His entire school career was wrought with complexities of school meetings with teachers, aides, administrators, psychologists, tests, regular Ed teachers wanting him out of their classroom, special Ed teachers wanting him out of school altogether. And all this for a parent who threw her life into the school parent associations – PTA’s, PTO’s, district wide committees, district advisory committees, school board elected positions, state board of education equity committee – knowing full well that schools look down their noses at ‘uninvolved’ parents, but alas, I came to learn there’s a paradox view of involved parents who come apprised of special student rights & responsibilities that make us viewed as adversaries and threats, and we rarely meet in the middle…. Having to fight for an IEP, or a component of same, this should be the first clue that something is not right at your child’s school and you may need to call in some conflict resolution mediators to assist you in coming to terms for some sort of an outcome for your child that appears to resemble an education for your student and not a prison term.

The real tragedy of my child’s education isn’t that his outcome was that he didn’t receive an education in that facility, hated school, dreaded going every day, got called names by other kids that should have been his peer group, didn’t get to participate in any extracirricular activities like sports that help round out a kids life and prepare them for real world experiences, but instead he got segregated from the main stream day and dealt with in ‘the naughty barn’. No, that wasn’t the real tragedy. The real tragedy was that through it all – from the time he started school in Kindergarten all the way through his Sophomore year before he was ‘encouraged to drop out and get a GED’ (a discussion that should have been brought to me as a parent first, before the seed was planted in his head, where all he could hear was ‘I won’t ever have to deal with this place again the rest of my life’ – through it all, and all the labels & acronyms that schools just love to slap on kids in this diagnosis crazy world, no one, NO ONE, ever suggested we send him for a EEG.

I was the best advocate for my child there ever was, and indeed, often his only advocate. I spent hour after hour scouring through books and IEP’s and cutting edge educational research trying to find out what was best for my son. His needs changed from year to year and I had to fight his middle school principal for an IEP by the time he entered his Middle school years. School life was easier when he had one, maybe two teachers in his school day, but by the time he was in midde school – a day full of transitions for the ‘untransitionable’, it seemed I was at war from the second we enrolled there. Where was all this resistance coming from in a school concept that is student centered and wrapped with services around the student, a team of educators sharing about your child on a daily basis, sharing vital information, so there are no gaps, no missing holes in their difficult adolescent years? Where was the team, wasn’t I on that team? And why was it I was the only advocate for my child in that entire school, on a team built to insure success for every student? (well….almost every student ).

Didn’t anyone else in that school see success in my son’s future besides the school custodian, a man he looked up to and often volunteered to help because he saw himself in that custodians world, where they had a shared knowledge there were bad kids at that school – kids my child saw take advantage of their environment that created messes that they knew someone else had to clean up – those same kids were the golden athletes and were allowed to tease and torture and torment my son on a daily basis, without so much as a single reprimand from the administration. Was it really so difficult to understand that not every kid – and especially middle school kids – aren’t all little clones of one another, and certainly, not all kids are athletes and success can and should be encouraged and recognized in a variety of ways in a school community – theres plenty of room at the table of success in a school, and they aren’t all sitting athletes table.

From the minute the seed was planted that he should drop out in his Sophomore year, get his GED, and get a job, the seed took hold and was steadily growing a tap root, not matter how much weed killer I applied to it. Here was a kid who was being turned out into the world with very little life skills department.. Sure, I had taught him how to cook and clean, and he had plenty of responsibilities at home, but there was so much lacking in his life skills department I didn’t know where to start. He got a job, opened a bank account, I worked & worked with him on how to write checks and balance a bank account – something he just couldn’t grasp without holding his head as of it might explode. Things weren’t going so well. His father, from whom I was divorced, had him dropped from his medical insurance and stopped paying child support because he was no longer officially in school. I was so busy dealing with this fledgling dropout that I didnt have it in me to pursue finding an attorney who could work in a state other than our own, in order to preserve the child support and heath insurance benefits of a this 15 year old child. Sure he was attending his GED classes at the community college, but they were boring; impersonal. He found them just as boring as his high school was – the only difference now was, nobody cared if bothered to show up. The part time job didn’t cover the gas money it took for him to drive to work everyday, so he went looking for better work. Where does a 15 year old kid work a work permit, but without a high school diploma go looking for work that pays more than minimum wage? A factory, that’s where.

