School issues are tricky in the world of older adopted children. Not having come from a background where academics were stressed…to put it mildly, many of my children came from drug and gang backgrounds, horrible school systems, and endured too much change and trauma anyway, superseding their ability to pay attention in class.

How could they learn math facts when they weren’t sure if their birth mom would be sober after school, or if there’d be a new abuser in their house? Their little minds were chock full of survival thoughts, not phonics.

There were many moves in foster care, different schools, half of my children went through various stages of disrupted adoptive placements, usually relative placements that failed, that weren’t suitable in the first place,

Coming into my house, where I stressed reading and homework, was literally a shock to their systems. Structure, dependability and routines were all new to them, where their lives had once stemmed from chaos and confusion, now there were expectations, approval and hope. A little too much, at times, for their shell-shocked minds to grasp.

And I dutifully attend two conferences a year for each elementary child, SST (Student Support Teams) and IEP meetings as we, the teachers and I strategize how to reach my children; to motivate them, or possibly get them to just tune in to the program, focus and pay attention.

In reality, that’s not likely. It’s as if they have 25 marching bands parading through their minds, so distracted are they by what all has happened to them in their lives, very little of what the teacher says can filter through that noise. I see this at home as well. I’ll remind the kids 1000 times to take their plate to the sink, or dirty clothes to the laundry. They’re not being defiant when they don’t do so; it just hasn’t filtered through yet.

This is why structure and routine can be so important to traumatized children, they need this literal reinforcement of what to do constantly; reminders and nagging. They simply forget, if they even heard it in the first place.

I may sound like I’m patient, overly so, but I’m not. It’s slowly taken me 20 years of living like this to fully begin to comprehend how hard this is for my children.

To leave the house each day is trying enough, they are leaving their safe cocoon, to go into the school building with other children who do not share these negative pasts and it is scary for my children. Yet I believe we are fortunate to have a school system that embraces my children, that tries so hard to understand what is going on inside their heads, and works even harder to teach them the basics. It’s frustrating in that the response back from my children is rarely what they would like it to be, progress is so slow, and not much is seen during the school year.

I have the advantage of watching the children grow emotionally, academically, spiritually and physically for many years. It is that aspect that keeps me going. I suppose I am patient, I’ll wait the kids out.