Sharon Cowan Landay is the amazing mother of Sophia. I met Sharon when she took Mothers Who Write, the workshop I co-teach, and we stayed friends on Facebook. I saw her post last week, looking for someone to accompany Sophia to her senior breakfast, and I asked Sharon to write a guest post about the experience. She did that and more, and I’m so grateful.
Thirty three days – this is the number of school days left in Sophia’s senior year.
The completion of four years of high school in Arizona means Sophia will have attended approximately 720 days of school. Sophia is what society calls Special Needs. Foolishly, I thought that this descriptor would not exclude Sophia from a typical high school experience. Four years ago, as we were completing an IEP for Sophia’s freshman year, I had the dream, though now it seems it was a delusion, that students in the “mainstream” would embrace Sophia, invite her to activities, engage her, find her amazingness, value her for who she is – all the things the media portrays when you see stories of the student with special needs who was voted Homecoming Queen/King.
Yah, that didn’t happen. Not even close.
Sophia is my daughter. She is also so much more. Sophia was born at 40 weeks, approximately 7 pounds, and had an Apgar score of 0. She has endured, recovered from, and thrived following 7, maybe 8, surgeries. At 17, Sophia is all of 75 pounds, 4 foot 11 inches. In her 17 years, Sophia has received many diagnoses. The first, given when she was just 28 days old, is ACC – Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum (www.nodcc.org). These Latin words mean that the fibers that connect the left and right hemispheres in the brain did not develop. This, as best we know, is Sophia’s “umbrella” diagnosis. All diagnoses that have come after are likely related to this midline anomaly.
Though Sophia developed slower than books tell you an infant/toddler should, she did develop. She walked at 2. Her verbal skills exploded around 2 ½. Sophia walks, runs, climbs, rides a 3 wheel recumbent bike, and stares at screens with the best of ‘em. Sophia rides horses once a week. She colors on the driveway with chalk. Like most every student, Sophia has slung a backpack over her shoulders for 12 years. She writes and tells great stories, often pirated from a show she has watched or a book she has read. Her grammar is atrocious, so grant-writing is out as a career. Sophia has a basic command of elementary math — addition, subtraction, multiplication, as well as knowing how to figure perimeter of a polygon and what a noun is. She has very little concept of the passage of time: five minutes could be two hours, and an hour could be three minutes, so she won’t hold the stop-watch at track events.
She loves animals. All animals. Her goal and dream is to work with animals. She will pet anything, loves pictures of everything, and has no fear of any animal (or insect. Eww.)
In the past four years, Sophia attended 0 school (sports) games, 0 school dances, 0 after school activities.
Sophia would, usually once or twice a year, tell me about a school activity that she wanted to attend. A football game; Homecoming; Prom; Coffee House. Activities that many kids attended, with friends, assuming this as their right as a high school student. Sophia did attend Coffee House one year, with a Respite provider (who graduated from the same school 4 or 5 years earlier). Not a friend, rather someone paid to hang out with her. (I would say babysit, but she’s in high school and it doesn’t sound right.)
In the past four years, Sophia has attended approximately six “mainstream” classes. The rest of her classes were modified, attended exclusively by students receiving Special Education services.
In these same four years, the number of “gen ed” students that called/texted Sophia – 0.
Number of students that invited Sophia to an after school activity – 0.
Number of students who called Sophia a bitch (because they lack the social skills to have healthy friendships) – at least 3.
Number of classes in which Sophia learned something new – maybe 2.
Number of hours spent “working” in the cafeteria, under the guise of “job training” — at least 180, quite likely more.
No one should walk away from high school with 0 friends.
This spring, Sophia heard that there would be a Senior Breakfast.
While the other seniors learned of this sometime in March, Sophia just got wind of it the week of. Yes, last Monday she came home telling me about the Senior Breakfast that would be Friday morning, stating she wanted to attend. On Tuesday she brought home the requisite permission slip. Even the permission slip assumes typicality – students would transport themselves. (Every senior drives?)
I didn’t give Sophia an answer immediately. I thought about it. I decided I would publicize our vulnerability (to my Facebook network), asking if any other seniors might be willing to be Sophia’s “friend” for the morning, so that she would have someone to sit with.
Radio Silence.
I do get it. They are seniors too. This is their Senior Breakfast. This is one of their final hurrahs.
But what about Sophia?
With a lot of nervousness, I took the signed permission slip and fee to the high school and purchased Sophia’s entry to the Senior Breakfast. Friday morning Sophia woke up, excited for the breakfast. I drove her to the location, walked her part way in, and watched her walk the remaining distance behind two unknown classmates.
Sophia sent me a text picture of her breakfast. She told me she was sitting with Brooklyn. Brooklyn is a junior. She was at the breakfast as a student government representative. She found Sophia and joined her. Sophia did not sit with any seniors. Sophia might have said hello to a few, and vice versa, but she was left alone.
The saving grace, in a twisted way, is that Sophia didn’t seem to notice or care.
I noticed and I care. I will always notice and always care.
Sophia went, she was happy, and that has to matter.
I hold no bad feelings toward any student or parent. The school failed Sophia. The district failed the school, that failed Sophia. For four years, students could have been part of Sophia’s high school experience. Instead, she spent four years in relative isolation. Didn’t anyone think to encourage friendships among different kids? Didn’t anyone remember there was a group of students, off in a proverbial corner, who might want friends? She seems to be a forgotten student.
Even worse, there are so many just like her in their isolation.
Sophia will complete high school soon. Sophia will complete high school with, it seems, no genuine friends. No one to celebrate with. No one to realize she, too, completed four years. 720 days of missed opportunity. I’m sad for Sophia, but I’m also sad for the kids who did not get to know her. Sophia’s love for Fairly Odd Parents, Teen Titans Go, animated Disney films, Disney villains, and Top 10 Lists for anything related to any animated show, should not disqualify her from developing friendships.
No one should walk away from high school with 0 friends. Yet, here she is. Three Dog Night sang “One is the loneliest number…”
I think zero might be lonelier.