Middle School: Check-In and Check-Out 3 of 9 part series

 Breathe in, breathe out….. It’s going to be ok. This new adventure has got to be a better experience than Elementary School. I was hopeful that switching classrooms every 43 minutes would be a good thing for you. But oof…. A bigger school means bigger kids. And bigger kids means more judgement. A much bigger challenge to fit into an environment that was not built for a neurodiverse kid.

I think you took a piece of my heart with you to school that morning. All I ever wanted to do was protect you. And for you to see what an amazing kid you were. You were entering this new school broken from your experience in Elementary School, and I was just hoping that it wasn’t too late to repair all that trauma.

It took a while before the “honeymoon” period wore off. You were always good at giving us false hope at the beginning of every school year. And then it began, phone calls, emails, lunch detentions. Things like blurting out in class, inappropriately playing with the fidgets your poor guidance counselor poured her heart and soul into finding for you, losing passes and assignments…. Your locker looked like a junkyard. Let’s face it, you were a hot mess.

Somehow you managed to make honor roll. I’m not using the word somehow because I ever doubted that you could achieve good grades, but because you lacked the executive function skills necessary to be successful. And your writing…. I was always amazed that teachers could make out what you wrote on a piece of paper. I never really bought into the fact that ADHD could cause such poor handwriting, but that was a battle I had lost. In hindsight, I should’ve fought harder.

I called what felt like our 1,877,765,886 meeting to discuss your 504 plan and see if we could add some supports to help you be and feel more successful. This time dad and I paid a private psychologist, who was very familiar with you, to join us and help advocate for better services. One of his suggestions was to add a check-in/check-out. He explained that bringing awareness to your behaviors by discussing how your day went, how you think your day went, how your teachers think your day went, and how you would handle the next day, would be beneficial. Could it really be that easy though?

The answer is no. It didn’t help and you once again fell into the familiar pattern of struggling. But this time your confidence was rapidly diminishing. And once again I found myself feeling so incredibly helpless. But the end of the school year was approaching, and I was hoping that maybe something good would happen over the summer. Maybe puberty would look good on you. Onto 7th grade…….

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