The great backpack fiasco of 2009, the reprise!

Let me start this tale by saying that I hadn’t planned on this happening. Seriously. I hadn’t. But, Isaac demanded that I send applesauce in with him, in his Star Wars thermos, so I did. BUT, he didn’t close it all the way, and whammo. Applesauce all over the pack.

We did what any parent worth their salt would do. Empty the pack and toss it in the washing machine with the next load of wash, which happened to be towels. We’ve done this with all of our packs and bags, both REI, EMS and LL Bean. We have never, ever, ever had a pack come out of the wash looking like this:

Needless to say, I was NOT impressed with the LL Bean backpack that we had fought so hard to get. Knowing full well LL Bean has a satisfaction guarantee, and that we needed a backpack for the morning, I called the local store.

I had a nice chat with a kindly gentleman, who totally understood my predicament and really wanted to help me out…but they don’t carry the LL Bean Original Bookpack in the store. They only have them online.

Yes, I knew that.

So, I told him that I didn’t care if we got a deluxe bookpack or whatever, as long as we had SOMETHING that met the following criteria:
1) was red.
2) was large enough to hold snowpants, a lunch box and other assorted things in the winter.
3) was small enough for a kindergartener’s back.
4) Would last for a few years.

He told me he had two things in stock-
1) the deluxe bookpack.
2) the critter backpack, which has a shark on it.

Now, the only problem is that these two backpacks cost a bit more than the one I purchased. I was NOT willing to pay for the upgrade to the backpack. I wanted a straight out even exchange if I was going to be made to get a more expensive pack.

I explained this to the kindly gentleman on the phone who explained that he couldn’t do this without a manager’s approval.

I understand that. It’s at least at $10.00 difference!

Now, it’s here that some people would say that I’m being unreasonable. I don’t think I am after what we went through to GET the pack in the first place, and the fact that we had purchased it in July, never even took it out of the package until September and my child had only used it to and from school for not even 3 weeks. Also, to refresh memories, I was given lectures on how I was going to ruin my child’s bones by purchasing the pack that I did, even though I explained I knew how to load a backpack and would be sure to watch out for overloading…and how can you overload a kindergarten backpack? I even did my homework on ratings, age appropriateness and the like. So, I don’t feel I’m being unreasonable.

Back to the tale…

Kindly gentleman puts me on hold and comes back and lets me know that the manager had approved the even swap, due to our immediate need and extenuating circumstances. I tell the nice guy that I’ll be in to get the pack in about 30-45 minutes.

I hop in the car and head down to the mall and the LL Bean store. I walk in and take the pack to the register. Explain the whole story, tell them that there’s a critter pack waiting for me and that I just need to do the whole exchange.

Then, I see her. One of the lecture givers…and she said “Oh, is that the jr. backpack?”
I told her it wasn’t and got the eye roll…then, she accused me of putting the pack in the DRYER.

Umm..the pack was still wet from the washer! How could it have even come CLOSE to going through the dryer?

As I’m being rung out, the clerk notices that the critter pack was more expensive than the backpack I was returning. I explain what I was told on the p hone, and they bring back Ms. Lecture. She ok’s the even exchange and I go on my way…to deliver this:

To a waiting 5 year old, who was beyond happy that his new backpack was:
1) red
2) had a shark on it.

Now, can we please just get through the year without another fiasco that involves a backpack or a part of Isaac’s room?

 

The back to school roller coaster

There’s a lot going on around here. With school starting and the like, it’s been one heck of a ride the past few weeks.

When you have a special needs child that goes to kindergarten or even changes schools, it just becomes that extra bit of twitch factor that other parents don’t have. Add that to everything else, and you get a back to school roller coaster that just doesn’t slow down.

Personally, I’d like this coaster to pull into the station, but I know when it does, I’ll complain that life is boring again (especially here in E. Nowhere) and I’ll wish to be back on.

So, here’s the latest roller coaster set of moments.

