Micromanaging Me...

So I generally pride myself on taking a hands-off approach to my older son's education, only stepping in to have a conversation with school personnel to say "thank you," to ask a question about scheduling, e.g., for orchestra concerts, or if he really leaves me in the dark about something I need to know. Oh yes, there was that one teacher who made flippant remarks to the students about guns, and that led to a call to "headquarters," so to speak.

With my daughter, it's been a mixed bag of hands off, and now and again all hands on deck. We can track the intensity of our involvement to the intensity of her needs/acting out. With Noah, it's just always all hands on deck. Not in a bad way. Frankly, the micromanaging we've done with Noah is the good kind, if you can believe there is such a thing. Since second grade, it's been about working closely with a team of dedicated and caring professionals to help Noah succeed. They have been incredible to/with us, and I hope they've appreciated us as parents.

Middle school is new terrain for us, but in the less than two weeks that Noah's been there, I've had phone and/or email contact with: the principal, the assistant principal, his aide, the special ed. teacher in the science classroom, the guidance counselor, one of his two speech therapists, the school psychologist, and the head of special ed. And we have yet to have open school night!!

I'm a bit overwhelmed by it all, because I have yet to put faces to most of these folks. What's been lovely is that they've generally been the ones to contact us, and that's very encouraging. But it's not entirely clear to me how all the pieces fit together. Partly that's a result of the fragmented nature of middle school; partly it's a result of the fact that Noah's partially mainstreamed.

In spite of all the years of dealing with this, I'm still not used to it. And elementary school is downright quaint compared with middle school. It's smaller, for one thing, and there's only one academic teacher to keep track of. Things break wide open in middle school. And since my child can't really tell me anything about his school experiences, I'm truly dependent on the good will and information I get from a whole group of people I have yet to get to know. Some days, I just feel like I'm too old and tired to keep starting over, but I don't really have any other choice.