Just when I thought I could put on the cruise control and coast for a little bit....
We received Auggies first Progress Report for his IEP. What a world of difference there is between the report cards for our two boys. Giorgio has gotten straight A's on every report card. Academics are his thing, it comes so naturally to him. It is something I am a bit jealous of; it did not come that easy for me and I did not have a thirst for knowledge like he does.
When it comes to an IEP it's more of a pass/fail which made me feel a bit down as I read the words on paper. Words that for the first handful of lines state, "will probably not meet goal". Ughhh it hurt, no matter how much you think you have acclimated yourself to this life, it still hurts your parent heart to see that.
Once upon a time, I would have ripped the paper up because of how it made me feel. I would have blamed myself and vowed to make sure he crushes every single one of those goals in record time. That is not what I did.
I put the paper down, I walked away and cleared my head. Some time later I picked it back up and the second half of the report was all positive. Auggie is thriving with fine motor and physical therapy and that is great. He may not meet his speech goals, and that's ok.
I see that it is not Auggie that has to change, or me or any of his educators. It is not his goals that need to change either. We know the starting line and we know the finish line those are quantifiable. How he gets there is not. We just may have to choose a different route to our destination, and that is ok. We know that Auggie is speaking a lot (alottttttttt) at home, however he is a bit more reserved at school. Our new plan is to keep a running list of words he says at home and school so his teachers and peers can try to get him to speak more at school. It may work, it may not but we are all working together and that fills me with hope.
The scenic route is beautiful. It allows us all to slow down and appreciate how hard this child works and how much progress he has made. He is not the same as his brother and his brother is not the same as him. They both have very unique strengths and they both have things they struggle with. What is the same is their love for each other, their level of determination and their heart. We're on this trip together and I am so thankful that we get to take the scenic route so we can stop and smell the Rose's together.