So there is a school out here for kids on the spectrum, and when we first heard about it after our IEP, we set about trying to figure out how to get the rooster in so he could get one-stop-shopping for all his PT/OT/speech needs (despite the school's geographic undesirability). Then, we met with the developmental pediatrician, who cautioned us that the environment at this special school might be too restrictive for our boy. His issues, though numerous and challenging, are never the ones that make the top 20 list on brochures and autism checklists, and he desperately needs to learn verbal pragmatics, so she told us that a social group of less verbal kids could result in the rooster actually struggling more to communicate effectively.
So then we set about trying to figure out how to keep the rooster in place and cobble together a variety of pull-outs, after school and weekend interventions, etc. We made calls, researched our options, investigated. That happened just as the rooster began really deteriorating in his behavior, and he got sent home from school for losing his cool.
So then we decided to go see the special school for ourselves. My husband told the tour leader his dilemma. "This is a wonderful place, but our developmental pediatrician said the rooster is the kind of kid who needs the least restrictive environment so that he strives to meet his language goals." The woman giving the tour guide gently and kindly tried a little Doctor Phil, and while I'm no Phil fan, it helped us realize that it ain't working for us right now. She said, "If your son has a really rich curriculum where he is, but he can't access it because of behavior is so disregulated, then it is not meeting his needs, is it?"
We still have many decisions to weigh and battles to fight, but I think we might have found a good place for our boy at this special school. Maybe not for always, but maybe for now. In some ways I can see where a special school could be "restrictive," but in a way it also feels just the opposite, too. It could open a world of ABA, OT, and much more that he can't get where he is now.
While on the tour, a boy with a roosterish quality caught my husband's eye and waved, smiled. He was having fun and learning on a typical school day. A teacher walked by pushing a cart full of drums, shakers, noise makers. The faculty sparkled with energy. Kids got their needs met. I don't know, but that doesn't sound too restrictive, does it? Does it? I'm a teacher, so you'd think I would know, but I'm asking.
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Comfort Levels
The developmental pediatrician phrased things in a way that struck me: she said she felt "comfortable with an Autism spectrum diagnosis." It's just because I'm a word girl that I turned that phrase over and over so many times. Of course, I know what she meant.
The doctor, like many, sees that the rooster's issues are atypical, even of atypical issues. Autism is like that, and so are other things, and so we're all "comfortable" with that diagnosis. And we're going to try to be hopeful, even in the challenging times. "Even if I'm wrong, even if this is something else, he still needs the same therapies." Right. Exactly. The whole point is to help the rooster.
Her advice: Rally your team. That, and "Work your butts off right now." We need a plan for school, first and foremost, and she thinks the rooster will be best with an ABA shadow teacher. We will have to start by finding out if our school will allow that, and, if so, then find out who the district will give us, hopefully someone from the list of better organizations the doc provided. If our school says no, we need to find another school, and that moves to the head of the triage line. Next, we need all the OT we can get. The district will provide some, but we need to get back in to the Regional Center system for more, which means more evaluations, evaluations, evaluations, and more time. We also know we need language, both what the district offers and also someone with lots of expertise in unusual kids like our boy. We hear this "costs through the nose." Lower on the list: considering floor time, therapuetic riding lessons, play groups, and support for the mom who lives on the brink of losing it.
At least I can say rallying has begun. Troops are aligning. Thank you to those of you among the ranks. Today a wonderful friend and her husband came by -- they knew both kids woke us up a few times in the night and that we're fried -- and babysat for two of the fastest hours in recorded history. My guy and I just walked around a shopping area nearby in a bit of a daze and noshed and stopped in the used book store for reading material not about spectrum disorders. We got home to find the rooster sweetly playing ball and Peaches napping. On a good day, with the kids in two different rooms, primed for success, and the rooster getting undivided attention, my husband and I hope we look like overreacting parents with kids who seem like they are mostly doing okay. That would suit us just fine. My dear friend totally understands what we're going through, and she's seen our kids on good days and bad. I feel the relief of having left her with them on a good one, and I'm glad she and her kind husband didn't see them in action early yesterday morning.
So with our "comfortable" diagnosis I reach the place in my blogging (at post number 50, I believe?) where the totally unfiltered disclosure begins to become gradually less comfortable. I don't know how to process this shift yet, or really any of the shifts. I just know that, while I live as open book, always have, I'm a big girl and can choose that for myself. He's a little guy, and I need to start considering if he'd really appreciate my endless full disclosure.
The point of this whole process is about helping the rooster more than it is about helping me. Blogging often helps me TO help him. I will struggle to find the right balance, the one that feels most comfortable.
