Meet Ethan. Our Mr. E, our stinkbug & the boy who was meant to be ours. Ethan has Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum (ACC). Basically, Ethan is missing the fibers that transfer information between the right & left hemispheres of the brain. Mark and I knew about his diagnosis before his adoption, but we were willing to take the bad with the good. Stinkbug came into our family at 3 months old and he brought life to a house that was merely surviving.
We were told by a developmental pediatrician and a neurologist when he was a baby, that at that time Ethan was currently on target but down the road there might be learning disabilities or even seizures. We crossed our fingers, held steady in our faith in God and hoped for the best.
Ethan did great in Kindergarten, getting into a little rambunctious trouble every once in a while but academically, he did good.
He did great in 1st grade. 2nd grade is when we really started to notice a big downhill turn. His grades started out meager and went down from there.
What we learned is that in 2nd grade, he has to think more outside the box, use his imagination, pull "what do you think will happen?" out and draw his own conclusions. For a kid with ACC, that is very difficult. He is a very concrete thinker.
Well, needless to say he has had a difficult 2nd grade year and is behavior has started to stink as well. He has become argumentative and aggressive. He has absolutely no patience for his 4 year old sister and his teacher says that his behavior has been a problem in school as well.
After a real bad weekend, my hubby and I decided there is more difficulty than we can can handle and since a need has really surfaced, we made and an appointment to see his neurologist. I want more tests done on him answered maybe he can guide us in the direction we need to go.
On Wednesday, I went to school with Ethan and followed him around. I had told him that if he got another "N" (needs improvement) on his weekly report, I would come to school with him and make sure he did "need any improvement"! I can really see why Ethan is struggling. Everything went so fast. The kids had barely any time to finish one assignment then it was off to another. Wow! I came home exhausted.
In the mean time, we (the hub, I and stinkbug's wonderful teacher!) are chugging along. If anyone has any comments or suggestions for us, we are open!
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