Now that Broken Bed fiasco 2009 has ended with a successfully fixed bed, we can all laugh at the latest piece of delusion that came through my mailbox-
a card thanking us for our purchase.
No, not kidding.
a week of screaming, sobbing and being totally glad that the boys weren’t here so that the bed could get fixed in peace, and we get a postcard for a year old bed? What?
Whatever.
Will I patronize this store again? Most likely, at the location that gave us the most help. I, however, will not deal with the person who shares my name and her customer disservice.

Since coming back from the outlaws in Arizona, my darling shrimper has been nothing short of a pill. Massive pill. Rude, spoiled and entitled acting. That’s what happens when you hang with the outlaws too long. I spent the first week back retraining him that 1) being rude will get you nowhere but your room, with all priveleges revoked, like your television viewing, and 2) you may not have everything you see, control the agenda to your heart’s desire, or speak to me like I’m the hired help. Again, this will get you nowhere but your room, with no television.

And no, a 45 minute meltdown will STILL get you nowhere.

Charming, isn’t it?

Then, Shrimper thought it would be a good idea to explore the cabinets on the top of his wall. His room has built in cabinets, and these cabinets are almost at ceiling level. I get a call at work on my cell phone, and hear that he’s fallen off of the cabinets and hit his face. Yes, huge bruise and scrape on cheek and neck. Great way to show up to the first week of Kindergarten-bruises and scrapes. Joy.

And then, we had the biggest ride of all. The medication ride. Isaac’s ADHD meds are insanely expensive. Hardcore expensive. That’s even WITH insurance. So, we found a few coupons to cover at least one of the copays. That’s when the pharmaceutical companies began their rain on my labor day weekend. Our coupon was declined at the pharmacy, because we had used one, and it was one per person, per lifetime.

what? Really?

So, we come back, call the doctor and explain the situation. She comes back with a card that gives us 50% off of copays for 10 months.

Ok. we can get behind that.

so, I drive all the way down to the doc’s office, and then all the way back home so we can activate the card and get the meds, as we’re down to our last 2 pills and two pills and a bunch of days doesn’t add up around here, especially with kindergarten starting.

Let it be known that I disclosed what happened at the pharmacy to the doc’s office. They assured me that this would be just fine and work well.

Yeah, it didn’t work. So, I spent a better portion of two hours dealing with Shire pharmaceuticals and their idiot staff. Here’s how it all broke down…

First step-talk to customer service and explain the situation. Get an extremely rude rep, who makes sure that she lets me know that this is totally my fault, and that the doctor could NOT have told me that this card would work.
Finally, I get her to give me the number to patient assistance, and I thank her for her unhelpfulness.

Second step-Call the number that witch 1 gave me. Get understanding person who unfortunately confirms rude witch’s stuff, but hears me out and issues us a “second use” card for the price of the perscription. She informed us that the card wouldn’t get here until Friday. I also explain to her that the cost is prohibitive to us, even though we have insurance. She puts me through to patient assistance, where….

I get the most sarcastic, obnoxious rep ever. I explain the situation, explain the whole thing and he starts to get sarcastic with me. He tells me I have to fill out an application, and me, knowing that we’re almost down to our last pill for the shrimp, says “I don’t want to be filling out 80 yards of paperwork just to be denied.”

Jerk says: “well, if you mean one page equals 80 yards, than yeah, you’ll be filling out 80 yards of paperwork.” and then he laughed.

I broke into tears and told him he wasn’t funny.

THEN he had the nerve to tell me that this process could take at least 2 months, because since we had insurance, we’d be automatically denied, and we’d have to appeal.

Really? Automatic denial? What the…

So, since we can’t wait 30 days, I ask if he is the final word, because he’s refusing to do anything. He tells me that even his supervisor won’t do anything for me.

This is where I finally lost it. I told him the following:
“Too bad. Stuff gets overridden every day. You don’t say another word to me and I want your supervisor now.”

I get the supervisor and she almost gets her head taken off with the following statement:

“well, if you had called yesterday, you wouldn’t be in this situation! This is almost 7 pm on a holiday weekend…”

Everyone knows how well that line goes over with me.