The doctor, like many, sees that the rooster's issues are atypical, even of atypical issues. Autism is like that, and so are other things, and so we're all "comfortable" with that diagnosis. And we're going to try to be hopeful, even in the challenging times. "Even if I'm wrong, even if this is something else, he still needs the same therapies." Right. Exactly. The whole point is to help the rooster.
Her advice: Rally your team. That, and "Work your butts off right now." We need a plan for school, first and foremost, and she thinks the rooster will be best with an ABA shadow teacher. We will have to start by finding out if our school will allow that, and, if so, then find out who the district will give us, hopefully someone from the list of better organizations the doc provided. If our school says no, we need to find another school, and that moves to the head of the triage line. Next, we need all the OT we can get. The district will provide some, but we need to get back in to the Regional Center system for more, which means more evaluations, evaluations, evaluations, and more time. We also know we need language, both what the district offers and also someone with lots of expertise in unusual kids like our boy. We hear this "costs through the nose." Lower on the list: considering floor time, therapuetic riding lessons, play groups, and support for the mom who lives on the brink of losing it.
At least I can say rallying has begun. Troops are aligning. Thank you to those of you among the ranks. Today a wonderful friend and her husband came by -- they knew both kids woke us up a few times in the night and that we're fried -- and babysat for two of the fastest hours in recorded history. My guy and I just walked around a shopping area nearby in a bit of a daze and noshed and stopped in the used book store for reading material not about spectrum disorders. We got home to find the rooster sweetly playing ball and Peaches napping. On a good day, with the kids in two different rooms, primed for success, and the rooster getting undivided attention, my husband and I hope we look like overreacting parents with kids who seem like they are mostly doing okay. That would suit us just fine. My dear friend totally understands what we're going through, and she's seen our kids on good days and bad. I feel the relief of having left her with them on a good one, and I'm glad she and her kind husband didn't see them in action early yesterday morning.
So with our "comfortable" diagnosis I reach the place in my blogging (at post number 50, I believe?) where the totally unfiltered disclosure begins to become gradually less comfortable. I don't know how to process this shift yet, or really any of the shifts. I just know that, while I live as open book, always have, I'm a big girl and can choose that for myself. He's a little guy, and I need to start considering if he'd really appreciate my endless full disclosure.
The point of this whole process is about helping the rooster more than it is about helping me. Blogging often helps me TO help him. I will struggle to find the right balance, the one that feels most comfortable.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Some Kids I CAN Help
WOW.
I have a crazy love passion for the Internet.
It makes things happen. It connects. It HELPS.
Last night almost as an afterthought I asked for help with this project I'm working on with some delicious fifth graders. There are 60 kids working beautifully and THINKING so hard, it is the joy of my days lately. Anyway, I tossed out a small handful of their topics, and already one person wrote to offer a resource.
SO, just in case there are more people out there with expertise on any of these topics, I cannot resist listing them below. Please forgive me for the annoying advertisement like this for something totally unrelated to the rooster, but since I'm not a heck of a lot of help to him these days, it feels therapeutic to help someone else's kids.
Looking for people with expertise on:
Esther Morris, women's activist
Myrtle Beach golf
Ozarks
Stone Mountain, GA
Graceland / Elvis
Little Rock Nine
Zion National Park
Indy 500
Roswell / UFOs
Baraboo Circus Museum
Oklahoma's Native Americans
Creole culture
Sequoyah
The 1st Nuclear Submarine
Maple industry
Fairstones
The Dust Bowl
Paul Bunyan
Hoover Dam
Bering Strait
Mt Rushmore
Grand Canyon
Iowa Caucuses
Appalachian music and dance
Fluorescent rocks
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Surfing
Hell's Canyon, Idaho
Blue Crabs
Blueberries
Olympia National Park
Holland Tulip Festival in Michigan
Sacagawea
Lewis and Clark Train in ND
Oprah
Anasazi
Tornadoes
Coal mining disasters
Japanese Inernment Camps
Tennis Hall of Fame
Broadway
Houdini
1933 World's Fair
Edwards Air Force Base
Jesse James
Selma to Montgomery Walk
Eli Lilly
Colorado's wildlife
Quoddy Head
Salem Witch House
Yellowstone
Dupont
Robert Frost
Kensington Runestone
Lumber Industry in Oregon
McCoys and Hatfields
Manatees
Sweet Potato industry of North Carolina
I have a crazy love passion for the Internet.
It makes things happen. It connects. It HELPS.
Last night almost as an afterthought I asked for help with this project I'm working on with some delicious fifth graders. There are 60 kids working beautifully and THINKING so hard, it is the joy of my days lately. Anyway, I tossed out a small handful of their topics, and already one person wrote to offer a resource.
