My husband Chris and I bought this house in July 2008. It was the perfect layout for us so we kind of overlooked the smokers yellow trim, popcorn ceilings, baby blue kitchen cabinets, and wall to wall filthy carpet. We thought we were getting into a great school district.
Everything should have been perfect. Well within two weeks of moving in the lower level ceiling collapsed. We fixed and replaced the ceiling and were still completely in love with our move.
It wasn’t until school started that year that everything changed. Our son always had ADHD and trouble in school. In this district things went the absolutely worst they can for any parent. Without going into too many details over the worldwide web, it is easily safe to say our son was not physically safe in the district. We pulled him out mid year and leapt blindly into homeschooling. The district did not let us leave without a fight and we had to get a lawyer to make it all stop. Along the way we discovered our son has Aspergers a form of Autism.
I went part time at work to accommodate my new homeschooling responsibilities. It was hard to manage our living expenses with the decline in my salary, so my husband went back into Special Events Set Up. He got hired on with a company that was setting up the 2010 Winter Olympics. He left us in July 2009 to go to Canada to work.
I put my son in a Charter School in the Fall of 2009. My son did not want to go back to school. I can’t say I blame him. He suffered severe anxiety during the previous year. I was hesitant to put him in school too. I had lost faith also. This school had a very strict program too but I had no other option I needed to go back to work Full-Time and couldn’t afford one of the 2 special education private schools in our area.
Things went well for the first month and a half. My son started to crack under the academic demands and his behavior went downhill. He did something that fell under zero tolerance and got a long term vacation so I was forced to home school again. This time I told my job I would need to permanently be part time. This was not good timing because it happened right at the start of tax season.
I was torn on whether or not to try to keep my son in this school. He was out for all of December, January, and February. His special education teacher told me to fight for him and not give up he could succeed their over time. So I brought him back and it is still bumpy but he is doing better. The administration is even rooting for him. I am not going to lie this is an academically challenging school. My son has an extremely high IQ but has learning disabilities that deal with processing information, so he does have to really try.
Aspergers affects kids socially and my son is definitely affected. He has a very hard time getting along with kids. He is also very sensitive and often misunderstands tone and context. He a hard kid to joke around with. My husband and I have days where we are on eggshells with him. Overall I think he is an cool kid. We have fun singing in the car and watching iCarly. He also has a heart of gold and wants to save all animals.
Well anyway back to why I haven’t posted in a while. We decided to sell our house. We think we need to live somewhere where their is more acceptance of kids like him and more activities he can get involved in. He doesn’t like sports and that's pretty much all their is around here. We also are afraid to put him back in our home district for Middle and High School. So we have been working like crazy people trying to get this house competitive and to a point where we wouldn’t come out negative financially on it.
The icing on the cake is that I was laid off two weeks ago. My husband was laid off from the Special Events Company earlier this year and than was laid off a day after me from his current company. He has an awesome opportunity coming in Texas so guess what he is leaving us again.
He is leaving next week so we have to have this house model perfect by than. I am sure next week I am going to be sore and exhausted but it will be nice to finally see the house finished.
Sorry for such a long and personal post.
