Concussed

Here is what I posted to FB yesterday:

This is the text he sent to me after working the concession stand at the school dance Friday night; the text in which he excitedly asked me if he could volunteer to work at the Halloween party Saturday. He was so proud and happy, and I’m completely stuck on how something so good ended up so bad.

 
Stow went back to school Wednesday, and even though he still gets headaches and easily loses focus, he persevered (with lots of supports and breaks) until the end of the day. His resilience amazes me.

 
Though I can’t go into detail about what or how, we are making our way forward and doing everything we can to ensure that he is safe and that he is heard. I’m extremely grateful for all of the encouragement and kind words we received from everyone; they have made this all bearable.

 
So much of my advocacy for the kids is aimed at making sure their neurodiversity doesn’t put them at risk of being mistreated. Stow engages with others in ways that make sense to him, and I firmly believe it’s my job as a parent to help make the world he lives in less ablest, to move the needle toward making neurodivergence the norm.

 
Still, all of that advocacy, and I couldn’t keep him safe.

 
I might be stuck on this for awhile.

*****

These days, I'm up at night worried about how and when he will recover from the head trauma and what things will look like for him once he gets back to a more normal schedule. Any change is ALWAYS hard for him, and this time of year has traditionally been when he starts to struggle. Something about moving into the fall and holiday season. How long will it take for him to get back into the groove he was in? Will he get there at all?

But I am also having trouble letting go of the idea that if I had just advocated harder regarding the deteriorating relationship between Stow and his classmate, this might not have happened at all. Overall, I think the team Stow has at school works hard to help him. But I also think there are just some things that they can't see or don't get. None of us figured out that Stow was perseverating for a very specific reason. I didn't figure it out because I failed to ask the name of the student he was having trouble with, and the team at school didn't figure it out because they didn't know of the history between the two students. We both had important pieces of information that, if combined, would have led to a very different approach to intervention. Maybe even if we HAD intervened more effectively the same thing would have happened, but I can't help but think that it wouldn't have.