Let’s review here…this medication is a SCHEDULE 2 CONTROLLED SUBSTANCE. This means you MAY NOT get it any sort of early. So, like the bed fiasco, how were we supposed to know that this was going to happen?

I very politely took her head off reminding her of this fact. I told her that because of the nature of the drug and their lack of any sort of urgency in this situation, that my child is being made to suffer. She then put me on hold.

She came back and they’re supposedly fed exing the card to me by tomorrow (tuesday). Should be interesting.

Meanwhile, we had our “booster pills” here, and we’ve been giving them to him, and we’ve kind of noticed something…

Shrimper’s disposition has changed drastically. We’d been dealing with the “whine monster” and wondering if it was just stress from changing schools, ect, or if it was the meds. With a 5 year old, it’s hard to tell.

So, Shire may have f’d up in our favor…letting us know that we had a side effect that we just chalked up to something else.

I’ll be on the phone with the neurologist’s office on Tuesday.

Then, the last piece is that of meet the teachers/aides/therapists. I’ve been trying to get answers out of the school all summer as to meeting Isaac’s aide and having him meet the teachers, ect. AND the biggest question-who is doing resource room for him. This is just what happens with a special needs kid. I’m still at the top of the hill on this wild ride with this one, so hopefully, these are only mini hills that will end on Tuesday morning.

 

why I don’t have an xbox

Thursday night, before I went to pick up the boys from their Arizona trip, I went over to  Blogless Renee’s house to geek out and play Rock Band. No, I don’t have it for my Wii, but she’s got it for the xbox 360.  And she’s got drums. Seriously. Drums. The last time I was over there, I made my own character-seriously red hair and all, and slammed out to Green Day and all sorts of other things.

(Interjection-21st Century Breakdown is the BEST Green Day album since Dookie. And yes, I have a special fondness for Dookie…but seriously. The new album rocks-and you can play it on Rock Band-21 Guns is a killer drum track…interjection over.)

We fire up the xbox and get the game in and Renee’s all loaded up, and I’m loading in…and the game freezes.

Oh….crap….Oh…crapcrapcrapcrap!

Renee and I reboot the system and see                    it.

the worst thing that you can see on an xbox-

The Red Ring of Death.

We both gasped in horror. serious horror.

I made a panicked phone call to the game store to confirm that there was nothing we could do-because this is her BOYFRIEND’S console. NOT hers, and we were both going to DIE.

So, Renee’s boyfriend walks in and looks at us…as we’re probably looking beyond guilty. Renee looks up and says: “I just tried to reboot it…”

Boyfriend notices the red ring of death and goes off the deep end.

I grab the computer and start peeking for fixes. I also jump on twitter…

Well, crap! @neanea18 and I just tried to play Rock Band on the x box and got the stupid ass red ring of death. *!@*#$%#@! Dumb Microsoft!7:58 PM Aug 27th from web

Yeah, seriously. We were both NOT happy about this. Definately not happy.

So we gave up on the xbox, with boyfriend saying “Man, crappy night all around. Both of my teams are losing, and I’ve lost my lover-Not you, Renee, my xbox!”

And with that we moved over to the wii…and this is what happened…

Umm. I think we now need a battery run. Stupid ass batteries. Stupid ass xbox. Stupid ass microsoft.8:00 PM Aug 27th from web

And then this:

ok. the wiimote lives. No, it’s not.8:01 PM Aug 27th from web

and the final insult…

Fine. we give up. We’re going for ice cream and batteries. Video games NOT in the cards tonight!!8:02 PM Aug 27th from web

All of this drama equals why I don’t have an xbox, and I use a Mac. Seriously. No one needs this kind of a headache. Seriously. We ended up at Stewart’s and then at CVS to get batteries for the wii. It was all we could do. Then, we played wii Tennis. So there.

Stupid Microsoft. Stupid xbox.

 

The bed fiasco-You’re really calling me?

