It has been a long road!!

Where to start. Late Friday night of March 22, 2001 my water gushed while I was sleeping. WOW, scared, and ugh I want to shower were the feelings that went through my head. We called the hospital and they said take your time, shower if you need to and come in. So that is what we did. That night was the night that has changed my life for the past 8 1/2 years. After 23 hours of labor, fluid being pumped in, and the babies heart rate dropping the doctors decided to do an emergency c-section. An amazing little boy was born. I felt like a truck hit me and the doctors say that the little boy didn't want to come out so they applied a ton of pressure to get him out. An AMAZING little man was born. We were so happy.

The little man was being watched by the doctors and it was decided that he needed to go to childrens cause he had pneumonia. He stayed in childrens for about a week. The nurses there nicknamed him Bubba cause he was the biggest baby in there.

Throughout Bubba's life we noticed that he had a very long thought process. He also had a very short attention span. I didn't think that he was ready for kindergarten but we sent him. While in kindergarten the teacher thought we should have him evaluated by the special education department. We said go for it. Bubba fit in under the LD (learning disabled) classification for special ed. What does this mean? We had no clue what this meant. We asked what it meant or where was he learning disabled. We were just told that is the classification he fell in and they don't know where he is learning disabled. I just wanted to know where to go and what to do to find out. I never did figure it out.

First grade, we were told in a subtle way that we should have his doctor check him out. The teachers never really said what they were thinking. It was brought to our attention that he was very fast moving and such. Bubba was diagnosed with ADHD inattentive. He was put on Adderall XR 10 mg. It did help with his focusing but he didn't improve in school.

Second grade, we had a wonderful teacher. She was absolutely fabulous and Bubba had a fantastic relationship with her. AMAZING. We also started at Childrens Theraplay and Speech and Language services. Over a course of one year Theraplay worked with Bubba and brought his handwriting up to grade level. Bubba absolutely loves his occupational therapist there. Things still weren't getting better in school. Bubba's IEP moved from LD to other medical disability. At the end of second grade we had Bubba's eyes checked. Bubba is farsighted and qualified for vision therapy services. He started during the summer and also continued with childrens theraplay. We also brought Bubba to a neuro phsycologist. This is where Bubba was diagnosed with ADHD, dsylexia, & dyscalcula.

Third grade. Bubba hates school. He is acting out and wants nothing to do with it. He is not improving and everything seems to be a fight. We finally have a diagnosis and have no clue what to do with it. Orton Gillingham was a name that was brought up to get some tutoring services but there is no center around to do an "intervention." We know Bubba needs help and we think it would be the best to find a center that he can go to to get the help. "Intervention"

I spoke with parents around school over the past couple years to see if there was anything that I could do. Are there any options that I can check into? Well one mother told me about a program called Lindamood Bell. I looked into it and they have a center in Edina. Also, they do tutoring in math along with the reading part. It is an amazing program and Bubba is already reading and it's only been 3 weeks. I will continue to update you as this entry is huge.