lot of progress in math but he's so far behind still. Probably only doing pre-algebra, maybe some algebra at times, when most kids his age are in Algebra 2 or further along.

I am hoping that he can just get through 2 years of community college at this point, but I'm not even sure that's possible. His writing skills are atrocious and he can't even memorize basic grammar skills, making the same punctuation mistakes he made back in 5th grade! A lot of that is because of his cognitive memory issues. He also struggles with executive function problems and I swear I've spent years working with him, but to no avail.

I am worried that leaving him home all day long with an online schooling program will frustrate him and set him into failure and frustration mode. I am going to have to drop his math tutoring at this point, too, which is a serious disappointment to me but it was truly extremely expensive and we just can't afford it.

My X claims he'll be more involved and will help our son regularly but I really don't see that happening at this point. He might step up to the plate once he calms down but I have no idea how that will look. Also, my X will put pressure on our son because he doesn't believe in learning disabilities and feels that the kid will just have to push through them and WORK HARDER. Well, yes, that's true, but you have to give kids like this the right tools to actually work harder and smarter.... you can't just bark at them and say work harder because they don't know how to apply that.

I am planning on working with my son in the evenings to help him communicate with his teachers and then helping with projects on weekends, etc. The X claims that he will step up but I am concerned right now because he's so angry and out of control.

My son knows he will have to work harder next year. He knows he will struggle but what he doesn't know is how much or how hard it will be. I am trying right now to get someone on the phone from the school who I can communicate with about his learning disabilities but it's the end of the school year around here and everyone is in 'the end' mode, LOL.

I am very worried that I'm going to be raising a kid who will never be able to fill out a job application or who will get fired from every job because he can't function.....I know....more will be revealed. I know that everything will work out as it's supposed to. It's just hard some days to see that when you can't get your kid to stop writing run on sentences at the age of 16. Makes me cry and makes me feel like I did a crappy job with him but I know that teachers would have struggled to get him to learn, too. I just can't afford those private schools who cater to special needs kids like where he does math. We're paying $1000 a month right now for 4 hours of math a week and he's still barely into algebra. It's so slow going and I wonder if we've just been throwing money away even if he is making progress?

Thanks for letting me vent. I think I just needed to type it all out!