Where we stand

Yesterday I had a conference call with Rayne's teacher and the Special Ed person. Basically, what it comes down to is this.
Rayne is not able to meet the expectations of this school because she is unwilling to meet and test with the teacher, showing aggressive behavior, she won't talk in the microphone for evaluations and won't participate in live lessons and reading groups. They are saying that they have to have a way of assessing that she is aquiring the information. That makes sense of course and I guess being an online school, one of their main ways is to talk to the kid. Not unreasonable.
In order to go forward with this school, we would need evaluations, including someone coming to our home to observe and probably Rayne meeting with a doctor/therapist on her own, and a behavior plan which, they were sure to tell me, would be extremely hard on me, require a lot, and things would definitely get worse before they get better. But, it is really important to take care of this now before Rayne is older and bigger and has hormonal changes etc thrown in to really mess with her. One word that stood out to me was that we need to "extinguish" this behavior before it gets worse.
Okay. Understandable. Reasonable expectation. Of course I don't want to be dealing with an aggressive, defiant teenager. Etc etc etc. But, there is no way for anyone to see Rayne when she is happy and sweet and confident and learning because if anyone else is there, she freaks out. I'm not completely convinced that forcing her to meet and work with strangers is going to help and not do more damage at this point.
Or maybe they are right. I have to confess that an exhausted part of me wishes I could just send her to school a couple hours a day and have someone else "fix" her.

The other option, according to this school, is to send her to the neighborhood traditional school. This might be better because she would be meeting face to face and have positive peer pressure and let's face it, just the convenience of it being just down the road rather than out in cyber space. They assured me that even being in a behavioral classroom, which may not even be always necessary, she should be learning at grade level, meaning what the "regular" classroom is learning. She is still expected to meet state requirements etc.
I can't help wondering if "experts" wouldn't be better able to help her.
But I don't think that's what my gut is saying. I don't want her to have a negative, hating school experience. I've never really believed that the best way to deal with fears is to face and overcome them. You need to learn how to deal in spite of them. I think that sending her to strangers, all alone, would be trying to get her over her fears. I'm pretty sure that if I were to go parachuting or something similar, I would die from my fears not suddenly not have them anymore.
Perhaps I'm wrong. I'm just not really ready to test it on my little girl.

So, my thinking, Jeff's thinking, is we will do flat out home school. I'm pretty sure that makes no difference to anyone but me. No one else knows really what we are currently doing or how it would be any sort of a change to be officially homeschooling. But, it is a big difference for me. I would be solely responsible for all her education and learning, academically, behaviorally, even socially. I'd have to come up with it all on my own. And as I've mentioned, I'm exhausted!
Because no matter how much someone else may love her or be concerned or try to help, when it comes down to it, I am the only one "in the trenches" with her. Even Daddy isn't completely there. Perhaps Caius is and that's a whole other issue. But it is me. I'm the one actually doing it. Taking her to doctor appointments, meeting with teachers, helping her in the bathroom, trying to get her to eat, being yelled at, trying to teach and love her.
My mom has told me the story of someone she once knew who had a daughter with some kind of disability. In exhaustion, the mother asked, "why me?" The answer she received was that she wasn't the one going through it. Her daughter was and she was the mother and it was her job to help her child.
I think of that often. This is my baby. It is my job to help her. I try not to think about my own tiredness and needs. I try to think of them enough to be better for my kids. This is what it is to be a mom. I believe that. I've somehow always known that it was so important for me to be there with my kids. I kind of think it's why my life has played out the way it has. It's all about them now.

Deep breath. It's time to be queen.