I'm Surrounded By IDIOTS!!!!

idi·ot (id′ē ət) - (1) a retarded person mentally equal or inferior to a child two years old;
(2) a very foolish or stupid person. Synonyms - simpleton, nincompoop, booby, fool.

Wow! My very first blog. I had always thought my first blog would be something exciting, something catchy. Maybe I would come up with some amusing story about my life, my family, etc. Something people could get a laugh about. Maybe I could talk about how much I love my wife or how cool I think my kids are. It would also be fun to just talk about the amusing parts of my day because believe me when I say my life is anything but boring. There is always something to share.

So it surprises me that in my first blog ever I'm talking about idiots. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not referring to people who cut me off in traffic although in my mind I might call them "idiot" with some sort of adjective in there somewhere. Nor am I referring to people who make mistakes that average people might think stupid i.e. like the guy who believes his wife when she says "Let's not get each other anything for Christmas this year." Unfortunately I have been this kind of idiot at least once in my 14 years of marriage.

No I am referring to people in my life who are just plain stupid. So who in my life fits that description one might ask? Well, I would say there are not many, BUT the idiots I am referring to come from the same place. It may surprise people to discover these idiots have jobs in the field of education. Not only do they work in a school, these people have a direct impact on our (my and the Mrs') children. Thinking about it now, that might just make me an idiot except for I rationalize it by saying I believed these people would be different somehow, a cut above the rest. Apparently not only is that too much to ask but it is also a very highly unrealistic expectation.

So let me explain myself a little more. We have 3 wonderful children who in turn have 3 wonderful personalities. All of our children have had some challenges when it has come to gaining an education. All of our children had some speech problems as they all had asthma at a young age and because they all used a nebulizer they never learned how to close their mouths properly. Our eldest child had 2 life threatening allergies when he first started school. Thankfully he has outgrown one allergy although the one he has now is the most severe. To make a very long story short, I should have known from my experience with his school advocating for this son that I was dealing with idiots, ignorant ones at that. As I said before, who's the idiot here? One of the smartest things my wife and I did recently was decide to home school our eldest (easy decision for me as I'm not the one home doing it. My son may thank me later for that). Seriously though, school just became a place where he no longer felt safe and we were disappointed with what we had hoped would be a supportive environment... his school. Again, apparently too high an expectation.

Now we come to our second child. A wonderful being full of life, sweet, caring, sensitive and would win your heart over in a second. Over the last few years we discovered this child of ours had some major strengths and did not learn the way others typically do. Here's where the idiocy begins although actually it began when we enrolled our first child at this school. So it is suggested to my wife and I we should have this child of ours assessed by an occupational therapist. My wife and I agree as we can see this child of ours has some difficulties. Once we agree to this, the person at the school in charge of helping children deal with these sort of issues and the same person who suggested our child be assessed, glibly informs us that 3 years ago while this child was in kindergarten his speech therapist made mention our child should be assessed. This was unknown to us until then. My wife and I were surprised at this revelation to say the least and we both thought if this had been suggested then why did it take 3 years to get to the point where the school decided to do anything about it. IDIOCY! Then our child was assessed. The assessment was detailed, thorough and the occupational therapist made several suggestions that would assist this child of ours in learning. These suggestions were not only concrete but rather specific, some of them rather simple in fact (not simple in the sense of the idiots I'm referring to in this blog). We were also informed by the occupational therapist she needed to come back to complete her assessment for our child. Thinking this wouldn't be a big deal we waited for her return. On a weekly basis either my wife or myself would ask the person from the school who organized the assessment when the OT was coming back. Each time we asked the response was something like "we don't know yet but it will be soon." Eventually we got to the end of the school year and asked the question once more only to be told she wouldn't be coming back at all this year, some sort of logistical problem or funding issue... IDIOCY!!

Did I mention my wife and I are educated people. We are also quite reasonable. At this point we decided to contact the OT to see what we should be doing for our child. The OT suggested we might want to pursue a more thorough assessment for this child, one that might enable us to get some more resources to aid in our child's learning. Thinking to ourselves this wasn't a big deal, schools pay for assessments all the time, we approached the school asking them to arrange this assessment. We quickly discovered schools, at least our childrens' anyway, did not pursue the type of thorough testing we wanted because it was too costly and they could pay for a very cursory assessment that would be "good enough" for our child. In the end the school decided to contribute what they would normally pay for the cursory assessment towards the assessment we were pursuing, their contribution a mere fraction of the total cost. In the end we went ahead with the assessment and were able to have it happen sooner rather than later because of the wonderful OT (not idiocy but kindness, professionalism, above and beyond the call of duty).

That brings us to the present. In September we have the 50 plus page assessment that cost nearly $100 per page and discussed it with the person at the school responsible for putting supports in place for children so they can learn effectively. This person used the report to apply for some funding which the school got. Apparently thinking this funding would be used for our child's learning is too much to ask. IDIOCY!!! Not only that but seeing as it is now January and the school has only just called it's first meeting to discuss our child's learning plan (IDIOCY!!!!) my wife and I were led to believe the OT we were wanting to complete her assessment on our child would no longer come to the school for various reasons... so we were told. And then last night something interesting happened. Over the holidays my lovely wife, the selfless mother of our children, always thinking about their well being phoned and left a message for the OT. She had also emailed the OT and last night we got an email back from her. Let's just say her version of what she was willing and not willing to do compared to the school's were worlds apart

THAT'S when the FIT HIT THE SHAN!!!! (no offense or resemblance Shan aka Mrs. Half-Soiled Boots) When I woke up this morning I was literally vibrating. I also got little sleep the night before because we had our child's chihuahua de-balled so he could be a nicer dog and stop humping our Shizthu all over (which for those of you interested is a normal behavior of dogs trying to show dominance over other dogs, things. I was just thankful it was not my leg or anything else). Needless to say it was a very long night of whimpers and cries. I think if that was me my wife would say something like, "Wah! Suck it up buttercup. You can complain of pain when you push a watermelon out your penis!" Ya gotta love women! Anyway, how did I get to talking about dicks, oh yeah, right... the school. As I was saying, I woke up this morning thinking I needed a day to calm down before I dealt with the school about this issue. Well I ended up going to school later in the day shortly after lunch as one of our children slipped and fell thereby needing dry clothes to be brought to school. So I ended up bringing the clothes to school and saw the two idio... people I wanted to speak to in the administration office.

WHEW!!!! What a long first blog. To tell you the truth I thought I wouldn't have this much to say and I have been trying to be brief! Well in the end I let both of these people know how disappointed, frustrated, and angry we are with what has been happening with all of this and requested the school use the funding they received so our child could finish the assessment with the OT. I didn't really get an answer, just a "we'll talk about it." It has been brought to my attention the school may not have to do this... who's the idiot now!

MENTAL NOTE: Never assume anything. Never expect the people you trust with educating your children are all actually smart because it has been my experience there are some idiots lurking about posing as competent professionals!