my kids one by one startig with Izzak

Izzak first he is my oldest at 11yrs

Hi this is new to me I haven't really done this before but things always seem to be going on for us and I feel the need to have a place to lay it all out.
For those of you who know me you already know this is the case for our family. Fortunatly up till now we have not had any life or death issues come up but lots of issues with all of us that always seem to come up so I am going to start writing about it maybe just for myself to get it all out.
Anyway for the moment we are all doing fairly well. The kids will be out of school in a couple of weeks and I can't beleive Izzak will be starting middle school in the fall this will be a whole new experience for him and it scares me. I don't like the idea of my little boy growing up as most people know. Also this will mean a new ERC teacher (special ed) to deal with. I am so tired of talking to those people or should I say arguing with them that I sometimes think if we only had the money and I didn't need to work right now that I would just stay home with him and find someone myself to help him. The school system as far as I am concerned has already failed him several times. Maybe I should start at the beginning with him. Whe he was born for the most part he was a perfectly healthy little boy after some scares during my pregnancy of possible downs and a heart murmer that stopped just before his birth. All was well for awhile other then the ear infections and the fact we always noticed he would get very into what he was doing to the point that he pretty much shut out anything or anyone around him this was as early as maybe 5 months we noticed. We didn't think to much at the time. When he was about 18 months we started noticing he didn't talk at all yet some grunting and other sounds but no talking so we decided to talk to his ped about it and he sent us to The Hearing and Speach institute to have his hearing and speach checked. His hearing test went fine and all was normal so they decided to do more tests on him to find out why he wasn't talking yet and he was diagnosed as having a speach delay and a bit of a cognitive delay also. His large motor skills were advanced (which we knew) but he had some delays in his small motor skills so they started first having him go to a speach therapist up there until we decided to get him involved in the Early Interventions program here in Portland so they could better assist his other delays. This experience was good and he began speaking more and his teachers loved him and he loved them and being around all the kids in the preschool he was in. Then comes the start of regular school for him. When they transitioned him to Kindergarten they decided his speach was well enough he didn't need further speach assistance and suggested the school keep a close eye on him for the other concerns. Kindergarten went okay but we started noticing then how frustrated he would get and they school put him in Title 1 to help get him more help with reading. this continued till the first grade and I started noticing he was getting more and more frustrated in school so I asked for him to be tested for learning disabilities. All they would agree to was to screen him and even though he couldn't pass all the tests they insisted he was just young and would get past that in title 1. Well because of that test we spent the next 2 yrs fighting with the school constantly to get him tested since he was falling farther and farther behind in his reading, writing and memory abilties but some would just saying he wasn't trying hard enough, I knew better I saw him try and he would get so frustrated because he just couldn't get it. Finally in the Fourth grade he had a teacher who realized how far he was falling behind the rest of the class and they did the full testing on him. They found out that what we already knew he was severly dislexic, disgraphic (writing disability which goes back to the small motor skills delay), it was also discovered that he has an auditory processing disorder and a working memory disorder. They finally started pulling him out for assistance and having someone come in to help him during writing and reading also he needs to have all of his tests read to him. He does great in Math though as long as the instructions are read to him. So once we get all this diagnosed you would assume the problems with the school should be over and they will help him right? Wrong. We still had to fight the school to do what they said needed to be done and we took him to a neurodevelopmental specialist to get her recomendations for him to help us know how to help him and make sure he was getting what he needed. Like I said we had to fight to get him what he needed this school year we struggled with his 5th grade teacher as she was a new teacher and I don't think really understood what he needed. He did well with his ERC teacher though and she was able to understand what he needed. Unfortunatly Izzak was still very frustrated and started complaining of severe stomach pains and when he got to the point he was crying and unable to stand up without pain this started the month of December when he was taken to the ER 3 times before they finally admitted him for four days trying to figure out what was wrong and to control the pain he had. They couldn't find anything and finally came to the conclusion that his anxiety from school had was actually causing him intense physical pain. With this and other issues with the home we were living in we decided we needed to move hoping getting him into a better school district would be good for him. Unfortunatly the new ERC teacher in the new school has been a challenge for me but we have been pretty good about keeping most of it away from Izzak to keep him from getting any issues with his anxiety. We have been pretty successful with this but one of the issues

was that she wouldn't speak to the other ERC teacher who knew about his issues and we had figured out what needed to be done with his IEP (individualized education plan) to help him get what he needed and what was best for him to keep his anxiety issues down to a managable level for him. After several attempts to get the teacher to speak to the previous ERC teacher about this as she was trying change things that for him would be a big cause of anxiety I contacted the principal of the school and discussed this with him and fortunatly he agreed with me and the teacher is for the most part doing what we asked her to do. So I go back to the fact Izzak will be in middle school next year and I have this fear of dealing with yet another ERC teacher. I am really hoping to not have to go through the same stuff over again but I feel that it is probably inevitable and have been told by other parents of their having to fight for their kids special education needs as well. For now though Izzak is doing okay he handles things for the most part but things like his memory issues tend to frustrate him also as well as everyone else. Our hope though right now is to move to Alaska there is less issues there with school funding as compared to here in Oregon right now and Kelly can make more money with what he does so I will be able to stay home and be more help for my kids we are working in this direction right now and hopefully things will work out for us. I must end this poost for now I will go on to another one of the kids tomorrow.