Slow But Steady

We continue to see Shane make slow but steady progress in reading and math.  He enjoys the computer math program and the new easy reader books we got him (all three letter words or less), but often forgets material he learned just a month before.  I know it's frustrating for him to see his younger brother, Kevin, advancing at a much faster pace in reading.  Kevin surprised Daniel this week by reading a polar bear book that we had no idea he could read yet.

Meanwhile, Shane says he has made friends with the boy who was bullying him at the Options program.  But yesterday, when I picked the kids up, I was told that the solution seems to be to ignore the bullying and let this boy take whatever Shane has.  I told him to be nice to the boy and super friendly in the hopes that he would stop being so violent.  I also tried to get the school involved, but their solution was to have a school assembly about bullying that didn't really make much sense to the kids.  The principal brought dogs and talked about the fact that, even though the dogs are very different and have different jobs when they are hunting, they don't bully each other and treat each other badly because of their differences.  The only problem is that bullying isn't always about kids treating a "different" kid badly.  Sometimes it's just bad behavior.  I was hoping they'd spell out direct consequences and lay down the law, but instead it was handled in a "let's just all be nice" manner.

He seems happy, though, with the way things are going now.  I'm trying not to be a "helicopter mom" hovering over him and zooming in to fix everything.  At least he has his brother in class with him as support and an interpreter when trying to talk to teachers.  His teachers have told me he's doing well in class.  Here's hoping it all works out okay.