The sins of the fathers...

... are too often visited upon the sons.

Those who remember this journal entry from the beginning of December will also remember that I promised to keep you informed of our collective progress.  To be painfully frank, there hasn't been much.

This morning at our request a concerned group (including the school principal, the school 'yo'etzet' [sort of a counselor/advocate], the school psychologist, Gilad's primary teacher, Zahava and I), met to discuss what we could do to get Gilad out of the academic hole he seems intent on digging for himself.

This wasn't some textbook case we were talking about... nor some theoretical problem.  This is my son... a little boy so very much like his father that throughout the description of his problems, I couldn't help feeling that I was a fly on the wall listening to a bunch of grownups speaking with my parents about me. 

However, the thing that pulled me off the wall and placed me back in the parent's seat was the unanimous optimism of everyone involved.

Opinions and observations were shared... notes were compared... and options were weighed.  I was extremely pleased with the enthusiasm and optimism that each of these professionals conveyed, and I didn't sense for a moment that anyone felt the problem couldn't be solved (or at least bypassed). 

As I drove to work after the meeting, I realized that there was an important difference between the meetings through which my parents surely suffered and the one I had just attended.  The difference was not in the love for the suffering child or the desire on the part of everyone for the child to succeed.  But rather the main difference lay in the current understanding of the underlying learning /attention problems that children like Gilad face.

I faced my academic demons almost entirely alone.  My teachers labeled me an 'underachiever' and my parents said (in frustration) that I was lazy.  They were both right, in a way.  But putting a label on the symptom did nothing to help identify a cure, or set me on the road to success.

The obstacles that blocked (and to some extent continue to block) my path may be entirely different from those that Gilad faces.  However, I came away from today's meeting with the feeling that everyone involved was committed to helping my frustrated little boy... and not just finding a suitable name for whatever is keeping him from succeeding.

As I said in December... I'll let you know how we do.