Probably Not Our Best Week

In the past week, Hays gave himself a concussion bad enough to need a CT scan, Will rode a bike down a set of brick steps, the twins were determined to be almost, but not quite, special ed, and Mason proved to be too lazy for the gifted program. Not exactly a banner week.

Let's start with the injuries. Those are common around here, but this was the first time one has sent us to the ER. Not that we're not familiar with the ER. Will's respiratory issues guarantee that we'll visit at least once a winter, and there was that time that we thought Hays might have swallowed a battery (http://theamazingtwinadventure.blogspot.com/2010/12/after-midnight.html). But this was the first time one of them had gotten hurt badly enough to require a hospital trip.

It happened in typical backyard fashion. He and Will were outside swinging with my sister, Paige, while Mason and I were inside baking a cake for his class. All of a sudden, Paige comes in carrying a crying Hays and looking terrified. She explained that he had let go of the chains while he was swinging, and we all know that gravity is an unforgiving force, and he wound up bearing the full brunt of that force on the back of his little head. He was already sporting a sizable goose egg, but it was his odd-sounding cry that was worrying me. When he started losing consciousness and throwing up, off we went to St. Mary's.

That was the most harrowing drive of my life. Traffic was bad, and I kept talking to him to try to keep him awake, shaking his foot every time he didn't respond. Once we finally got to the ER, we had to wait through a line of people (that didn't even look sick, much less like they were in the midst of an emergency) just to check it. They finally took him back after 30 minutes or so, and he was already starting to perk up. He sat through a CT like a champ, and once they determined he had neither a skull fracture or a brain bleed, they finally released him. 4 1/2 hours after arriving, we were on our way home, and you would never know he'd been hurt.

I thought we might be on our way back yesterday with Will. We were at a friend's house, and he was riding her son's bike on their very wide front porch. Even though we were sitting 15 feet away, we weren't close enough to stop him when he decided to coast down the front steps. Luckily, there are only a couple of steps, and he hurt his pride more than anything else. He's got a couple of scrapes, but nothing bad enough to keep him from climbing back on the bike two minutes later (Though we did block the stairs. I'm not convinced he wouldn't have given it another shot.)

The bike incident occurred just hours after my meeting with the school psychologist and speech therapist. Testing had shown that while the boys both have some mild to moderate developmental delays, especially in the area of fine motor skills, they weren't quite severe enough to qualify for services. They did stress that they had just missed the cutoff. Ummm, yay? But they did qualify for speech services, which was our main concern, so they'll be getting 30 minutes of speech therapy twice a week next year at preschool. And they'll monitor their progress in other areas, and if they're not coming along like they need to, they'll reassess later in the year.

Then I had my second school-system meeting this morning to see if Mason qualified for gifted. Nothing like the irony of testing on both ends of the spectrum, right? In a decision that really came as no surprise, he did not qualify based on low motivation. He's plenty smart, and the test scores for skill and intelligence were high, but motivation was abysmal. That's my Mason- smart as a whip, but always looking to do as little as possible to get by. On one hand, we're bummed because we think he would have enjoyed the PACE program. They do some really interesting things, and Mason always does better when he's interested and engaged. On the other hand, we're not wailing and gnashing our teeth because he didn't get in. We know this doesn't indicate that he's not smart or capable. He's both, and we know he has what he needs in those areas to be successful. Our concern is finding a way to make him WANT to work to the level of his ability, rather than just sliding by. The same thing we've been struggling with since kindergarten. The same thing my parents struggled with every day of my educational life. Oh, Karma......

But next week is spring break, and I'm hoping that it will be uneventful and relaxing. Yeah, right, relaxing. Like that's gonna happen. Maybe if I send the kids somewhere and just stay home by myself! But since that's not likely, I'm just aiming for a week with no trips to the ER.