Finding our place, successes and setbacks in the school system. Chapter 5, struggling to keep up. My name is Delilah, and I am the mother of a son who is diagnosed with nonverbal learning disorder when he was three years old, and prior to that, was diagnosed with low muscle tone.

I had a feeling there was something that wasn't quite right at a year old. We started early intervention for him, which consisted of physical therapy, and then, we went into the early intervention program for school to get him ready. That added on to the physical therapy with speech therapy and occupational therapy. Now, he's 21 years old and he's doing amazingly well.

When he was diagnosed with Asperger's, we were told that he was going to have trouble around the third grade with math. And sure enough, when third grade hit, that's what happened. He really struggled with math. Simple things like addition and subtraction, he just couldn't follow it.

As time went on in school, there were different things that he struggled keeping up with. For example, he had trouble with transferring information from the blackboard onto the piece of paper because he had spatial issues. So when he would write stuff down in his notebook, or when he would write down math equations, everything was on a slant.

His handwriting was always terrible, no matter what we tried. When he slows down, he does better. But he had a lot of challenges in school, both socially and academically.

We had intervention and he got an IEP. At first, it was just going to be a 504, but he was diagnosed, so we were able to get him the IEP. Because of that, we were able to get certain accommodations in class. So for example, he had to sit up front. He couldn't sit in the back.

He had more accommodation for testing. For him to take a test in a classroom filled with students was very difficult for him, given the distractions, so he would take tests separately, and that worked out really well for him. At home, we had to practice patience. That's what it really was. We had to learn how to teach him and how to help him.

It was really hard because we didn't know. At that time, where we live, how to handle nonverbal learning disorder and Asperger's was really not well known. The teachers didn't know a whole lot, and we were lucky in the sense that in kindergarten, he had a special education teacher who was pretty savvy, and she was able to guide us and help us quite a bit.

Middle school, high school. The challenges changed in middle school because the workload got more intense. He still received the services because he needed them, but the information was getting more complicated.

So for example, in subjects where it was rote learning, he was fine. He was able to be successful because he could memorize the material. He just got it. And there were certain things that he just got. Science was one of those things. History was another one. But math and language arts he struggled with quite a bit, especially in middle school, and then, even more so in high school.

Socialization was also always a challenge for him, as it is a common struggle for those on the spectrum. He really never had many friends. He didn't get invited to a lot of parties. He was always kind of the odd kid out, so to speak, and that was really a struggle for him.

When he was in 10th grade, he joined the ski team. When he was on the ski team, he was a completely different kid because he was involved with a group of people. He made friends on that team, and things got better for him. It changed his entire outlook, and even academically, things got a little better.

Unfortunately, we had some personal things happen at home unrelated to him, and as a result things shifted pretty badly. So for his junior year and senior year of high school, things were not all that great. Although socially and academically, in certain subjects, that was not always the case.

Other than the IEP and in-school support, we live near a college that has a wonderful communications program. And as part of that communications program, they were offering executive functioning skills for kids between grades 7 and 12 who are on the spectrum. So I enrolled him in that, and he did that for three years.

He would have certain assignments that he would have to do and bring them to that program. The first year that he went, they had other kids in there, some of them more lower functioning than he was, and some were higher. But part of the problem was that he just felt like the other kids were so well functioning that he couldn't even interact. It was a struggle for him.

Post-high school. He did, ultimately, graduate from high school on time with the rest of his class, and after that, he went to a local community college. Before that, though, he wanted to be an EMT. He failed the first certification test, which was fine. He wasn't quite ready, so we talked about it, and then, he went back and retook the course.

He did very well, and that actually sparked a lot of self-confidence in him, which was huge during that time, as well as after. So he decided he was going to go to college, but after the EMT program, he wasn't quite sure what he wanted to do. We still talked about the paramedic program, and there's a local one, but he didn't want to stay local. He wanted to get out of here. He wanted to get out of the environment so that he was not at home.

A year ago, he told me that he wanted to go to school out West on the other side of the country. Long story short, he enrolled and is doing amazingly well. His grades have increased. He took the prerequisites for the paramedic program out there. His GPA is a 3.6 or 3.7, something like that.

He's got two jobs out there, one working with an ambulance company, and another one as some kind of security guard. So that's what he's doing now. And he's going to continue on the path to become a paramedic.

Advice for other parents. The thing that I would say to a mother or a parent who is going through similar circumstances is that you have to fight for your kid. You have to advocate for them because they can't do it on their own. They need your help.

And you have to ask the questions. What does my child need? It's up to us as parents to advocate for our kids and to make sure that we're getting them the right services that they need. If the schools are not going to provide those services, then you have to get them for your child no matter what.

I would have made sure that my son was getting what he needed no matter what the cost was. It didn't matter to me. Don't be afraid to speak with your child about what is going on.

I was always very open with my son, and it was not a secret that there was something that was going on. And it wasn't anything that was wrong with him. That was never it. There is nothing wrong with the child. There's nothing wrong with them at all. They just have a different way of learning, and it may take a little bit longer.

But we focus on the strengths. We don't focus on the negatives. This is what we do. This is what you're good at. This is what you follow. Go for it.

That's the one thing that I had to learn, that I had to have faith in him that he can do it, and that he knows he can do it, too. My son has taught me an awful lot about life, about patience, and about understanding. And I think that, really, what they need is exactly that.

They need patience. They need to be embraced, to be encouraged. You need to be real with them. That's it. Just be real.