Today, we finally got someone out here to look at/fix the broken bed that has been sitting in my house for just about a week now.

So, repair guy shows up, and as I’m explaining the entire thing to him, he was quite preoccupied with the fact that Doug had stashed the bolts somewhere that I didn’t know.

Umm, dude-the bolts and bolt holders were STRIPPED! STRIPPED I tell you! Like those would have been any use to him. Whatever.

So, he has to go back to the store to get bolts. he was quite annoyed. I don’t care.

The long and short of his visit is this:

1) The bed is now fixed and back in Isaac’s room.

2) I got confirmation that the bed was put together improperly in the first place, or this never would have happened. THEY assembled it, not us, so the blame lies squarely with them.

3) We should have had a bunky board all along to cover the slats on the platform bed-for support and protection.

So, I dive into the shower because I was getting ready to go out. While I’m in the shower, I hear the phone ring. I totally ignore it. Whoever it is can leave a message. I’d already heard from the boys in Arizona today, so I knew it wasn’t them.

Turns out it was the bitchy customer care coordinator who shares my name playing like she has NO CLUE about today’s visit.

She said:
“Our tech came and assembled your bed..”

No. The tech did NOT assemble the bed. He FIXED the bed. WITHOUT your help. Cripes. I had to go to her supervisor to get someone out here.

She wants a return phone call. Maybe I’ll make someone else do it. I don’t know if I can make this call with a straight face and a polite demeanor. This has been too much of a fiasco.

 

The broken bed escapade-Let’s just escalate this one up the chain.

After the snippy conversation with the woman who shares my name, and her unwillingness to do anything for me…and the wonderful manager at the store branch who got Isaac off the floor, I decided to call the next day and see what I could accomplish by contacting that awful woman’s supervisor.

So, Against my better judgement and with witnesses…that’s important. I needed witnesses! I called the furniture store again. Asked for the woman who share’s my name’s supervisor.

Got her.

Told her the entire story-top to bottom. When I told her the part about the bed collapsing with my darling 5 year old ON it, I heard her jaw hit her desk. She asked the question that the evil one didn’t ask-was Isaac ok?

Yes, he’s fine. But the bed…not so much.

 

I explained the conversation with James, the one with the evil woman who she supervises and how wonderful the store manager got Isaac off of the floor with a bunky board and a metal frame. I told her I knew, knew, knew that they needed someone to look at the bed, and that would be just fine with me. I just needed to schedule it. I gave her my best days and times,and said if it had to be the following week, that was ok too. He’s got a bed. This can hold for a smidge if it needs to.

 

So, the supervisor gets her tech to call us and he’s coming on Monday. I’m all for it. He wanted to come at 7:30 am on Thursday, but umm. No. Not getting out of bed that early for a furniture tech. Nope. Nope, Nope.

 

So, another step away from the EECB that I am carefully crafting and doccumenting things for. Both the supervisor AND store manager are in safe mode right now.

 

Wonder how far I’m going to have to escalate this…

 

Customer service = Epic Fail.

Since the bed fiasco of last night,  I had to deal with the “Customer Care Coordinator” of this specific furniture company.  Which furniture company you ask? I’m not telling right now. The only thing that’s saving me from naming this company publicly is the fact that the store manager of the store I contacted last night is on my side in this disaster. This is extremely important. Remember that.

So, this morning,  I make a call to the customer service desk as soon as their machine would let me. I get attitude from the initial person who I spoke to. She said “I called both numbers you gave me. You didn’t get my message?”

Umm..I forgot my cell phone. Whoopsie. Happens.

I attempted to explain the situation and told her that we were looking for a replacement for this bed that so epically failed last night. The bed was unusable, and was currently in pieces in our hallway. Isaac is currently sleeping on the floor with his mattress. (the kid is still as odd as fish. He thinks it’s great. Wacky kid) She then said her technician would be out to the house between 2 and 4 pm. Oh, not so good. Working until 3:30. No one there to meet technician to see unsalvagable bed.

