Homebound: The End

First, with Gretchen landing a teaching job mid-semester, I must offer our complete appreciation to her mother, Sharon, for staying with us for an extended visit to help us get through Connor’s school reintroduction plan as part of his Homebound program. You really are a godsend! Second, I must thank the good folks at Connor’s school who there with us all the way. Thank you all so much. I also want to thank Connor’s counselor, Jennifer, who has really made an impact. Connor has little tolerance for activities like these and when he states it is helping and he agrees to continue then something positive is truly happening.

While I’m listing him last, he’s most important -- thank you Connor for trying hard to get reintroduced back to school. We ALL know how tough this has been on you and we all appreciate how much you have tried and are grateful of how well it has gone.

Now, that surely doesn’t mean that this has been a perfectly smooth process. We had some very tough days, but the worse ones are also days when I dropped the ball and didn’t ensure Connor took his prescriptions on time. Proof positive these are helping him. It is also fair to say that Connor still has a lot of apprehensive about going to school -- and this is every single day. Fortunately, he does know how important this is to him and is willing to try hard to make it work.

To recap, we did (basically) reintroduce him into an additional class each week as per our original plan. We focused on periods 3 - 8 and skipped hist first two (elective) classes each day. Connor only made it to his last class a week and a half before the semester ended. As for grades, he ended up with all A’s except for his advanced 9th grade math class (only six 7th graders are taking this) which his teacher decided to give him an Incomplete on and work with him in the Spring semester to catch up on. Our goal was to focus on getting him back into school and not to worry about grades, but we are grateful he has been able to stay on track with his prior performance.

The holidays have been a welcome break for all of us being away from school and work, but it is all about to heat up again for us with school starting up full-swing next week. This will be the first time Connor has gone to school for a full day in a few months and I’m positive we’ll have some tough days ahead. I’m also positive that we’ll all give it our very best and better days are ahead.