The Day I Disowned My Only Son (Part 4)
After dinner, we resumed the family meeting.
The first priority was to bridge the gap between the school's perspective and his own.
That was when it came out that the school nurse had suggested, "Why don't you try taking a developmental assessment?"
Because my son had surgery on his anal sphincter as a sequela of congenital Hirschsprung's disease, his tightening strength is weak. Although it improved significantly about six months after a corrective surgery in the summer of his first year of elementary school, he still has occasional fecal incontinence even now, so he spends his days wearing a toddler training pad attached backwards to his underwear.
Because of this, he sometimes uses accessible restrooms when he has time, and he has previously gone through the procedures to request the use of accessible restrooms during exam periods.
As a parent who once had to endure the hardship of having to put him in paper diapers even after he started elementary school, hearing him say that it has now been downgraded to something he treats as "insurance for just in case" brings tears of joy to my eyes.
Due to these various physical issues, it seems he had been reporting to the school nurse and having regular meetings with her since he first enrolled.
He told me that when he spoke with the nurse there, she said, "I'm sure you've had many tests regarding your developmental traits before, but perhaps the drastic change of living alone is having some kind of impact. Why don't you try taking an assessment that suits you now? Even if it doesn't lead to a diagnosis, I think it would be good to see a specialist and get their opinion."
Not another developmental assessment!!!
The first time I noticed my son's developmental traits was in the winter of his first year of kindergarten.
My son was born in mid-February, so his age in months was behind most of his classmates.
However, rather than it being about his age in months, I happened to let slip during a meeting with his kindergarten teacher that "it feels like there is one child from the two-year-old class mixed in with the three-year-olds."
The teacher immediately understood, saying, "You think so too, Mother! Is it because you studied pedagogy?!" (crying), and since the information was immediately passed from the kindergarten to the person in charge at the city hall's children's division, he has gone through:
・K-ABC Developmental Assessment
・Tanaka-Binet Intelligence Scale V
・WISC-III
・WISC-IV
At least, he has gone through almost all the developmental assessments I studied in university, yet he was always told, "Hmm, it's not at a level where a diagnosis can be made. If I had to say... is it what you call a gray zone?" Now, he was being presented with the possibility of a new one:
・WAIS-IV
Which, as someone who majored in early childhood education, was outside my scope.
There is no helping it now.
At this rate, he won't be able to focus on his studies.
Since he only earned two credits, repeating a year is inevitable, so we discussed whether it might be better to take a leave of absence for the second semester to set the stage for him to focus on his studies, whether he returns to school or explores another path.
For now, we managed to agree on:
・Procedures for a leave of absence for the second semester
・Finding a clinic that performs developmental assessments (coordination with the school nurse is essential)
・Finding a cram school that can provide academic support for his high school curriculum in a one-on-one format
This was decided the next morning after we had finally gotten some sleep following another bath.
Regardless of the developmental issues, I felt that academic support to keep up with junior college classes was absolutely necessary. He has the handicap of not having taken biology, and to begin with, my son graduated from a part-time high school, so the academic knowledge and thinking skills he acquired in high school are incomparably lower than those of a child who graduated from a full-time high school (because the number of credits required for graduation is completely different).
However, in this rural area, there isn't even a cram school that can provide one-on-one support for university students.
We decided that he would gather this information on his own at his apartment in Tokyo.
After all, we are in the deep countryside of Hokuriku, an environment where depopulation is inevitable.
There is no comparison to Tokyo, where you are allowed the luxury of choosing from multiple options that you can commute to from your own apartment.
To begin with, this is such a rural area that it's normal to have no options at all.
Of course, I will provide follow-up support using the internet for parts that are difficult for him to handle alone, and if he gets stuck, there is always the option of us parents going to Tokyo to help.
With that, we finally reached an agreement. My son left with positive words, saying, "Well, I knew from the start that it wouldn't be an easy path, and since I was the one who decided to do my best in Tokyo, I'll try as far as I can." He then packed the portable game console he hadn't brought in the spring into his trunk as a souvenir, and returned to his apartment in Tokyo while being driven to the nearest station by my husband to catch the evening Shinkansen.
As a premise, at this point, we parents, and (I would like to believe) he himself, had agreed to use the next six months effectively without being bound by the school curriculum to create an environment where he could once again aim for the path of becoming a clinical laboratory technician.
At the end of this summer (though it was still quite hot), I had no inkling that this plan would be overturned in just a month and a half, let alone lead to a great war between my son and his parents.
To be continued.