I’d appreciate it if any parents who have special needs children weigh in on this. I don’t really know where to start. The bare minimum explanation is that I’m unsure if I should leave for college because of my sister. She is in her mid 20s and has a learning disability which my mom discovered after the public elementary school my sister went to tested her. They said she would have noticeable difficulties in math and other subjects; according to my mother they also said she’d “never be able to make it in college” which I’m sure sounded ridiculous to my mother.
Now, my parents are immigrants from Africa and they didn’t really know much about learning disabilities or how to deal with them, so my mother hadn’t looked much into what it entailed for my sister. I’m pretty sure she was put into remedial classes and summer school all throughout her schooling. For most of my and my siblings lives our parents worked constantly(my dad owned a store then and didn’t earn much from it), especially while my sister was still in school, so unless my dad had to go to a meeting with my brother’s teacher about his grades or something of the like, they didn’t really pay much attention to our schooling, or what we did in general. So, considering this, there really is no telling what kind of education my sister received, though I know the schools she went to weren’t the best. After she graduated, she didn’t have any idea of what to do, so my dad took her to our local community college to sign her up for classes, even though I’m pretty sure she didn’t want to take them, at least that’s what she says now whenever she engages in a shouting match with my mother and the topic of going back to college comes up. She took the placement test they give everyone and she was told she had to take those classes that I think start with a “0” or something; basically they were high school level courses. She stopped going either purely because she failed the writing and math classes she took, or because she couldn’t receive some type of aid due to her failed classes, I’m not completely sure why. Anyway, this was after about two years, so she was 20 by then. Following this was a couple of years of doing nothing at home except for watching t.v. and going on the internet(of course my mom hated this, but she was just bored and was trying to keep herself entertained), I think sometime in between this, my aunt weighed in and convinced my mother that my sister should take a CNA course. I don’t know how they found the money to pay for it but somehow my sister ended up taking it, but she never took the final exam.
Periodically my mom would try to convince my sister to go to this organization that helps, in my mother’s words, people like her. After the first time my sister failed to keep in contact with them(she’s not good at speaking to other people, especially on the phone, it frustrates her) and if my mother tried to contact them for her, or accompany my sister to a meeting, she was told she couldn’t do so because my sister was over 18, and thus an “adult” and she had to initiate communication herself, which knowing my sister’s tendencies, would never and will never happen. I felt there was more hope about my sister’s situation when, in the middle of last year, my mother finally convinced my sister to meet with her counselor and sign a form that allowed my mother to represent her in a way and do the aforementioned things that she couldn’t before(although I’m not sure my mother was allowed in the initial meeting my sister had recently). I say this because I was trying to convince her to attend therapy, and she said her counselor had already suggested that and she refused, yet my mother had no knowledge of this. My sister doesn’t like the idea that she has a learning disability and adamantly affirms she doesn’t have any kind of disability, which is partially my mother’s fault but I’m not going to get into that. Anyway, because of the meeting she had with her counselor, my sister begun a technical course that will end even before I graduate, but because of a certain requirement my sister is unlikely to fulfill she most likely will not complete it successfully.
This truly is just the tip of the iceberg. I discovered, upon getting older and staying up later to do my homework, that my sister(we share a room)has these little, I guess you could call them either severe twitching or convulsions, which mostly impact her head. I brought it up to my mother recently and she said she’d noticed it too a while back, but she thought she was seeing things. She also mentioned that when my sister was much younger she was directed to a doctor who kept my sister for an overnight evaluation and told her that my sister wasn’t getting enough oxygen when she sleeps and should either get a machine that she would use as she slept or receive corrective surgery. I wasn’t aware of this until about a year ago and I can tell you neither of those routes were taken. Bear in mind that these tests happened when my sister was still young, my parents had insurance(I’m assuming), and my mother was…ignorant, I suppose, and unsure of what to do, I don’t know. My sister was a premature baby(not sure by how long) and according to my father she didn’t walk until long past the normal time for babies to do so, and when she tried walking she would never do it if she didn’t have something to hold onto next to her. I also was unaware of this until recently(we might live in the same house but we really don’t talk or interact with each other much-the first couple of years of my life I could go for a long while without saying anything to my father.) I don’t know if any of this contributed to her learning disabilities.
My sister doesn’t focus well and gets into fights daily with my mother about her situation and there’s so much more to say but I just don’t know how to help her because I can’t make her go to therapy, I don’t know how to get her the machine or surgery which would require her first making an appointment and she never will(I don’t know how we’d cover the specialist care anyway), I don’t know how to make my myself or my mother see or understand what my sister needs. I’m afraid to go away for college because things in my house have the potential to get worse in my absence. It around be unfair because while I get away from here she’ll be stuck here in the house day in and day out. There’s so much more about her situation that I can mention, but knowing this much what do you think I should do? How can I help her? All I want is for her to be happy and not frustrated and angry all the time.