Homebound: The Beginning

As my previous blog entries indicated, Connor really had a tough start to his 7th grade year. What I hadn’t posted about was how tough this really was and the fact that he had been struggling to get through the school day. He was feeling as if every single person was looking at him which was causing him to get very anxious. This externally surfaced with him retreating into a psychological shell. The coupled depression he was suffering through was very tough to bear for Gretchen and I. While he made it all the way through a few days, most days during his first month of school usually ended early with Gretchen going to school to bring him back home. In fact, there were many days he couldn’t even go to school.

It was very tough for Gretchen to get him out of the car in the mornings as he was breaking down on the way to school. It was clear that he was troubled as he is a great student and loves school & learning. We met with the school counselor and principle asking for whatever help, assistance and/or guidance they could provide. They were supportive, but (as expected) no “silver bullets” presented themselves. Thoughts of home schooling were rapidly running through our minds. Additionally, we were getting concerned that progressing at this rate could end in him failing 7th grade (this was Gretchen and I panicking -- the school folks never went there).

Connor was desperate for help. He decided he wanted to try medication again and his neurologist prescribed a drug named Clonidine that he tried years ago. He took a step-up approach on the dosages and a month later is now on the full dosage. It has made some difference, but it was never expected to relieve him of his tics. Overall, it has helped take some of the hard edge off, but it surely isn’t consistent. His psychiatrist also added an anti-depressant to help him with his anxiety disorder and depression. Connor started attending weekly personal counseling sessions which has started to be helpful as well.

Rolling back to the timeframe of our thoughts around the possible need to consider home schooling, we naturally started discussing the Hospital/Homebound Program (HHB). This is a program where students who cannot attend school for more than a couple of weeks due to a physical or mental condition can stay “connected to the school based curriculum until they return to the classroom setting”. A FAQ from our school district can be found here. We researched this program thoroughly and considered the pros & cons before deciding it was the best option for Connor to pursue while he builds up his confidence and is ready to return to school.

Fortunately, his psychiatrist agreed which was extremely helpful as you can only enter this program with a doctor’s recommendation. Like all school programs, HHB was a little bumpy getting started. It took many weeks before an official “homebound teacher” was identified. Fortunately, Gretchen was building good rapport with (most of) Connor’s teachers and was able to obtain (again, most of) his assignments and work with him at home. Once the homebound teacher hit the scene (early last week -- almost a MONTH after starting HHB) Connor started meeting her after school twice a week for 90 minutes each session where they cover the assignments from his core classes.

He has also been going to school periodically during school hours to take quizzes and tests. We were supposed to meet again with the district’s HHB coordinator at the end of October, but realizing that didn’t seem to be happening within the expected timeframe, Gretchen and I again realized that we are going to have to make this thing work. The plan when we met with the coordinator was to eventually start phasing Connor back into school a little bit at a time and to review progress at each step.

Gretchen and I thought the week after Halloween (three days from now) would be the time to try to start going to a single class. We talked to Connor and his personal counselor about this and Connor picked the class (4th period) that he wanted to use as his starting point. We have talked a lot about this in the last two weeks and Connor seems to be feeling positive about the plan.

So, that’s where we are now. On the cusp of this reintegration effort that I can only pray will go well for him. They have election day off, so he’ll only have four days next week to attend and we are only going to focus on 4th period. He promised that he will try to work on the postive affirmations his personal counselor has helped him to create and we all have agreed to wait until next weekend to review how it all went and what the next steps are.

In the meantime, we appreciate your thoughts and prayers for Connor’s incremental return to school.