Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Keep Her Out Of The Loop

The sixth graders here go skiing every year. This is a fun day for the average sixth grander but for one like Hanna it is a disaster in the making. She is not going, end of story. I am not sure what we are going to do with her the day the rest of the kids go on the ski trip but there is no way on earth she can handle this. It is not like she will be missing out on the Minnesota winter experience or anything. We take her outside to build snowmen and forts, we take sledding, and we have taken her skating although she went in her boots because she would not put the skates on.

She can not learn the safety lessons by watching a movie. She needs to learn these things by repetion and modeling.
She would need weeks of training one on one in order to ski, not just a few minutes of general instruction with a group of fifty or more kids for one instructor
We are not allowed to send our own PCA who can keep her in line.
There is to much opportunity for things to come home that are not hers.
There is a great possibility that she will give her money away.
When she came home with the great news that she was going skiing she did not even have a clue what the activity involved. We asked her what skiing was and she said "eating lunch at the park". All she has figured out is that that are going to eat.

The kids are all excited about going and of course Hanna has been there while they talk about what is safe and how to ski. She wants to go and now she has almost a month to obsess about that and be angry with mom and dad because we are not going to let her go.

Sometimes at school it would be much easier if she could be kept out of the loop when it comes to these things. That could happen if staff would give me the heads up as to when things are going to happen before they do so that she could spend some time in the special education room when need be. Maybe in there they could at least teach her what skiing is?

1 comment:

  1. If at anytime you think she is ready to learn to ski, I would help you with that, and have you or her PCA also there to help with explainations etc... finding a quiet day out at Mt Kato can be tricky, but maybe sometime in the future years.
    My cousin works out at Mt. Kato, I know they have a special day for people with disabilities - I'll ask him about that, he might also be a good one to work with her as he is ski-patrol/rescue as well.

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