Update on Anthony's school

Yesterday I had a meeting with the care-team at Anthony's school and his teacher and we came up with a plan for Anthony. I explained them that Anthony has been underachieving for years now and that this started at another school where he did the same things as the year before(I found out after that year) because they thought it would take away stress from him and build his self-esteem, accept it turned out that it only made his self-esteem lower( he thought he was stupid because he still did the same things he already mastered the previous year) and his fear of failing only grew from that moment on. Also on this school they have never challenged him, pushed him through his panic attacks which comes up when he needs to do new things. But my experience with this is that once he gets through this panic he is calm again and gets everything done flawless. Now Anthony also knows that when he puts on a temper or such he knows that his teacher doesn't push him and he is let of the hook and he is OK with that because he is fine by how it is right now. Everything is easy for him so why bother right? 

I also explained that I think his dyslexia is also a BIG part of his fear to fail. He can't spell, he can't write down what is in his head, he has no idea how to do that right so he is not answering the questions right , only short answers because he simply panics when he can't do it and gets frustrated. I told him that we are getting him his own laptop this x-mas and will put a programme on it for him so he can have help with his spelling. We also will enroll him in an on-line programme called typetopia where he will learn how to type blind and it is also for dyslectic kids. He can take his computer with him each day to school to work on it because at school they have computers and apparently the programme but no one is using it or knows how to use it....sigh. They will also start with teaching him the basic grammatical things for English instead of just words. He will be getting a day task to complete in the beginning but we will build this out to a week task or more then one. This way he learns how to plan and to finish things. In return we will talk with him about a rewarding system because it will be a lot of changes for him and for a child who hasn't been challenged for years it will be scary to get to a place were he needs to actually do things that might be difficult for him.

The lines with school will be short, updates each day by mail in the beginning.

I hope these changes will help him to grow the real potentials that are inside of him.

Corinnexxx 

Comments

[carole R]

Well it sounds like a plan Corinne, and a brilliant place to start for Anthony. I wish him well and good on you for explaining to the school what your boy needs. Good luck Anthony!

[D@nielle]

sounds like a good start, let's hope this will help him get to be the boy we all know he can be !