SO, just in case there are more people out there with expertise on any of these topics, I cannot resist listing them below. Please forgive me for the annoying advertisement like this for something totally unrelated to the rooster, but since I'm not a heck of a lot of help to him these days, it feels therapeutic to help someone else's kids.
Looking for people with expertise on:
Esther Morris, women's activist
Myrtle Beach golf
Ozarks
Stone Mountain, GA
Graceland / Elvis
Little Rock Nine
Zion National Park
Indy 500
Roswell / UFOs
Baraboo Circus Museum
Oklahoma's Native Americans
Creole culture
Sequoyah
The 1st Nuclear Submarine
Maple industry
Fairstones
The Dust Bowl
Paul Bunyan
Hoover Dam
Bering Strait
Mt Rushmore
Grand Canyon
Iowa Caucuses
Appalachian music and dance
Fluorescent rocks
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Surfing
Hell's Canyon, Idaho
Blue Crabs
Blueberries
Olympia National Park
Holland Tulip Festival in Michigan
Sacagawea
Lewis and Clark Train in ND
Oprah
Anasazi
Tornadoes
Coal mining disasters
Japanese Inernment Camps
Tennis Hall of Fame
Broadway
Houdini
1933 World's Fair
Edwards Air Force Base
Jesse James
Selma to Montgomery Walk
Eli Lilly
Colorado's wildlife
Quoddy Head
Salem Witch House
Yellowstone
Dupont
Robert Frost
Kensington Runestone
Lumber Industry in Oregon
McCoys and Hatfields
Manatees
Sweet Potato industry of North Carolina
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
To The Office
The rooster got in trouble today. Basically, he got the preschool version of being sent to to the office, which, since that's pretty much next door to my own office, meant I got sent home from the office, with one angry, aggressive little boy. We were out of there before noon.
Anyone who knows anything about us knows why this happened, right? (And I'm talking the micro why, not the macro.) Yes, let's all say it in unison, now: deities. About 20 minutes prior to the rampage, (and I later heard that the administrator in charge of preschool offenders had been looking for me for -- YES -- about 15 or 20 minutes) I, knee deep in a research lesson with 60 delightful fifth graders, said, LIKE SOME DEATH-DEFYING FOOL, "This is just about the most fun I could ever have at work. I love this project." The perfect signal to my exit from the project, would you not agree?
What on earth is happening to my little boy? Up until about a month ago, he was difficult, but charming, and he saved most of his negativity and aggression for home life. Sure, his teachers dealt with a lot from him, paticularly that he could not share or handle circle time, and that he had terrible trouble communicating with kids. NOW, however, we have a boy who screams, "AHHHHH! Ahahahaaaaa!" at the drop of a hat. He grabs toys from others and taunts them by holding the coveted object over his (tall) head. He hit another child with a shovel. (Thank goodness it was a flimsy plastic one, but STILL.) Kids avoid him. He spits. That is so disgusting. I can't figure it out, I can't get to the cause, I surely can't stop it, and so I'm so freaked out that I've gone all ... detached. I'm not crying, I'm not aching, I'm not ... here. Not exactly here. Something inside got turned down way low, dialed back to inaudible levels. Of course, perversely, I like it, I relish the relief. But I am smart enough to know it's not a good sign. It's numbness, and that isn't healthy. It's the kind of sensation that finds me offhandedly commenting to my husband, out of earshot of the kids, "So what time you think he'll get thrown out tomorrow? Because I really have important work to do at school." WHO SAID THAT? It might have been me, but it was not my real voice, if you know what I mean. I love my boy, so big, forever, but I've disconnected today, and I need to fess up to that right here and right now if I hope to reconnect.
When I picked the rooster up, I tried every thing I thought was "right." I told him that he couldn't play today, because he was hurting and scaring his friends, but that I know he is a good boy, and I'm going to help him feel better, so that he can make better choices tomorrow. Okay, I chunked it for him so that he didn't have to hear all that at once, and I repeated it infinite times, with lots of synonyms. I had him repeat to me several times why we were going home early. "It's not okay to hit friends," was his general reply. I didn't want him to feel like a bad person, but I also made sure not to make the day too fun; I didn't want to make him hope for escape from school every day by doing the same actions. We checked out picture books from the library about anger, feelings, hitting. I asked him about his feelings. I gave him lots of love. But the whole time, as he alternated between more loving than I've seen in weeks and going full tilt mad on me, I was struggling to find me in it all... I wasn't really connected, no matter how many times I pinched myself.
