Leaps and bounds....

Since Monday afternoon my heart has been so happy , so very happy. Some of my newer readers may not know the history but we have had a hard and long struggle with our Mr L. He has several issues that just make life that little bit harder - harder to learn and to be what seems to come easy for our other two children. For the record, let me spell it out because this is a celebration of regardless of all of this, he is achieving. He has surprised us so many times. Mr L has an eye defect that leaves his right eye partially blind and the 2/3 that have sight at -6,5 while his left eye is +1,5.  Therefore he wears contact lenses - as glasses can not compensate for an 8 point difference. A challenge on it's own. Add to that low muscle tone and Praxis - two issues the OT has worked very very hard on through the years. Then the ADHD and some Autistic traits complete the picture. He has a package that will be a challenge to anyone. A package that our little Lion fights with - bravely. Sometimes we feel like we are going two steps forward and one step back - but we are certainly winning and life is way easier now at 8 than at 3 or 5.

Last year his biggest challenge in the year by far was the debate item they all had to do in class for a mark. Boy the fights we had over this! The learning again and again. The barrier he build not wanting to learn more. The shouting and fighting and total feeling of being unfairly frustrated with your kid.... and then his teacher let him almost read it in class. I think we all felt a bit defeated but it was over and at least he did hit.  He never looked up and spoke really softly. For grade 1 it was apparently enough. They just had to speak (it was their very first chance to do so in grade 1) and it was enough. But I knew come grade 2 it will be another matter.

This year I feared the dreaded grade 1-3 debate item. But we went ahead - pushing last year to the back of our minds. We let him choose his subject - possibly the most controversial of the choices ( I believe that hunting is a good thing) - and wrote his speech. We started learning it over the weekend and the au pair spent a lot of time last week teaching both the boys their speeches. Friday afternoon they both presented completely learned speeches to me. I was so surprised and very excited about this. Over the weekend we helped both to round them off and found out that Mr L does not even need his cue cards - he knows it by heart.

I have warned his wonderful teacher before that this was a huge challenge last year and she said that he could choose when he wanted to do it. It turns out that once again he surprised us all! Totally! He got up in class on the very first opportunity - with huge confidence, speaking out and looking at the class as he presented his item. He did it so well that he was sent with another boy to one of the other grade 2 teachers to present his speech. Which he once again did with such confidence in front of a totally different group of children. This is huge for him - another last frontier broken and tamed. I am so very very proud of how far he has come in a year. My heart is overjoyed.

Adding to the happiness of course is that Mr C in the grade 3 debate went through to represent his class in the grade 3 debate final today. That was also a surprise to me as I have never thought that public speaking was his thing.  We are so extremely proud of him - I hope he got up proud and spoke out loudly in front of all those teachers and kids today and that he feels great about his achievement. (He debated the point that homework is not a good thing. )

I'm a very happy mom.