Bryan’s Reading Deficiency

About a year ago I wrote a story about me being a crazy mother in the mornings while trying to get myself ready for work and our four kids ready for school. I also wrote that Bryan was always a mess when we arrived at St. Michael’s Elementary to drop the kids off. Chad, Kelly and Corey would tease him about his elastic-wasted pants being on backwards, his jacket being unzipped or his papers falling out of his backpack. With Bryan being our youngest I guess I was more relaxed about his appearance than I was with the other kids.

Baby Bryan inherited his bad allergies from me, so sometimes I would give him an allergy pill for kids and send him off to school. By the end of the first grade Bryan had started to fall behind in reading so his teacher Mrs. Peterson suggested we find him a summer reading program. I called my friend Marie Hoppa who was a reading specialist at Reeths-Puffer and who also happened to be running a reading program that summer and we signed Bryan up. At the end of Marie’s program Bryan was doing great and he was ready for second grade.

School started the following fall and the allergy season was really bad and I was all out of my own allergy medicine so I took some of the medicine I’d been giving Bryan the year before. Shortly after I took it I got really sleepy and couldn’t keep my eyes open and then I thought of Bryan. Every time I gave him Benadryl he must have fallen asleep in school. I felt so bad and then it dawned on me that I was responsible for his deficiency in reading which made me feel even worse.

I learned a very important lesson about using medicine without clearly thinking of all of the consequences. I could have really changed Bryan’s future if I hadn’t taken him off that medicine.

Sorry Bryan. I’m so thankful that I didn’t scar you for life.