Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Well I've been thinking about what to write, or actually how to write it. Hannah has been struggling. She is struggling both cognitively and emotionally.

Dave and I met with her teacher last week regarding her schoolwork. We have noticed that homework is becoming too much. There have been nights that Hannah has worked nearly 2 hours on her homework. She becomes frustrated after such a long time and just breaks down. Nothing gets done after that. We were told she should be working about 40-45 minutes a night, and after that, she's done. We are noticing this now that the work is becoming more difficult and more fast paced.

Hannah has been going into school at 8:30am each day to work with her aide Mrs. W. They preview work that the class will be doing, so that Hannah has already been exposed to it. They also finish up any work not done during the school day, study for tests, go over times tables, etc. It has really helped a lot, and Hannah's stress level seems to have gone way down. However, Hannah is now falling behind a bit during the day on the classroom work. It's not that she can not comprehend the information, it's that she takes longer to do the work than her peers. She needs more time and more repetition to be able to absorb the material. She already has extra time for tests (time and a half) and she has really needed that. But her teacher also suggested less work load, more time for all tests, including state tests, ranking of homework so that the most important things are done first and worked on for only 40 minutes, working with small numbers, rather than the larger numbers as the work becomes more difficult and no more PT in school, so that she is not out of the classroom for that amount of time. Hannah's neurologist had already suggested no more school PT, and that she do some specific things at home. Hannah has also been evaluated for assistive technology. This would involve any special technological aides to help Hannah organize and process her work. We don't have any results from the evaluation yet to see what their recommendations are.

Hannah has also been struggling emotionally. It seems that when is pushed too far, she just loses it. This can be over too much homework, asking her to brush her teeth, dropping her off at school. We have noticed this for quite some time, but it was rather sporadic until recently. Without going into all the gory details, yesterday I got a call from the assistant principal as well as the school psychologist. Mrs. W. has also been researching information on traumatic brain injury (TBI). The research notes that TBI kids (brain surgery qualifies at TBI) exhibit behavioral problems including not being able to control their temper, not obeying directions, as well as restlessness and agitation. Hannah exhibits ALL of these. And it's getting worse. Sometimes she is totally out of control, screaming, crying, kicking, biting, hiding, hitting, etc. We have tried every approach possible, believe me.

Hannah knows there is a problem. A few weeks ago she called me into her room after I put her to bed. She was crying. She had a difficult time telling me what was wrong. She finally came out with "I'm sad because I was thinking about something. I'm different." I talked with her to see exactly what she meant...different how? Different from other kids, different because there were some things she couldn't do anymore? She just kept saying no. She could not articulate how she was different, she just said "different from before the surgery." She said sometimes she just can't control herself. She can't stop from crying, even though she doesn't want to. She can't stop the rage and anger once it starts. She just knows she is different and that makes her sad.

How is that for heart breaking?

There is more, but I'm ending now for fear of overloading everyone with too much information!

♥Kim