The Garden School Tattler

This is really a beautiful letter and one I'll treasure always:

I have one of the "not-so-well-behaved" children at the GS who has missed more than one field trip because of his attitude & behavior issues. Tis life! In the words of Pink Floyd... "if you don't eat your meat, you don't get any pudding". Has this caused problems with our work schedules?! You bet it has!!! Has it caused us to get our feathers ruffled?! Guaranteed!!! Have we been more than aggravated over minor changes in policy, discipline, etc?! Darn tooting we have!!! But we got over it & moved on! We love the GS & the teachers! They have meant so much to us & our child.

They have pulled more than a few hairs out over him... but they have never given up on him. Instead they got him reading on a 2nd grade level, doing addition & subtraction that several 2nd graders couldn't do, learning seas & countries of the world, memorizing & delivering lines for plays, teaching him songs that he's done solo in church, etc. That's not to bad for a 5 year old.

Thank God my child is not a "cookie cutter child" & that he's not normal! I'm sure we'll have lots of problems to overcome in his lifetime, but hopefully the individuals working with him at that time will be like Mrs. Judy, Mrs. St. Louis, Mrs. Kelly, Mrs. Molly & Mr. Tom... & find a way to work with him. I don't know what he'll be someday or what he'll do, but it gives me great pleasure knowing that Einstein was a "problem child" who hit his sister often & bothered his teachers immensely. You see... there is hope for "problem children".

BTW... Ty will be leaving the Garden School next week to start "big school". He'll be going in the first grade. His little brother, Ian, will be 3 the end of September & we're sending him to the GS as soon as he master's the potty. :-)

Having had a difficult boy child as well, I understand the problems, the worry, the grief a poorly behaved child can cause at home, but there is a difference, and the home is the difference.

My son and this little boy come from loving and caring homes. This child like my own need to hit the age of reason to mend their ways.

My son is now 34 and as a chosen profession builds machines that treat otherwise untreatable cancers. The machines are called Proton Therapy Units. Last night he told me that the one his team has just finished building in Jacksonville is treating a lot of prostate cancers. I asked him what was wrong with that, and he said there is only so much time on the machine, and when prostate cancers are treated the really important illnesses, like pediatric cancers, have to wait, and that is a moral issue.

I'm really proud of my son, and the family who so kindly wrote this letter will be proud of their child as well. Loving families do have loving children even if it takes a while.

Their child is brilliant. He's bored most of the time and that's his problem. He needs constant stimulation, but he doesn't always have the facility to use the information he gains through observation, or innate intelligence. It's like dancing. He appreciates the dance steps, but he can't quite move to the music. That intellectual coordination takes time.

No matter what field he decides to tackle, he will do it with a difference and a joy that will make him great. He's as bold as they come; now let's think about who was bold: Columbus, Lewis and Clark, Beethoven, Picasso, George Washington, Lincoln, Mother Theresa...

Looking forward to #2. We will finish the training, so bring him on.