This chaotic time we are living in...

Mamahood has never been easy for me. There is a lot of joy, but also much frustration. When I am in meetings and parents share the struggles they are facing, I can relate to alot of it, because this journey hasn't been easy for us either. Their stories often mirror our story.

In the leadup to the pandemic, we were in crisis mode at our house. In the fall, everything was going smoothly. Our daughter started third grade and our son started Kindergarten. Both of them loved school and were excited to go. They were also very well behaved (at school, at home...well, we had our moments still). My husband had just finished law school and passed the bar and was in the process of looking for jobs. While that was stressful in itself, it was also a blessing because he took the brunt of the parenting responsibilities. He allowed me to thrive as a working #readingspecialistmom. I loved my job, but it wasn't conducive to leaving the work at work, especially when a pivotal staff member to our reading program was pulled last minute due to a teacher shortage. This left me scrambling and putting in alot of extra hours. But it was okay, because #lawyerdad was taking up my slack. He took the kids to school, picked them, took Ed to speech and Addy to dance. I worked late and often nonstop on weekends. 

This changed in January. #Lawyerdad got a job. A wonderful job. An answer to prayer. But his job is in Charlotte, NC, 5 hours away from where we live in Virginia. We had to make a choice whether to pull the kids out of school or let them finish the year. We knew it would be hard, but they were so well adjusted to school, we thought we could struggle through with my husband coming home on weekends. 

But little boy fell apart. And not just a little spiral, it was a full out tailspin. Like me chasing little boy down the street, praying he didn't get hit by school traffic as he ran away from school. We tried an incentive program, we tried coaxing him, we tried laying down the law with him...nothing worked. It was like, school morning came, and he all out panicked. And since I was essentially by myself, I was looking at having to quit my job because there were days, I just couldn't get him to go safely. Long story short, months later in the midst of the pandemic, he was diagnosed with anxiety. But that was after trips to his pediatrician, a therapist who told us he needed to be committed and alot of obstacles in our way. In my heart of hearts, I knew that while my little boy was strong willed, there was something else going on. He loved school, so why the sudden change?

On the morning of March 13th, we had a meeting at his school to discuss next steps. I headed to work after that and I remember sitting with our admin staff, trying to think about how March was shaping out. And our principal basically told us that we needed to hold off because things were happening. The governor later announced that were were going to shut down schools for 2 weeks. And all the sudden, Edmund's school refusal didn't really matter any more because the whole world basically shut down. 

But it also meant balancing still working from home and now starting to instruct my own kids, facilitating their packet work. No problem, right? I'm a reading specialist. I do this for a living. 

Monday morning, I wanted to give an assessment on our third grader. She was struggling with her spelling and her teacher couldn't figure out why. Perfect time for me to do some digging. I tried to give her the PAST assessment. She had a full out meltdown when I gave her corrective feedback. As frustrating as it was at the time (I very adamantly said that my school children never yelled at me and I gave about 60 of them this assessment throughout the year), I now understand that she was mourning that her little world was rocked. And she wanted her teacher to teach her, not me. Little boy was not much better- the battles we had. All out wars. At the end of it, for little boy, I basically threw the packet out the window (mind you, I had worked on 3 of the literacy weeks of the Kindergarten packet for the division, so I threw my own work out the window) and tried to do at least one thing with him a day. I had to give myself grace because I couldn't keep fighting with them. 

All of this to say, if it was struggle for you this spring, you are not alone! If you are worried about what the fall will look like, you are not alone. If you are concerned that your student will not progress in their reading, you are not alone. If you have a student with an IEP and are worried about their services, you are not alone. 

I will have to say, alot of times this journey of motherhood can be very isolating. The competition between moms can be disheartening. And it is surprisingly hard to make friends as a mom. And facebook...well, people just make life look so easy. And it's not. But what this pandemic is teaching me, is that we have to come around each other (not physically, of course). We have to be there for each other in the struggles...and yes, that has to happen virtually, but it can happen. 

I wanted to create this blog as a place that we can do that as well as dive into some topics how how parents can support their kids with their reading. One difference that I do have is that when my kid does something surprising educationally, I can usually figure out why (but not always). Questions like: Why is it taking my student so long to learn sight words? Why aren't they using their sounds in words? Why is their spelling behind their reading? Why can't they tell me what they read? What does their teacher mean by________? I understand the developmental process of reading because that is the world I have lived in for so many years. But it is also a very complicated world. It is not easy to teach kids to read or to help them understand what they are reading. And we are learning something new every day about how this process works. Hopefully this blog can be a place, where I can offer some support to ease the burden on parents...because this is certainly a chaotic time we are living in.