Specifically it was the week of January 11th, 2016. Ryan had a tough week at school. On Monday, he had a planned meeting with Mr. Reese (his music teacher) and Mrs McDonell (guidance counselor) abuot his lack of participation in music class. We requested this meeting to see if they could find ways to help Ryan overcome his fear of singing and dancing.

That afternoon we got a call from the Vice principal and a few others telling us about the conversation and saying Ryan will fail if he doesn’t participate. Ania took that call and I was very proud of the way she stuck up for Ryan and held her ground. She said a lot of things in that conversation I probably wouldn’t have.

Then on Tuesday we got a call from the Dean of Students regarding an incident during lunch where Ryan was talking about ghosts, demons, and killing. He is really into the haunted / ghost hunting stuff and even brought in a folder of pictures to show his friends. Well he took the conversation too far and that resulted in some kids getting scared and an emergency visit from the guidance counselor that afternoon.

Thing that got us upset is that we knew nothing about what happened until after we got home and got the phone call. We tried explaining to Ryan the importance of telling us about his day and telling us what we need to know, because that call was a surprise and we were very embarrassed by it.

Then on Wednesday something else happened in lunch regarding Avi, who was trying to take back a pencil from Tim that she purchased. She was grabbing it from Tim and Ryan was trying to tell her not to grab him. All three of them were called out by Mrs. Hauze for a meeting to figure out what happened.

He didn’t get in trouble since he was mainly just a bystander, but here’s what made us proud: he TOLD us about it ahead of time! As soon as we got home he wanted to chat with mommy and he told her everything. It was his way of trying to implement what we taught him 24 hours prior, and we were very proud.

The rest of the week went better. He got a prize from Mrs Hauze’s prize box (“Ginger” stuffed animal) for doing so well in math, and he and I went swimming at the Mt Pocono school on Friday with his friends Andrew and Zoey.

A whirlwind of a week, but he made it through and learned plenty of lessons about life in the process