This is where the failure begins to become epic. Hardcore epic.

The Customer care manager begins to argue with me over the timing of the technician coming to see the unsalvagable bed. She gets nastier and nastier with me, each time I tell her that this is just not working for me. She even went so far as to ask if I could call someone to see if they could meet the tech at the house and let him in for her. No. sorry. Not happening.

So, since I was working for some friends of mine, I had very limited phone access. Cripes. It’s a cafe. I called her when I could. She was quite irritated by that. She really expects me to call when I’m up to my elbows in salads or sandwiches? Yeah, no. I called her back, and she said the tech wanted to be there at 2:30. I very politely told her that 3:30 was the absolute earliest we could do it, and that was even pushing it, as I had to get home from where I was working. Without traffic, that takes a good 20-30 minutes. With traffic, all bets were off.

This was when she got nasty with me. She argued that since the bed was out of warranty, there would be additional costs.

Umm, excuse me? A product that falls apart? No, I’m not paying for anything extra here.

She then informed me, very snippily, that she was going to charge me for the tech’s time, labor and any associated costs with the visit. If the bed was in irreparable shape, we would be purchasing some sort of new bed. Any sort of replacement was “Out of the question.”  Even a metal frame and something to put the mattress on was out of the question, because she said “you will be required to purchase a box spring and metal frame”, although the store manager at the one store said….wait. we’ll get there in a minute.

The biggest line here was “Look, Laura, I’m TRYING to HELP you.”

Yeah, no, you’re not. My 5 year old nearly falls through a bed that’s failing, horridly, and now he’s sleeping on the floor, and you’re trying to help me by refusing to accomodate my work schedule and then have the nerve to tell me that I’m going to have to pay for this tech visit…and you’re helping me HOW??

So, I end the conversation, because if I didn’t, I would have lost my job (Ok, no I wouldn’t have, but the things I was about to say were NSFW.) and finished my day in a slightly foul mood.

I get home and start playing back the messages.

Holy Crap. There’s one from the manager of the store I contacted last night…Mike, saying that he really didn’t want Isaac sleeping on the floor tonight, so he had the frame and board that we discussed all ready to go, and when the tech came, he could bring it out.

WELL, since we cancelled the tech, I gave him a ring at his store. Near tears, I recounted the day’s events with the Customer care coordinator, who unfortunately, shares her first name with me. I even told him how she demanded I pay for the metal frame and anything associated with it. He refused to hear any of it and was appalled by her behavior, telling me that he would go to HER boss if need be.

did I mention I like this guy? Did I also mention he’s the only one saving this company from an executive email carpet bomb?

So, Mike lets me know that the frame and the board (because we don’t have a box spring for Isaac, due to the fact this was a platform bed) are at the store closest to me, and we can pick it up before 7 tonight. Ok. cool beans. He also let me know that I would NOT have to pay for the technician to come out and look at the epic fail of a bed that is now sitting in pieces in my hallway. He also said multiple times that he is going to make it right with us for this whole disaster, and that he would reiterate to the woman who shares my name at the customer service center what the lifetime service guarantee is and that it means NOT to charge for a technician visit.

We’ll see where we go from here. I’m not too keen on talking to her again…but whatever. We’ll see. We’ll see.

 

If this happened earlier, I would have called earlier!

For a while now, we’ve been having trouble with Isaac’s bed. We’ve been noticing that things that should not be coming loose under normal wear and tear are really becoming a hazard. We were planning on calling the furniture store while the boys were in Arizona because if something needed some time to be replaced, we’d have that without Isaac being out of a bed.

You know what they say about the best laid plans….

Yesterday, we noticed that the bolts on the one side of the bed were coming loose, to the point where we could see exposed metal from the bolts. We also noticed that the other 3 sides of the bed were starting to come apart-from stripped bolt holder holes or the bolt holders themselves. About 5 minutes later, we heard a scream come from Isaac. We went in to find the side of the bed had collapsed, and it was hanging there. Doug went in, used some wood glue, and put the thing back together again, praying that the stripped bolt holders would hold out until the next day, when we could make a controlled call to the furniture store and start the process.

