By Myrriah Gossett
Many people I know, including myself, work with the general population of Savannah. The difference between my job and many of my peers is the fact that I have to work with kids, and even worse, their parents.
I work as a swimming instructor. For those who may have been taught by your parents, I basically have to get in a pool with kids and try and make sure they don’t drown. I attempt to teach them how to swim depending on their skill levels and age. If this can be done without tears, throw-up and bite marks, it has been a successful lesson.
Out of all my lessons that I teach, or teams that I coach there is one group of kids that I love working with, my special needs swim team. These are kids that go to the Special Olympics, and honestly are the sweetest kids I deal with on a regular basis. While they have their good days and bad days, every kid does and I really don’t mind working with them at all.
What I do mind, however, is a particular parent. Let’s just call her The Mom, not a Mom but The Mom, and it will soon become clear as to why she is The Mom.
Her son is the only consistent kid that shows up to his swim practice every day it is offered. Most of the other kids are pretty sporadic. She also takes her son to other activities during the week, while this may seem great; there is a drawback. She never leaves him to be himself.
Her son does have some problems with listening, however he is way better when she does not intervene. She sits next to me while I coach and never really stops talking, making it harder for me to coach and I end up helping her with her issues more than actually coaching her son.
What I have come to realize while listening to her rant and rave about her son, Savannah has hardly anything available on the public scale for students with special needs. From what she says that is, however it could be a lack of education and research on her part, let’s just say her son is the apple that didn’t fall far from the tree.
There is an obvious lack of communication between schools and parents that needs to happen, on a much better scale. Not all moms of special needs kids are going to do all the research themselves, the schools might want to look into helping out as well.
My mother taught special education and behavioral problem children for a long time while I was growing up so I do have a basic knowledge of how it works in Florida, however it does seem that Georgia might need to take a page out of Florida’s book, or at least from my Mom. She worked extremely hard for children who went through her classroom to achieve graduation, and some college education.
There are steps that can be taken for this kids, and the general public is not aware of what they can do for their kids in this situation.
[Contact fname=”Myrriah ” lname=”Gossett” email=”news@nathanielholland.com/district “]