I am one of those people who believes there are no accidents in life. Maybe every second of every minute of his life up to now, even the bad school experience parts, happened just as they did so they would lead him up to this very moment that completely changed everything.

So, here was Proud son, who was no longer seeking that GED, had landed himself a factory job. A job that paid him more than he’d ever eared at any job is his life, and if you added up the salary, hour for hour, he was even earning more than his college professor step father was earning – if he’d be getting paid for all the hours he actually worked, that is. Fine choice there son, maybe there’s a chance for you to make it on your own yet in this big world. Yet, the strangest thing happened within a couple hours of going in on his very first day.

I get a phone call at home, from a woman identifying herself as the factory nurse, and she said she had a few questions for me. “Drats”, I think. ‘lT’s starting already, and they are noticing some of the fancy school acronyms – acronyms that keep people out of the work place, and I’m entirely shaken I might say the wrong thing and blow his very first day of work. Then I listen closer and she asked me medical history questions. “here we go again…down the medical history path, where we always start” and I’m certain they are already searching for a reason not to employ this kid, who I’m now certain, has no future…

Then I listen closer and hear ‘Does Mitchell or anyone in your family have any history of epilepsy? Has he,, to the best of your knowledge, ever had a grand mall seizure? Do you have a hospital preference, because we have called an ambulance and they should be here shortly and we need to know where you would like us to take him.”.

And there it was, that one second where The Universe all came together and unified it’s theory of Mitchell and everything, I mean everything fit into place. The factory nurse then put my son’s supervisor on the phone and he explained to me exactly what had happened, right before, during and after this seizure occurred. The Ephinany that explained it all. From quirky moments to absence seizures – to grand mall seizures that teachers took as threatening postures to their safety instead of recognizing them for what they were. All those years of school collapsed down into one big miserable failure on the part of every professional that ever worked with my son right before me eyes. Did I feel guilty, that I did not recognize these seizures? Indeed I did. There were times I witnessed him Make tight fists with his hands, moments when some subjects just got too difficult to handle (like balancing a check book) and he just ‘checked out’ on me, or just held his head and shook. There were times like that. But, I have to say, I’m not a professional school anything (except parent), took no schooling in as a school psychologists, teacher, administrator, special Ed teacher, Superintendent. I am none of those things. Why, I ask, didn’t a single one of them, including the early childhood specialty clinics ever perform an EEG on this kid? Wouldn’t that be the FIRST thing you’d do for a kid experiencing some setbacks in his educational process, that were cognitive in nature. Wouldn’t you do this one test, because it’s non invasive and relatively cheap to perform? Why wouldn’t they do that? What went wrong & where?

As a side note, I need to inject a few more important lines here. By the time Mitchell had his first Grand Mall performance in public, he had no health insurance. (remember, his father had it cancelled, great dad…). He lost the job that where had a grand mall seizure on during his very first day. He went years looking for work, and shared with his potential employers that he had epilepsy (which he needed to do, because by now he was seizing regularly and it was a safety issue.). Employers were reluctant to hire a kid without a high school diploma who might get hurt on the job, so jobs weren’t exactly forthcoming. Jobs he did get, had no health insurance benefits, and by now, he/we were bured in hospital/Dr. Bills. Contrary to popular belief, there isn’t a safety net for the sick in our country. Sure the emergency room saw him, but emergency rooms don’t treat epilepsy long term, and the Hospitals and Doctors, ambulance services, well they, knowing he had no job, turned him over to collections. By the time those collection agencies caught up with him (because we moved twice, and didn’t know these bills existed) selling our home to pay my own heaps of medical bills for long term unresolved medical Issues of my own, his bills had already been turned over to the court for collections and had court fees attached to them. we had no choice but to pay them and hope this doesn’t scar his credit rate so badly that he might some day move out & get a place of his own.

He did go on & get his GED. He was right – the classes were repetitive and boring, so the GED teacher allowed him to take his tests and he passed them all, first go around. As hard as school was for him all those years, he was paying attention (between seizures) and had a love for learning and curiosity about the world that led him down the path of self education, and it paid off.

Just last week, he started a new job. He turned 24 thos year & there have been so many jobs all these years. This one – is at the factory right where he had his first publicly acknowledged seizure, when he was 17. They remembered him & knew what happened that day was not his fault and believes in second chances. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for him this time. He desperately wants to earn a living wage & get a place of his own.

So sorry this comment to your blog is so long. It’s a story that I felt could be of benefit to other parents & maybe they can learn from our mistakes…