Schooling Ryan

Ryan and I have a love/hate relationship. I love him. He hates school. This can cause some conflicts when I am his teacher. He is the only child I've had who has had to repeat any work. I had him do his entire second grade Language and reading books again. He gets frustrated easily and some days it's a battle.

Things just didn't click with him the way they did with the other kids. I know each child is different though, so he and I plugged along and the second time, it seemed to sink in better. Obviously it did, since he was able to score his grade level on the testing at the school last week.

Today, however, I took him for some other testing. This spring, I filled out the paperwork at the public school corporation for him to be tested for any learning disabilities. The state law requires it to be done within a certain amount of school days, but we had a whole summer in there to wait also.

Whereas, I can read something out loud and Jacob could repeat word for word what I read when I asked a question, Ryan would just stare at me like I was from Mars when I asked him. He is much more into "hands on" learning.

This morning, Ryan and I went out to breakfast and then he and I trucked on over to the school corporation this morning for his testing. I figured I might as well get something for all the school taxes we pay, so we would just let them do the testing rather than pay someone else to do it.

Although I was obviously expecting some type of disability, the results were a surprise. And not a good one.

Ryan's IQ tested at 70. Average is 90-109. 70 is borderline low. Mentally handicapped. This certainly doesn't change how much I love him. But it will change how I try to help him learn. How I try to teach him. How I try to help him succeed.

I am meeting on Monday with the lady who tested him and the resource teacher at the elementary school to get some ideas on how best to help Ryan reach his full potential.

The lady who did his testing said it was amazing that he scored as high as he did in some areas, given how low he scored in the corresponding areas. I've always known his thought processing was slower than normal. He is not the child you can just tell to do something once and it gets done right away. He has to think about it, process it, think some more and then do it.

It makes me angry. Not at him. Not at the school -- and certainly not at God. But it makes me angry at his birth mother who thought drugs and alcohol were more important than the health of her unborn baby. As much as this hurts my heart for him, I'm glad we found out the results. It will help me help him -- and that's my job.