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She's Pissing Me Off
January 27, 2006 | Category: Mother to the First Power
Bear's school, the highly expensive Happy Montessori School in Poshville, is really pissing me off.
Actually, it's the "Hi I have 4 advanced degrees" in-house learning specialist, Mary, that is doing the pissing. And I am just about ready to start fighting back.
So, she called today to find out if we've enrolled Bear in Occupational Therapy yet. We'd agreed at the meeting at the school last week that we would follow up on her recommendation that Bear get an OT evaluation and she was looking for status.
Mary has been working with Bear for about an hour each week for the past 3 months. She has been providing him with tutoring in reading and writing during school hours.
I told her about Bear's doctor's appointment on Wednesday. How Bear's pediatrician gave him all these milestone tests in the exam room - and passed with flying colors. Bear wrote his name legibly (with his left hand - with his right, he piled the letters vertically), draw shapes, numbers, and point out words by first-letter keying (She told Bear her first name was "Jane" and Bear looked around and correctly pointed out her name on her prescription pad by looking for a word that started with the 'J' sound.)
She was very impressed that on Tuesday, Bear's school buddy had told Bear hisphonenumber and Bear had written it down correctly and then, after school, had solemnly stood in my office and dialled the number so he could invite his buddy over to play. (Hey, that impressed me too)
(Insert joke about buying a 5 year-old his first cell phone here.)
The learning specialist huffed at me that, in her educated opinion, Bear is still having fine motor difficuties and problems getting himself situated in his space to write. She said that he'd had a lot of trouble getting small flashcards in and out of a box in the correct order and direction.
I reminded her that, as we told her last week, we've switched over to an HMO (to control our out-of-pocket healthcare costs). The pediatrician has to make the refferal in order to get the OT evaluation paid for by insurance.
And hey, I dutifully took Bear to the pediatrician's office just for this purpose. And the pediatrician is a good doctor. And I think it is actually a good sign that she wants to do some research before she makes the referral.
She snapped at me that she had to go and hung up on me.
When I picked up Bear today from school, I asked about the flashcards as part of our usual "how was your day" conversation on the ride home. Bear said that the learning specialist had accidentally dropped the cards in the hallway as they'd walked to her office and he'd helped her pick them up. He told me that she liked them to go in the box in a special way, so he'd had to take some out and put them back in again. And that the big kids had been coming in from recess and had been careful not to step on the cards.
And I'm like.... what the fuck?
Bear can actually shuffle cards - rudimentally, sure, but let me tell you - he is pretty good at it. So I am just completely confused now. CD told me that a couple of the other parents he was talking to during some volunteer time they were doing both had their kids in OT on the school's recommendation as well.
So I am Really. Confused.
And a slow burn starting.
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