Dear Noah

WHAT is the world coming to. I mean a gunman IN A GUARDED courtroom guns down and kills the jude, court stenographer, and others Friday. A man goes into a Saturday night church service and kills others and himself. I know they say the chances of those things happening in everyday lives is probably miniscule. But all those people affected in the past few days had miniscule chances too. EVER since 9/11 I have thought about things I never dreamed I would think of. I now PONDER possibilities I never could even imagine before.....just so I can be "more prepared"???? What kind of a concept is that? Can anyone ever be prepared to just LIVE in this world anymore? You never know who you will come across and what will happen. You don't know if even the policeman you seek out to help you will be straight and legit and okay. ALL these concerns and worries makes trying to teach you who to count on to be there and take care of you or HELP you when you need help so tough. Even for the average person who can understand "concepts" it is getting tough. For someone who does not it is near impossible now. Some of the people we would normally have sent our children to in the past for help are now not always the ones who will help our children but instead are the same ones who hurt. Devils in sheep's cloathing. AND IF I TOLD THAT TO YOU NOAH....YOU WOULD TAKE ME LITERALLY AND THINK "DEVIL IN SHEEP'S CLOATHING" and that is what you would be looking for. HOW IS it EVER possible to get you to understand. I DON'T EVEN understand times like this that we live in.

It is so hard to not become depressed and worry all the time wondering what kind of life you might have one day. I worry about a lot but in the back of my mind I know it will all work out and I really don't have any control over much anyway so I just need to give it all up to GOD. However....as a human being that is even hard to do sometimes as we want to always keep our "hands in the pot" (again...you will take this literally...sorry). We always want to try to handle everything ourselves. I can turn it over to God but I also will still worry to some point.

I WORRY about you even going out to recess as you have been trying sometimes to run away. The slightest thing that is different in your environment can set you off and make you run. NO ONE gets that.....I think YOU DO. You thought the person holding the school door open Friday was a "stranger". You remembered Mommy has told you to run, kick, scream, yell ...do ANYTHING to get AWAY from a stranger. YOU DID exactly what I told you. However...you have to make sure where you are running is safe. AND running away from your paraprofessional is not safe. We would not know where you were. You could get hurt. Mommy and Daddy would miss you and love you and would not know where you were. We might not ever get to even see you again. We could not imagine a life without you in it. THANKFULLY GOD AND HIS ANGELS were watching over you when we were not there and you stopped when your para said "STOP!!". You came back. I don't want to get a phone call one day however where they say you got away. AND....while your para may be great..she is overweight and out of shape and I HIGHLY doubt she could run and catch you. I could not run and catch you as I am out of shape. AND we all know CHASING you only makes you run more. SO that would not work anyway.

SO many things in my mind constantly racing around....worries....fears...stresses....trying to think positive all the time so we don't self fulfill all the crap in our heads we do worry about.

Then we wonder. WHY EXACTLY are we continuing to try to even send you back to a public school setting? MAKES NO sense to us. We don't even desire to send you to a public school. We have had great success homeschooling you here at home. Supposedly it was for therapies and to learn to handle a classroom setting. WHY SHOULD YOU EVER NEED TO LEARN THAT? YOU don't HAVE to go to a classroom setting to go to school. You can do school at home..you can even do college at home now. WHY NOT DO THAT INSTEAD? MAKES perfect sense to me. We know what is best for you. The teachers don't. I mean you are not even getting the social skills classes you need now. Once again they have isolated you into a corner of the room.....you are partitioned off from the others so as not to "disturb" them. How can you learn social skills if you are not allowed to be SOCIAL???? WOW PEOPLE....NEW concept there. I think we will just go ahead and withdraw you from school now. I know the head of all the IEP stuff is thinking you need 4-6 weeks to see if all these new things will work for you. However your teacher threw in the towel last week when she said she had already called the director and scheduled a meeting to "discuss WHERE you would go AFTER spring break". THAT tells me she has already made up her mind "you" in "her "room will NOT work. Meanwhile I wonder about that. Daddy and I both do. You are presently not getting ANY academics in school as they say they cannot get you to sit and stay on task long enough to complete anything. Funny.....at home we got you to complete and stay on task on about 5 different subjects Saturday. You completed all your work and actually learned things. You soaked things up like a sponge. Your behavior was better and we could control it. WHY should we continue to let you go to a school where they have admitted they do NOT know how to do those things but yet somehow supposedly know what is BEST for you and think anything they do will magically transform you? INTO WHAT we ask? A perfect cookie cutter molded little person who will do and learn things the way all the other little cookie cutter people do? WHAT FUN IS THAT?? AND WHY when your paint water at school became dirty and they would NOT let you get up and change it to keep you calm and on task.......WHY we would like to know did they just not let you change it? I would have done that at home. You have a full time para assigned to you. The bathroom sink is in the classroom for Pete's sake! Instead they tell you to USE DIRTY water which really set you off and you threw the chair across the room into the door. Now ALL that could have been avoided by allowing you to simply change the water.....and then sit back down and finish painting. They seemed so thrilled and proud they were finally able to get you calmed down enough that you sat and used dirty water to finish painting with. THAT would have bugged even me! That affects your painting when the water is dirty. Are we the only ones who understand that? I just sit here with my mouth hanging and shaking my head.

I really believe we will be homeschooling you in some fashion......and you will be receiving additional therapies either here from home or we take you somewhere for them or both. We think that is what will work best. It is so funny when the teachers say "oh but he won't be getting any socialization" ....oh and yes I say...he is receiving SO MUCH in school where you keep him off to himself all the time. I would think if you were not paranoid before.....you would soon become paranoid. I would imagine you would start thinking something must be wrong with you. We have gone through this same thing before....over and over and over it keeps happening. WHY???? I would think that is not helping you to learn to be with others...only making you crave being alone and off to yourself even more.

AND then they talk about sticking you in an SIED program...that is for emotionally disturbed children. YOU have already been deemed NOT emotionally disabled. We will never place you in a program like that. There comes a time when we have to stand up and say "hey....we do know what is BEST for our son and the district obviously has no freakin clue". I am so thankful to GOD we have been able to change our work schedules around where Mommy and Daddy can be home with you during the day and at night so someone is always with you. We love being with you 24/7. We love teaching you things. We love seeing you change and grow. We are thankful we should be able to give you what you need.

So be tough my little Noah. My little angel boy. We truly believe you were sent down from God above for Mommy AND Daddy to love. And that is what we are doing!!

LOVE YOU TO THE MOON AND BACK ...again and again and again and again....

FOREVER AND EVER AND EVER AND EVER!!

Mommy