Jake is going on his first field trip to the zoo in March.  The school nurse has been kind enough to contact me well in advance.  She asked his teacher if she would be willing to be trained to give him the shot if there was ever an emergency (like a bus accident or something out of the ordinary) and she said she would be willing to be trained but felt that it was too much responsibility for to ask her or another field trip parent to administer the shot.  So they have asked if I can go on the field trip.

I like field trips and more importantly I would love to go with Jake and be the parent for his small group even if he didn’t have SWCAH, but there is a problem.  They will not allow me to bring Savannah.  Savannah also has SWCAH and has two trained babysitters that have both gone away to college now.  In order to be Jake’s group mom I will have to ride the bus and the district rules will not let me bring her on the bus.  So then I asked if I could bring her in the car and meet them up there and they said no.  Next I asked if I could just go to the zoo as a normal parent (we have a membership, it would cost me nothing) and meet up with Jake’s small group and that was a no also because it’s against the rules.  So basically I have to find and train a suitable sitter for Savannah and go or Jake can’t go on the field trip.  My husband works full time and runs two companies so he is not even in the equation.  The nurse says that the district rules (from what I understand) cannot "require" that a parent go on a field trip because of a medical condition.  I asked her what all of the other injectible children do on field trips and she said so far this year that Jake is the only one out of 1,000 + kids.  I think if Solu-Cortef was made into an epipen I think they wouldn’t even blink.  Anyone know how many years we are away from that?

So what do I do?  I’m grateful that they’ve at least given me plenty of time to gather a solution.  If he does not go, as of yet, I am unaware that they will have any place to put him so he would have to stay home, in which case I would home school him for the day.  That I am also willing to do, but I do not want him to feel "different" from the other children, or to have a negative self esteem issue as a result.  Also, I don’t want the teacher to have a negative attitude towards him for the district requiring that she be trained to administer the shot.  He is in Kindergarten and her attitude towards him could effect his entire attitude towards his education (fearful, angry, etc).  He has a great attitude now and is happy to go to school and eager to learn.  I don’t want to mess that up.  I have always taught my children to respect their teachers because my dad is a teacher.  Will she have hard feelings against him for having to be trained you think?  I would like to avoid that if possible.

I have halfway considered homeschooling him in the beginning because I homeschool my kids in the summer anyway.  I use a more vast program than the district, as my children also do science, American History, Art History, and French.  The only problem is that I have a friend that takes advantage of me being a "just a housewife" and depends on me too heavily for free emergency daycare, and they wouldn’t understand that with homeschooling you can’t also do daycare because they would say "well you’re home anyway, what’s one or two extra kids?".  I usually have to drop whatever it is I am doing to watch someone else’s kids and get mine where they need to be as well because they claim it’s an "emergency" or they’ll miss work and be fired.   Even during the summer I have to drop school for a day to babysit so my kids miss out on their school for the day.  So regular homeschooling is out of the question, although it would eliminate the field trip problems as we could go on our own field trips.  My kids get plenty of social interaction through story time at the library, Kid’s Club at the mall, Zoo, Science Museum, church and religious education, hockey and dance.   I feel the local teachers are more than able to teach Jake what he needs to know, I just don’t want him to feel or be treated negatively because he’s different.  For right now I’m riding it out to see how it progresses.

Any ideas for the field trip?  Have any of you experienced this before with two CAH kids in the family and needing someone trained to be with them in separate places at separate times?

Many thanks,

Adina