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Connecting Day 2: My herd of elephants

Sam2's picture

Well interesting thing happened last night.    About two weeks ago my parents visited for Christmas.   The evening they arrived they took me, DH, DD and SS out to dinner.   SS rolled his eyes and made a comment about my DD and myself riding back to the house with him and his father.  Needless to say my mother didn't feel comfortable about us riding with him in particular.  I didn't see or hear it but mentioned it to my DH.    Last night he came up about his usual time of 8:30 to make dinner for himself .  He talked with his dad briefly then mumbled something in the general direction of his dad about his behavior and nonverbal communication then went back downstairs.   I looked at his dad and mouthed, "what was that about?"  His dad said he was apolizing for dinner two weeks ago.  I replied "ok, I forgot about that "  which I had and had moved on figuring new year , new trying to get along with this kid.  Any way, not sure what else to do since I had no idea what he was talking about and figured let bygones be bygones.  

I was relating a story to my mom about my herd of elephants.   Several years ago I had read a book titled "The Elephant in the Playroom."  which was about a child with autism and how no one knew what to say .   It is a metephor I have adopted in my life.  My own herd of elephants.  Those things that are present in my life which are not talked about.   Sometimes because nothing will change, other times because it is something I need to deal with or I'll be real something I"m not sure how to deal with or hope will just go away.  This was one of those things.   Two days after I made a inappropriate comment about something, apolized and moved on from his dad brought up the comment and how much it hurt his son.  I told him I was sorry, had said I was sorry at the time and moved on.   Not remembering the incident that well to begin with.   That was when I told his dad about the incident at the restuarant.  I figured that none of us really remembered it that well and it was said in anger, which is something I need to work on along wiht not saying things I don't mean to say or are inrelevant to the situation.  So it brings us to last night, out of the blue with no warning SS makes this comment and I of course do not respond appropriately because I had no idea what he was talking about let alone that he was talking to me.   I might add that SS tends to mumble and its difficult to understand him even when you know he is talking to you.   So another situation in my column of failure.

This morning.   SS and DH are going to the High School to re-enroll him in school.  DH husband got called out of town for his job but hopes to be back around lunch time to take SS to school to re-enroll him.  Since it is not a guarantee that DH will be back , I offered to take SS to the school and re-enroll him.  I asked if he will have to set up his schedule of classes and such.  "I guess so."   So I hope his dad does come back so I don't make mistakes here.   There might be more to it then just re-enrolling him as I'm such electives are lost due to the no credit semsters he has to make up.  I also suspect that there may be ramifications due to the high rate of absences and cycle of not caring or keeping up with work.  Our district had sent out a letter about this time , which his dad didn't receive, about if a student has frequent absences , interventions would be inititated.  If the student doesn't respond to the intervention , more extreme measures would be implimented.  I would think this would fall into that catergory.   Stay tuned. 

Comments

notarelative's picture

Before you decide whether or not you should take SS to re-enroll, can you take him? Will the school re-enroll him without a bio parent or legal guardian?