Schooling Aaron

He came to us as a blank slate.

When you could get him to talk at the institute, which was rare and guarded, his speaking vocabulary had deteriorated down to simple discussions about machines and airplanes.  The two things he could see and hear while sitting in the empty shed day after day.  

He knew nothing.

Nothing.

All he had retained from his past life was a gorgeous smile and a God-given ability to find joy in the hardest of circumstances.

But whatever he had learned at the baby house was completely lost.  Wiped clean.

For our first six months with Aaron we focused on helping him feel safe and secure.  He wasn't ready to learn about colors and numbers and letters.  His learning centered around knowing that Mama and Papa were not going to leave him.  His focus was on what he was doing each day and where we were going and when we were going to go back home.  His mind could not comprehend past the deep need for the security of always knowing where we were and if he would be with us. 

Colors. Numbers. Letters.  They were of absolutely no concern to our shell-shocked little boy. 

Though he was six and was desperately behind, school was not what Aaron needed.

We treated him as we did our boys when they very very young.  We read hundreds of books, played games, surrounded him with creative toys, showed him his colors, his numbers and counted things over and over and over again.

Aaron had no trouble playing with toys, his creativity is endless.  He has a great attention span and he loves reading books.   He was happy.

In the language area he struggled.  We saw him learn s.l.o.w.l.y.  After several months he retained the color word red.  A few months later he started remembering yellow.  But it was slow.  It was discouraging.  We wondered if he would ever learn.

He could build ever challenging puzzles, he tried to meticulously color inside the lines despite his handicaps, he could figure out any mechanical device handed to him, he could navigate all around the computer, he could tell you how to get home from any point on the map but...

It took a year for him to learn to say the numbers to 10.  A year.  Despite our counting to him every day, a thousand times a day.   It took him a year to remember the words for four colors.  Four.


He just couldn't remember the words.  He couldn't keep them in his head.  Anything that didn't involve language was easily grasped and easily understood.  But remembering those pesky words.... He was again and again defeated.  It was hard to understand why.  Our theory centered around the loss of his native language at the institute.  A year where he received nothing.  The blankness of the walls and rooms.  The total lack of anything stimulating.  He lost everything he knew.  We weren't working with a six year old child who needed to go from his language to a new language.  We were working with a six year old child who LOST his language.  We were working with a child who was equal to a newborn babe in terms of what he knew.

We had nothing with which to compare.  There aren't too many studies of children who were in Aaron's shoes.  A cognitively normal child, treated as a severely mentally disabled child from birth and then at age five exiled to a mental institute out in the middle of nowhere.  How in the world??

We knew we needed help beyond what we could give him.  Speech. Therapy.  Adaptive services.

But we wanted him home with us.  We wanted to teach him and watch him grow.  We felt torn and frustrated.

We decided to get him tested through the school system.    The dreaded IEP.  We wanted to see what they said about our little guy.

Of course they fell in love with him as soon as he walked into the building.  You can't help but love Aaron.

His tests indicated that he or course desperately needed Speech, OT and PT.  They also indicated that he was way behind mentally.  This didn't surprise us.  But they did not want to label him as mentally disabled.  Everyone around the table believed after spending time with him that despite his struggle with language, Aaron is a very bright little boy.

We were so relieved.  We did not want him labeled either.  We know that he is extremely bright.  We believe with all of our hearts that if he had been born into our family that he would be at the top of his class, not at the bottom.

After testing and after much discussion, we decided on a rather strange but workable plan.

We are going to continue to home school him.  But he will also attend public school part-time.  He will receive OT, PT, Speech and will be attending Kindergarten 2 mornings a week during their math and circle time.  He will also go out to recess with his class 2 days a week and will do art, music and library.

By doing it this way we get the best of both worlds....

If we had chosen to home school Aaron full-time he would have only received speech from the school.
If we had chosen to put him in school full time he would have been placed in 1st grade and would have been completely lost in the classroom, but he would have received all the services the school had to offer.

By home schooling him part-time, he gets to go to kindergarten instead of 1st grade which is a much better match for him.  He also gets ALL the services the school has to offer.  He also gets to continue to learn his math and reading from us.

Those who tested Aaron all agreed that this was the best workable plan because he would be getting the one-on-one help he needed from those who love him best, but we would get some help in areas where we felt weak.

This past week was Aaron's first time in the classroom.

He loved it.

The children loved him.

We think for now this is going to work.