Those Labels are Heavy to Carry

It is an eye-opening experience to have a child in public school with a special education label. I have one. My other child does not carry such a label. Margaret's problems are mostly of her own making, but are exacerbated by a system that doesn't address the underlying reasons for her behavior, whatever they might be. She sometimes misbehaves, by lying on the floor, refusing to do work she is more than capable of doing, calling other students "cheater" or "liar" or "copycatter." On one occasion, she pinched the special ed teacher.
I think some of the adults at her school expect her to misbehave. And she lives up to every expectation.
When she refuses to cooperate, the teacher takes her to the assistant principal. This is the woman who has already suspended her. For doing something that is on her IEP, individualized education plan, and for which she should not be punished. The regional director backed up the assistant's decision, but legal evidence does not. Without the funds to hire an attorney and remove this from Margaret's record, I know it will follow her throughout elementary school like a vicious dog. What was this assistant principal thinking? Did she think that would teach anything to Margaret, who loves to be home?
As a special ed student, she is expected to do poorly at various tasks. Math is one such task.
Margaret just can't add. She can't subtract. She just can't do it. This is what we are told.
So Gene decided to get involved. Armed with flash cards and a pointer, he drilled into Margaret's sticky little brain a bunch of math facts and families of numbers. 1 + 2 = 3, 1 + 4 + 5, and so on, all the way to 9 + 8 +17. She has gone from hating math and refusing to do it to viewing "math with Daddy" as a reward. She can do it now because she thinks she can do it. And she wants to.
She reels off the answers to equations without even thinking about them.
The next frontier is handwriting. Stay tuned.