Anything Can Be Blamed on The Mama

Last fall Caroline's teacher reached out to us and said she had some concerns about Caroline's reading comprehension.  She was pulling a strong B, but the amazing, wonderful, intuitive Darcy Cleaver still saw signs that something wasn't quite right and she thought we might want to get it checked out. She told it to me straight-man I love that woman!   Chris and I have never been ones to put our heads in the sand when it comes to their educations and educational needs. You might even be able to say that one of us (the one with hair) spent a good deal of time being obsessive about it. Mrs. Gegner, Mrs. Waddell, and Mrs. Martin spent way more time with me than they should have had to as I reported every incident I saw of reversals with Christopher, William, and Caroline --would have had to with SK too except we didn't live in Virginia at the time.  I think as they saw me coming they were already starting the speech, "Developmental..." and I'm pretty sure they definitely sent up special prayers for the children of the neurotic mother. Anyway,we immediately scheduled testing for Caroline, told her what we were doing, but left it at that.  While we feel absolutely no embarrassment about the possibility of there being a learning issue (we are Doyles where learning differences are a badge of honor), we also were sensitive to the fact that she's a 13 year old middle school girl, so we told her she can just tell people she has some appointments or somewhere she has to be.  Shoot, I didn't care if she said she was sick except for the fact that she wanted to go to basketball practice that afternoon.

Thursday evening as we were driving to dinner Caroline piped up from the back seat, "Oh I told my classes I wouldn't be there tomorrow because my parents think I'm either stupid or crazy."  "Caroline," I started.. 

Caroline, "I also told them it could be because I was dropped on my head, but basically we just have to find out what's wrong with me."  

"Caroline," I continued, "There is nothing wrong with you we're just trying to figure out how you think..." 

"You think someone will really be able to figure that out?" Caroline interrupted again, "That's going to cost you A LOT of money.  And I hope they don't have any of those open response questions because those take too long and I don't want to have to write that much."  

At this Chris glanced over at me; we both have some suspicion that there might be a tinge of laziness and overly social that also hampers Caroline's reading comprehension.  "Anyway," Caroline continued, "I told them I'd let them know."  

"Caroline, there is nothing wrong with you and it's not about being stupid or crazy.  I'm curious though, why did you tell them where you were going?"

"Why not?" replied Caroline

Later that evening during Christopher's game she turned to her friend Kate and very loudly said, "You know I have to go find out what's wrong with me tomorrow."  As Kate tried to maintain her balance and not fall off the bleachers because she was laughing so hard I said, "It's just some reading comprehension stuff.  There not trying to find out what's wrong her."  Caroline again interrupted (I should really talk to her about that), "Yeah, they're not going to be able to do that; the test is only 5 hours.  It would take them WAAAY longer to make that list."  

Yesterday morning before taking Caroline to her testing I was with some other mothers.  One of them had been in the class the previous day when Caroline made her announcement.  "You know," she said, "I love that Caroline is being so open about this and in fact I think figuring out how you learn is important whether there is a "need" to or not.  I hope she knows how great this opportunity is--I tired to tell her yesterday and I'm going to try to tell her again."  (Oh honey, I try to tell her many things; I wish you luck with that.)  "And," she continued, "I hope that her openness gives others permission to be open." (Please not as open--Collegiate really couldn't handle that!)  But as I've thought about it over the last two days, I agree.  I do hope this gives others the courage to embrace who they are--their strengths and challenges--and to remove some of the masks they live behind.  I hope that if any of the students told their parents about it it gives them an opportunity to talk about either their own needs as learners or how to have compassion and understanding for different learning styles.  Because the answer to "why not?" should be, "Yeah, why not? There's nothing to hide or be ashamed of; we are all created as we are created and that in and of itself is good.

I picked Caroline up from her testing and asked her how it was.  "Some was easy; some was hard--no open response or science questions that was a relief.  The verbal stuff was pretty easy, but you didn't tell me I'd have to play with blocks!  Seriously Mama, you should have played with me more as a child.  I did terrible on that part because I never played with blocks.  I couldn't do it past four blocks. You should have spent more time playing with me."  Yep, anything can be blamed on The Mama.