My son is graduating from high school tomorrow. Yeah! It's not such a big achievement from some perspectives, but for my son it is a huge accomplishment.
We adopted our son as a toddler. By the time he'd arrived in our home he'd been hospitalized twice for failure to thrive, and had lived in several foster homes. In one he'd been horribly abused every time he cried, in another he'd been bitten in the face by the family dog.
He has an alphabet soup of diagnosis: FAE, PTSD, ADHD, Anxiety Disorder -- to name the big ones. (Although I disagree with the ADHD. It's only when he's anxious that the ADHD symptoms crop up. Medication for ADHD never produced any results.) His biggest challenge comes from the Fetal Alcohol Effects. He has trouble with cause and effect. He has trouble with sequencing. Math is very hard for him, but so is looking anything up in a dictionary. After all, alphabetical order is a sequence. (He solved that problem by typing the word into a computer and getting the definition that way.) Time is a concept that baffled when he was younger. He is starting to "get it" now, but still has challenges with it.
We've had many, many battles over homework through the years. He got it into his head that school work should be "easy" if you're smart. If you have to work at it, then you're "dumb." He wants to everyone to think he is smart, so he doesn't do the work. Yes, this results in bad grades, but that leads right back to his problem with cause and effect.
Getting assignments in on time was one of his biggest challenges. That's partly due to his challenges with sequencing, but mostly because he has never wanted to keep track of assignments using a calendar or any other organizing device. (I think this was mostly a passive-aggressive move.)
Like I said. We've had our battles over the years. He is graduating with a regular diploma. He was never in Special Education, so he had meet all the state requirements to graduate. He had a D- in English going into the last grading period. He managed to pull a B on his Hamlet final project. (Yeah!)
He will go off to a community college in the fall. He wants to be a firefighter.
I'm very proud of him.
He wrote the following thank you note:
Dear Mom & Dad,
I made it! Thank you for helping me through the years. Thank you for always being there for me and watching your little boy grow up. I will always be your little kid. I'm so excited to go to college, but I'll miss both of you lots.
Love, ------ (your little boy)
P.S. I couldn't have done it without you guys. Thank you! Love you lots!