Second guessing myself

I had an absolutely fantastic weekend.

Friday night, we had a cookout with my family which ended up with a round of freeze dance with the adults and kids.

Saturday was a bridal shower for my brother and soon to be sister-in-law.  Then Wonderful Husband took the kids to a family party on his side while I sat at home outdoors and read a book for 2 hours, before going to a jewelry party at a friend's house on my block.

Sunday we spent the morning at Gaelic Park for a mass, breakfast, and carnival of sorts for 'special persons.'  Then relaxed indoors to let the kids watch the movie and play with the toys the eldest brought home, before we had dinner and topped the weekend off with a trip to the ice cream parlor with my dad.

On Saturday night I was talking with another special needs mom at the party.  She was telling me how she put her daughter in mainstreamed pre-school classes, and pushed for it because the school wanted her in a self-contained room just because of her diagnosis.  It had me thinking...why am I not pushing for that?  We haven't officially tried him in the mainstream class outside of art, gym, and music.  I asked for it 2 years ago, but they kept deterring me away from the big groups where the eldest gets overwhelmed.

Geesh - it's so hard.  He needs adult direction to stay on task and breakdown the task at hand, but then he gets distracted.  In the self-contained class, there is a lot of distraction from the kids all around him, so is that making him unsuccessful?  So I was thinking...maybe the self-contained class isn't the right place.

When I got home and talked with Wonderful Husband about my new 'revelation' or 'revolution' (I suppose)...he reminded me that Dr. Psychologist diagnosed our eldest and did a school assessment, and sure enough, he is in the right place in self-contained classroom (fyi - it's new term for special ed).  BUT...this was before we had him on these new attention medications.

Our eldest isn't a disruption to other kids.  He follows rules.  He is mainstreamed this summer at daycare.  He just needs reminders because when things get difficult, he doesn't know how to organize the tasks into smaller ones to get going.

I can't figure it out if this is something that I should start to push for.  Would it make sense to put him in a mainstreamed class for one subject?  Would he be successful?  Would it make him feel better or worse about himself?  Would he feel like he's being punished if he's not in the classroom with the only friends he knows?  Does keeping him in a special ed setting set him up for special ed his whole life, when maybe he can be mainstreamed, but only with the right assistance?

The thing is...I don't feel we are out of place at the 'special persons' outings.  And my eldest had so much fun.  With a disability, there is a huge range of difficulties that people face...whether it be walking, talking, thinking, eating.  Some disabilities are obvious, some aren't...but that is what makes each person special.  It is not one general thing, the challenge they work through every day is special only to them.  Even though we don't yet have a diagnosis, and one special person's adult niece asked me what his diagnosis was because he seemed so 'normal', we fit in there and my eldest can be successful and he feels great about himself...I can tell.

Why does grammar school always feel like this is the be all, end all?  It's only 8 years of your life.  You have a lot more to go after school and many opportunities to change and reinvent yourself after the school years.  Grammar school, and even high school, don't define you.  But success, self-confidence, feeling like you fit in somewhere sticks around forever.  I'm right, yes?

I need to stop second guessing myself!  I always say that I consciously do not try to keep up with the Jones, but why am I doing it now with my kid?