We go through the evening routine and get Isaac into bed with strict orders not to do anything but lay in his bed, because we’re working on fixing it. 15 minutes later, he comes out of his room, and we see that the same spot we had fixed earlier had just fallen apart again. At this point, it’s 7:45 in the evening, and I pick up the phone and call one branch of the store. Even though it is well within their hours, no one is picking up their phone at all. I’m not happy. Doug is in Isaac’s room having tizzy fits because the fixes aren’t holding, and Isaac is out in the living room with me, playing cars.

So,  call the other branch of the store and get  James on the phone. I attempt to explain the situation and the gravity of said situation-a 5 year old with a dangerous bed and the fact that this bed is just over a year old. THIS SHOULD NOT BE HAPPENING…plus, a 5 year old can’t strip bolts, or holes, especially on all 4 sides of a bed! James just doesn’t want to hear any of it. He keeps going on and on asking inane questions, after I explain to him that this was purchased by the Outlaws in Arizona, and I don’t know what they used, or even what name he put it under. I also explained to him that I figured our address would be in there, because the bed was delivered to us, so our name and phone number would probably be in there. Then, he asked me for a receipt number. Umm, didn’t I just explain to you that this was a gift?

He then tells me that I’ll have to wait two weeks for service on this bed.

How about NO.

I told him that he could just override that and we’d get something faster, as this was a safety issue and the only bed that my 5 year old had.

He then said this:

“Miss, it’s 8:00. If you had called earlier, maybe I could have done something, but since you waited too long to call…”

That’s when I lost it. Seriously lost it.

I said to him in a manner as controlled as I could be at the time-

“I need to speak to your manager. Now.”

He came out with this…

“I’m one of the managers.”

oh, holy hell.

So, I ask him for the store general manager, his supervisor, because he is not understanding the gravity of the situation here…

He refuses to get said manager and I tell him I’ll be on the phone with customer service in the morning. I hang up before I take the guy’s head off.

Then, I hear it. The scream of frustration and storming out of Isaac’s room…the bed had completely fallen apart-one of the platform slats had snapped as well. All 4 sides were collapsing, and there was no way in hades that this thing was even going to make it through the night.

So, I grab the phone again, call the store and say the following…

“I just called regarding my son’s bed that is broken, and now the situation has escalated to the point where the bed has just fallen apart and is unfixable. I need to speak to someone now regarding this matter.”

I get the general manager of the store on the phone with me and I, as calmly as I could, explain the situation, and the idiot who I spoke to earlier. I told him about the line about the timing of my call, and if this had happened earlier in the day, we’d have called earlier, but this happened NOW!

To his credit, this guy understood. He really got it. He understood how upset we were and the fact that we have this 5 year old who can’t sleep on the bed like this. He reiterated to me that the customer service department closes at 4 pm for the day and that they wouldn’t be in until the next morning. Lovely. Banker’s hours. Bah.

BUT, what he would do is fire off an email to the head of customer service as soon as we got off the phone with all of the details, as well as CC the other store general manager on this, so I could speak to either one of them and not have to explain the story another million times. He also said that if we couldn’t get anyone out tomorrow, to get Isaac off of the floor with his mattress, he’d send a frame and a board until we could get the whole thing resolved. He also had me describe, in detail my conversation with the first gentleman, and promised me that since that was in his control, he could totally take care of it. He even agreed with me that there was no way I could have called earlier, as the failure happened when I called. I couldn’t have predicted that the bed was going to fail. He even agreed with me that the bed, even under the worst of conditions, should have not failed in one year. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

So,this morning, I’ll be on the phone with the customer service person and then back on the phone with the store to get something for Isaac to sleep on besides the mattress on the floor.

But to prove my child is as odd as they come…

When we told him he would be sleeping on the mattress on the floor, just like he did when we were camping, he said to us…

“Can we put up a tent? This is FUN!”

