Trying something new

For two years,

she has struggled.

She wants to belong

wants to have peers that enjoys the same things as her.

She has always done well with adults and has preferred adults over peers.

Has been that way since the day we brought her home.

The past couple of years, she has tried

and sometimes tries to hard

to make friends.

With her being a older child in her class (miss the cut off day by 5 weeks), this has added to the difficulties for her.  She is academic gifted, but struggles with social aspect of it which then causes some emotional struggles.

At the spring of her kindergarten year, we tested her, she came out way high on everything but the social skills.  The school, Dave and I were okay with the decision of not letting her skip a grade because of needing the peer environment to work social skills.  The school did a great job keeping her fairly challenged,  sometimes she got bored, but once the teacher(s) were aware, they adjusted their teaching and she was again challenged.

 She has been patient and doesn't tell me right away when something happens at school.  She has either tried handling it on her own or she keeps it bottle up and then we start seeing some negative behaviors at home, usually one night she will really start doing things she knows not to do, then gets sent to her room, falls apart and it will come out.  She has been picked on at school occasionally.  Since this spring she has gone back and forth about wanting to switch schools.  The first time was after a group of kids including someone she thought was her friend threaten to kill her.  I didn't find this out for a couple of days, but once addressed, the school took care of it right away and Jenny felt safe at school again.  The school really worked hard to address that situation.  Jenny has said the girl that did threaten her and thought she was her friend, now talks to Jenny, Jenny said she is nice to her now and that the girl has changed.

With the girls going to year around school, they get 3 weeks breaks every 10-12 weeks.  During that break except in August, they can attend bridges which is like fun school for part of the break.  This past break in November, an younger girl  (Jenny doesn't know her) asked Jenny during recess if she could use her paper and pencil.  Initially Jenny said no.  The girl continued to ask for paper, Jenny ended up giving it to her.  The girl then wrote "I hate you" over and over on the paper and gave it back to Jenny.  This crushed Jenny as she didn't even know this girl and she was being kind and sharing her paper and pencil.  Jenny said she was done and wanted to go to a different school, her only hang-up is she will have people asking her again about her little ear and she wasn't sure she wanted to go thru that again.  She also told me that is why she decided to stay at the year around school this spring and not switch even though she wanted to.  This hurt so bad, knowing that my child was that unhappy but tried to stick it out as long as she could.  This latest incident was enough for her, she wanted a new start.  Our regular public school has Gifted and Talented Programs, that can also help with the social and emotional needs too.  Jenny's year around school had higher learning program but it couldn't help with the social and emotional aspect of the students like Jenny.

In less then a week, we got it arranged for her to transfer to a regular public school.  She knows a couple people that go to the school and was pretty excited and nervous too.  On Monday she started a new chapter in her life.

 Monday morning I brought her to school early, to give her a chance to meet the teacher and get a feeling of the school before everyone else got there.  We get into the front office.  There are two workers, which to find out I knew both of them.  One of them is a mom to a former club gymnast and now the daughter played on the 9th grade volleyball team with Erin, the other worker, I grew up with her.  Small world.  Once we finished check in.  We went and meet Jenny's teacher.

This teacher has a hearing aide and was able to related to me and Jenny right away.  She arranged Jenny's desk so that it will give her the best advantage to hear the best.  She explained some things to Jenny.  Jenny looked into her desk and discovered that her math book has a zebra on it (which is Jenny's favorite animal right now).  That made her excited.  The teacher also assigned Jenny a "special friend" to help Jenny to feel welcome.  I then send Jenny off and left school saying an prayer that she will have a good day.  When I saw her after school she was all smiles.  She said school was really good, told me some things they did and how the day goes.  She then informed me her special friend is just finishing up the last book of H*rry Potter which was huge as Jenny couldn't find anyone at the old school in her grade that has read those book, there were other things that they has similar likes.  She said the only bad news was that a boy already has a crush on her.
Now we just need to work on the bus times.

I have prayed and continue to pray this was the right decision for Jenny.  This does create more challenges for me, but if this will help Jenny, it is well worth it.  Her second day of school was also awesome.