And nothing I did helped anyway - not for more than a few minutes here or there. And I knew it wouldn't. Which sentence that I just wrote is scarier? I do not know. The scariest thing of all is my innermost fear that whatever troubles the rooster is something worse than autism, something that will only grow as he does.
The only thing I know for sure is that tomorrow will, without any doubt, be just as bad as today. Maybe worse.
But, since I've already done a miserable job at parenting, let me at least do something for those fifth graders I had to abandon. They're all researching different topics, and it gives great joy to my inner geek. Some kids still need information, and "experts" they could interview would help a lot. So, dear blogosphere, if anyone out there knows about any of these topics, or could point us to resources, I'd LOVE to put you in touch with a darling researcher, age 10, by email or phone, at your convenience:
Appalachian music and dance (West Virginia)
blue crabs (Maryland)
fluorescent rocks (NJ)
Fairystones (VA)
Salem Witch Trials
Eli Lilly
Robert Frost
Texas City explosion
Anyone who knows anything about us knows why this happened, right? (And I'm talking the micro why, not the macro.) Yes, let's all say it in unison, now: deities. About 20 minutes prior to the rampage, (and I later heard that the administrator in charge of preschool offenders had been looking for me for -- YES -- about 15 or 20 minutes) I, knee deep in a research lesson with 60 delightful fifth graders, said, LIKE SOME DEATH-DEFYING FOOL, "This is just about the most fun I could ever have at work. I love this project." The perfect signal to my exit from the project, would you not agree?
What on earth is happening to my little boy? Up until about a month ago, he was difficult, but charming, and he saved most of his negativity and aggression for home life. Sure, his teachers dealt with a lot from him, paticularly that he could not share or handle circle time, and that he had terrible trouble communicating with kids. NOW, however, we have a boy who screams, "AHHHHH! Ahahahaaaaa!" at the drop of a hat. He grabs toys from others and taunts them by holding the coveted object over his (tall) head. He hit another child with a shovel. (Thank goodness it was a flimsy plastic one, but STILL.) Kids avoid him. He spits. That is so disgusting. I can't figure it out, I can't get to the cause, I surely can't stop it, and so I'm so freaked out that I've gone all ... detached. I'm not crying, I'm not aching, I'm not ... here. Not exactly here. Something inside got turned down way low, dialed back to inaudible levels. Of course, perversely, I like it, I relish the relief. But I am smart enough to know it's not a good sign. It's numbness, and that isn't healthy. It's the kind of sensation that finds me offhandedly commenting to my husband, out of earshot of the kids, "So what time you think he'll get thrown out tomorrow? Because I really have important work to do at school." WHO SAID THAT? It might have been me, but it was not my real voice, if you know what I mean. I love my boy, so big, forever, but I've disconnected today, and I need to fess up to that right here and right now if I hope to reconnect.
When I picked the rooster up, I tried every thing I thought was "right." I told him that he couldn't play today, because he was hurting and scaring his friends, but that I know he is a good boy, and I'm going to help him feel better, so that he can make better choices tomorrow. Okay, I chunked it for him so that he didn't have to hear all that at once, and I repeated it infinite times, with lots of synonyms. I had him repeat to me several times why we were going home early. "It's not okay to hit friends," was his general reply. I didn't want him to feel like a bad person, but I also made sure not to make the day too fun; I didn't want to make him hope for escape from school every day by doing the same actions. We checked out picture books from the library about anger, feelings, hitting. I asked him about his feelings. I gave him lots of love. But the whole time, as he alternated between more loving than I've seen in weeks and going full tilt mad on me, I was struggling to find me in it all... I wasn't really connected, no matter how many times I pinched myself.
And nothing I did helped anyway - not for more than a few minutes here or there. And I knew it wouldn't. Which sentence that I just wrote is scarier? I do not know. The scariest thing of all is my innermost fear that whatever troubles the rooster is something worse than autism, something that will only grow as he does.
The only thing I know for sure is that tomorrow will, without any doubt, be just as bad as today. Maybe worse.
But, since I've already done a miserable job at parenting, let me at least do something for those fifth graders I had to abandon. They're all researching different topics, and it gives great joy to my inner geek. Some kids still need information, and "experts" they could interview would help a lot. So, dear blogosphere, if anyone out there knows about any of these topics, or could point us to resources, I'd LOVE to put you in touch with a darling researcher, age 10, by email or phone, at your convenience:
Appalachian music and dance (West Virginia)
blue crabs (Maryland)
fluorescent rocks (NJ)
Fairystones (VA)
Salem Witch Trials
Eli Lilly
Robert Frost
Texas City explosion
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