See? Odd as anything. He had a blast sleeping on the floor.

 

Where I roll my eyes and attempt to move on

This week, we’ve been attending our local Vacation Bible School (VBS) where Isaac has been having the time of his life. He’s thrilled to be in the big kid group and rotating to different activities, and he’s been thrilled to be chosen for song helper and game contestant! The only downswing is that, as in every group, you get the kids who are ill behaved and then you get the adults who think they know more than anyone else.

The main thing that’s making me roll my eyes is one particular kid. He has always had the worst behavior of any child at the VBS and is consistently out of control. He runs away from his group, just wanders into the kitchen and tries to take adult food, throws the largest temper tantrums that I’ve seen on a kid in a long time and then refuses to participate. The other night, he spent a good portion of arts and crafts time under a chair, refusing to come out, because after he picked a fight, the other kiddle fought back, and he was all “Oh, poor me.” Then, last night, he started something with the kiddle next to him in arts and crafts and then tried to blame HER for starting it, when two of us saw it.

Here’s the issue-a lot of people tap dance and walk on eggshells around this kid and he is allowed to run around unchecked until it gets so bad that it makes people miserable. His mom seems to think it’s everyone else’s fault but her child’s…and refuses to do anything about it.

It really bothers me that people call this child special needs. No, he’s just ill behaved. There is a big difference. There are kids who are special needs at this VBS-and he’s just  not one of them. People need to stop confusing bad behavior with special needs.

I’m rolling my eyes and attempting to move on.

 

Can I please parent my OWN child?

Today, I took Isaac to a local farmer’s market-one that has a playground right next to it. As I was finishing my last transaction, knowing I’d be over in 3o seconds, I allowed him to zip over to the playground, where I could see him the ENTIRE time. He was in my line of sight and I was on my way over.

As Isaac is prone to do, he fell over another child-he refused to wear his AFOs this morning. I was not going to fight with him on that.

I had no less than 4 parents asking me if this was my child, and basically condemning me that I wasn’t within arm’s reach. For cripe’s sake-I saw the whole thing, he was fine, I was paying for some eggs-it was all of 30 seconds. I had to explain myself to these parents and I ended up getting a lecture on how I should NEVER leave my child alone.

Umm, really? I know when I was 5, I spent more time running from my parents down at the local park. As long as I was in eyesight, I was fine. My parents never got lectures from other parents who thought they knew better and how I functioned. I’m sick of the hyper vigilant society that we live in thinking that we all know best how to parent another person’s child.

When will others learn that only the parent knows what is right for their child? Telling someone how to parent is like telling the weather to change on a dime. It just doesn’t work.

 

Special Needs and Kindergarten, take 2.5

Oh, boy. I came home from dropping Isaac off and got a call from the principal that I’d been waiting for. 

Now color me SUPER unimpressed. 

 

Here’s how it all went down….

I explained that I’d like to view both the regular kindergarten and the multi-age classroom to help make my choice as to what is most appropriate for Isaac. I also explained that I (as well as the school) was told that we could visit after the psych visit.

 

WEEEEEEELLLLL, the psych and team came and I’m still not able to go in and visit the classrooms, because the school hasn’t decided what is appropriate for my child and what isn’t. 

 

Really now? Why are we changing stories again? 

 

and then, it was brought up that the preschool was not being accomodating in allowing the psych to visit. 

yeah, right. 

The psych asked to come the NEXT DAY, then, the dates she was giving to the director were over SPRING BREAK. 

I let the principal in on that one too. She was flabbergasted. 

She admitted that she was new to the elementary school, and just got her first inkling of all of this in January when I started asking to visit. She’s blaming the hold up of all of this on Isaac’s current placement! Ummmmmm…NO. 

Stories are changing as fast as the weather around here. 

So, now I’m waiting for a callback from the head hancho at the district. I know she’ll call me back, because she knows I’m not a happy human, and in these situations, she’s ALWAYS called me back. Nice as she is, she’s quite the entertainment factor. 

 

I’m still super unimpressed.