What are the advantages of spending time in a classroom with your adopted child? It doesn’t matter if you choose to be a classroom mom at public school, participate in a homeschool cooperative, or teach a Sunday school class. The point is to see your child interacting with peers and to note how your child compares academically with similar aged peers. What can you expect to get out of this classroom experience with your child? Children adopted at an older age sometimes fall into odd patterns of communication with their parents. Unless you are an employed teacher in the current... more

With about six weeks of school left, it has become apparent that my teenage daughter, Lyn, cannot possibly pass four of her fourth grade classes. She has special needs that include a learning disability, fetal alcohol, ADD, and verbal Apraxia. There cannot be any benefit to her education or her self-esteem to continue to fail for the rest of the school year. If she were in public school, instead of homeschooling, there wouldn’t be any choice. She would have to finish out the current school year before starting summer school. What a waste of time and energy. However,... more

One issue that adoptive parents face is whether or not to tell the teacher about the child's adoption. I went into the pros and cons in my post, Telling the Teacher about Child’s Adoption.

This year, I decided not to tell my son's teacher until later in the year. I did not want the fact that he was adopted to influence her opinion of my son. Also, I already met with her to discuss his asthma... more

Should you tell your child’s teacher about his adoption? If yes, then when should you share this information? Is a child’s adoption something that a teacher needs to know about, or is it private information that your child should decide whether to share?

I am active on a message board for adoptive mothers, and we have debated this topic several times. We have never been able to reach consensus, so I will share with you the pros and cons discussed. I do not believe there is a right or wrong answer: Follow... more

Livi finally started her occupational therapy center based services otherwise known as school in our house .She goes twice a week for an hour each session. We are just getting started and our first week included filling out the sensory profile and a language profile. I will let you all know how things go from this point on. There is just something about your two year old going off to school, putting... more

It won't come as any surprise that when the girls returned from their weeklong field trip we were all excited as heck to see each other. Even their brother admitted to being glad that they were coming home. It just wasn't the same without them.

I went to school early on the day that they returned, so that they wouldn't have to get on the school bus lugging their roll-on suitcases with them. Of course, I, also, couldn't wait another minute to see their (hopefully) smiling little faces. I was not dissapointed. They defined the very expression "happy campers."... more

So, as I was saying in my last post, my girls went on a week long sleepaway field trip with the school last week. If I have ever wondered what would it be like to have only one child, I am still wondering. That's because when you have three children and two of them are away for a week...you still have three children. The two who are away still occupy your emotional, mental, and psychological space, even though they are not in your physical space. That's what happened with us.

Every other minute, I was wondering what the girls were doing and hoping that they were enjoying themselves and worrying that they were okay. Nothing about the rhythm of the house was the same. The morning routine,... more

This week the girls were on this incredible, fancy-smancy field trip with their school for a solid week! It was one of those outward bound, adventure, environmental learning, well, here let me let you read how they explain it on their website:

NorthBay is a residential environmental learning center designed to introduce students to the exciting field of environmental science through immersion into that environment, and simultaneously give each student a profound experience in leadership and character development. It offers participation... more

Since everyone is probably well entrenched in the back to school routine, I thought this would be a good time to revisit the topic of adoption and school issues. Or would that be, adoption issues and school?

I have written about this topic before from the limited perspective of how my two daughters handle the telling of their adoption story in the school setting. For those of you who have not read about it before, suffice it to say that they handle it very differently. One takes the "let it all hang out woo-hoo I'm adopted" approach. The other is strictly "don't... more

My oldest daughter's transition from the private to the public Montessori setting was the most challenging of all three of the kids. She had a different teacher every year, two of whom were less than impressive and one who was a good teacher but a little inexperienced. The first teacher never did quite "get" my daughter and I always felt like she was trying to force a round peg into a square hole. She is to be credited however with teaching my daugher how to study and how to spell. My other two children are sorely lacking in both areas, but not my oldest daughter. I... more