“red lasers” in his stomach and I was able to tell her that he used that term whenever he was nervous about something. She’d think about this for a moment and then tell me that, yes, that nervousness did sort of feel like red lasers, didn’t it?
Above all, Sally was determinedly cheerful but not in the false, fabricated way I was starting to recognize from other school staffers. Sally’s cheerfulness was both positive and genuine. This was more than I could say for her class. Since there was only one special-ed class in the school, Sally had a mix of at least four grade levels in her classroom and what seemed to be an astonishing array of “issues.” There was one little girl in a wheelchair and one boy who had severe visionproblems. There was an older, bigger boy who continuously shouted out a pattern of loud sounds in an unchanging loop. A couple of kids sat at the edge of the room, desperately working on computers as if their lives depended on it. The rest of the class merely looked tired and dispirited as if they had already had enough of the whole school experience. Despite Sally’s creativity and her innate warmth and compassion for her students, I don’t remember them ever looking happy when I dropped Blaze off there every morning. They looked, to me, like prison inmates waiting for a reprieve. I liked Sally but I hated leaving Blaze there every day. It was depressing and I was depressed about the whole situation.
As the days wore on, I wondered how long it would take Blaze to come around to my father’s philosophy of “give your teachers what they want” or if that would ever even happen. Blaze’s placement in special ed right out of the gate underscored the feeling I’d always had that I’d never really fit in and that, although I’d been able to cover it well, whenever I went “out there,” I was merely visiting. Obviously, I now thought, the same applied to my son and he was apparently less able to camouflage his differences than I had been. Although I’d always tried to see Blaze as his own person, always listened to him when he spoke to me, and constantly defined my role as his mother, I still had his identity very much tied up with my own when he started school. I filtered his experiences through my own impressions, which was all I had to go on. Blaze was stingy with the details of his life at school. If I demanded information, I got nothing. If I waited a few hours after he got home, when he finished processing his day, I’d get some odds and ends, such as what book the teacher was reading or who cried on the playground, but never more than that. I had to rely solely on what the teachers told me and what I personally could observe and interpret. I was in the position of being both his defender and translator on a daily basis.
Sally, Dr. Roberts, and the speech therapist began the series ofpsycho-educational tests that I’d signed off on. Blaze was uncooperative in the extreme. For Dr. Roberts’s tests, he refused even to remain seated, let alone finish drawing triangles or squares.
“Blaze had great difficulty staying seated and attending to the directions of the standardized tests given,” she later wrote in her report. “During the testing session, the reinforcer offered was time to play in the playhouse outside the examiner’s door; this reinforcer was not powerful enough to motivate Blaze to cooperate. He threw the testing booklet on the floor and began to kick the filing cabinets, the door, and the examiner.”
I was very disappointed in these results. Blaze was proving me to be a liar. Even though I begged him to cooperate and even sat in the room while Dr. Roberts administered one of her tests, Blaze was as intractable as he had been in the days following his birth when he’d refused to nurse or cry or get on with the general business of living. He had decided not to take the tests and so he didn’t. No amount of cajoling or pleading would get him to change his
Above all, Sally was determinedly cheerful but not in the false, fabricated way I was starting to recognize from other school staffers. Sally’s cheerfulness was both positive and genuine. This was more than I could say for her class. Since there was only one special-ed class in the school, Sally had a mix of at least four grade levels in her classroom and what seemed to be an astonishing array of “issues.” There was one little girl in a wheelchair and one boy who had severe visionproblems. There was an older, bigger boy who continuously shouted out a pattern of loud sounds in an unchanging loop. A couple of kids sat at the edge of the room, desperately working on computers as if their lives depended on it. The rest of the class merely looked tired and dispirited as if they had already had enough of the whole school experience. Despite Sally’s creativity and her innate warmth and compassion for her students, I don’t remember them ever looking happy when I dropped Blaze off there every morning. They looked, to me, like prison inmates waiting for a reprieve. I liked Sally but I hated leaving Blaze there every day. It was depressing and I was depressed about the whole situation.
As the days wore on, I wondered how long it would take Blaze to come around to my father’s philosophy of “give your teachers what they want” or if that would ever even happen. Blaze’s placement in special ed right out of the gate underscored the feeling I’d always had that I’d never really fit in and that, although I’d been able to cover it well, whenever I went “out there,” I was merely visiting. Obviously, I now thought, the same applied to my son and he was apparently less able to camouflage his differences than I had been. Although I’d always tried to see Blaze as his own person, always listened to him when he spoke to me, and constantly defined my role as his mother, I still had his identity very much tied up with my own when he started school. I filtered his experiences through my own impressions, which was all I had to go on. Blaze was stingy with the details of his life at school. If I demanded information, I got nothing. If I waited a few hours after he got home, when he finished processing his day, I’d get some odds and ends, such as what book the teacher was reading or who cried on the playground, but never more than that. I had to rely solely on what the teachers told me and what I personally could observe and interpret. I was in the position of being both his defender and translator on a daily basis.
Sally, Dr. Roberts, and the speech therapist began the series ofpsycho-educational tests that I’d signed off on. Blaze was uncooperative in the extreme. For Dr. Roberts’s tests, he refused even to remain seated, let alone finish drawing triangles or squares.
“Blaze had great difficulty staying seated and attending to the directions of the standardized tests given,” she later wrote in her report. “During the testing session, the reinforcer offered was time to play in the playhouse outside the examiner’s door; this reinforcer was not powerful enough to motivate Blaze to cooperate. He threw the testing booklet on the floor and began to kick the filing cabinets, the door, and the examiner.”
I was very disappointed in these results. Blaze was proving me to be a liar. Even though I begged him to cooperate and even sat in the room while Dr. Roberts administered one of her tests, Blaze was as intractable as he had been in the days following his birth when he’d refused to nurse or cry or get on with the general business of living. He had decided not to take the tests and so he didn’t. No amount of cajoling or pleading would get him to change his
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