eSpecially Ben

  I wish I had more time to write on eSpeciallyBen . Ben teaches us lessons on a regular basis: Smile often, give hugs, sit down and savor the moment, grab someone's hand to let them know you care and laugh with abandon–even if it annoys your brother. Ben will be 18 this summer. He attends high school in-person and enjoys seeing his classmates and teachers each day. In the photo above, it's 6 a.m. and he can't wait to get on the bus. As for most people, the pandemic has been tough. Ben's in-person activities, camps and programs were canceled. He's happy to see grandma when we met on a Charlotte greenway or park. Ben seeks out social interactions and being quarantined away from friends and family was even more difficult because he didn't understand why. Ben's teacher sends me photos of him throughout the week. They just finished a rousing game of catch here.  Thank you for following eSpeciallyBen. If you want to see what I'm working on now, find me here ....

This month the writers for the eSpecially Parents series will focus on their child’s experience with schools and the educational system. I have written a lot about Ben’s experiences at school. For the most part we have been very happy with his teachers, staff and academics. In preparing to write this post, I thought about why we have had good experiences and what went wrong when we did not. Here are three areas that I think help to summarize why we continue to  be happy with the public school system. Expertise - I know that I am an expert on Ben because I have known him the longest and involved with every detail of his life, but I also value that the people working with Ben are most likely experts about how to best teach him. They are trained in educating children with needs such as Ben and have special techniques that work.  I begin with the assumption that they went into this field because they have a love for this particular profession and the work that ...

Things sometimes have a way of working out and when they do, it is like a beam of light is shining down on our family from the heavens. An aside: Just watched George Carlin's Its Bad  for Ya and he makes it clear that any reference to a heaven above is pure poppy cock, but he did not say it quite that way. He used a lot of $#%@* There have been too many times in our life with Ben that divine intervention had to be figuring into the situation. The first time we sent Ben to preschool was when he was two. I researched many places with weekday schools, and most churches were not accommodating to Ben's special needs. One even went as far to say that they had no idea what to do with him on rainy days because their rainy day room was upstairs. Heck, if they couldn't figure that out, then the sunny days wouldn't be much better. We did find a church, 25 minutes away who welcomed us with open arms. On the first day of preschool, we found out that the teacher happened to be...