about Perspective (Part 1): What would you do? How would you feel?
Imagine you are a teacher of 20 elementary-school aged children and are also 37-weeks pregnant. In the middle of the hustle and bustle of a classroom party, one your students all of a sudden flees the room without you noticing.
Imagine you are a substitute for a teacher who is on a 6-week leave. Without warning, one of your students begins crumpling and ripping up all of his papers.
Imagine you are the parent of a 1st grader. You get a call from the school to come get your child. You learn that he has developed a large knot on his head because another child threw a chair that hit him.
Imagine you are the Principal of a pprimary school. A student has been brought to you for disrupting the classroom. He spits at you, disrobes, and urinates on the floor in your office.
Imagine you are the parent of that child.
Imagine you are that child.
This is Part 1 of a series of articles on Perspective. I have been procrastinating addressing a controversial topic, but because I don’t want to default on my New Year’s Resolution, I decided to take baby steps.
If you choose to share your thoughts, please post on the original post where you can also choose to post anonymously. Please be honest, especially with yourself…
I’m out of breath trying to catch up – a timeline
For my own refreshment, I’ll need to jot down an recap outline. It’s sad when I went through my archives and I couldn’t remember the last time I posted a non-tweet, non-meme, non-Elderese/Youngerese of the Day post.
Here is my last timeline post. This goes to mid-August. Here are the two posts that are referenced in that post regarding Summer Camp and Preschool for The Younger. (May, July and August details. Warning: Read at your own risk. May stir up angry feelings.)
- August 26, 2008 – The Elder had 2 weeks where he just attended school for a half day on Fridays. They do this to “ease” them into Kindergarten. Of course he has a meltdown the very first day, but then had some better adjusting to Kindergarten during his first full week of school.
- September 10, 2008 – We had a surprising First Parent/Teacher Conference and here is a post of a good example of how to decode a meltdown.
- September 16, 2008 – I took the time to be vulnerable and just cry in a completely separate post for just me. This was the day The Elder decided to show his autism colors. But at least The Younger’s situation was getting better. Here’s another positive post about The Younger’s progress. I was sick for 3 consecutive weeks and I was absolutely miserable. I finally had to take a steroid to get rid of everything. It worked but it totally screwed up my skin. If you know what I do for a living you can understand the drop in my general confidence to go out in public much less to work and see clients. In the Holiday Season of all times. As if I needed more things to be depressed about.
- October, 2008 – OMG, I never posted about the first IEP meeting!
I totally owe you that.
- October, 2008 – My first time volunteering in the classroom for the Fall Party. It was following a depressing day because of The Elder’s behavior report that came home. This made for some major anxiety to even step foot into the classroom. Other details about this in this post. This year’s Halloween season was a total whirlwind. My parents were in town for a week, my father-in-law and girlfriend-in-law were in town for a week, There was a week of Halloween parties between the 2 schools and churches and oh yeah, Halloween itself. Because all this also followed a 3 week pause in my business in September because of sickness, this resulted in a dramatic decrease in production in October. On top of all that, for some reason I thought that I “save” my networking group and agreed to be the interim president for the next 2 months to organize the expected roles and update the bylaws. What was I thinking?
- November, 2008 – This is the months that I got tired of being way behind in this journal and signed up for twitter. But then I felt like they were “lazy posts.” I probably lost a lot of readers this month because I wasn’t blogging. It was a time I really needed to be blogging just to update my virtual friends so that I could the feedback and support of the autism community. This is my Thanksgiving Post as I took a deep breath and reminded myself that my situation is not all that bad. Things will get better and it could always be worse. So I count my blessing and move on. This was a very sincere and genuine post. None of that “fake it til you make” stuff to psych myself into a positive attitude. So I was proud of myself.
- December, 2008 – This was a weird month. The first weekend, The Hub and I went on an MK cruise that I had earned from accomplishments between Jan-June 2008. I felt guilty because I felt like I had done a 180 in the second have of the year…and i had. I was a little more motivated to be there but not for business or the kids or whatever. But for me. I was waiting to hear a whisper from God that would help lift the depression off my shoulders. I didn’t really hear it, but I think the prayers and positive attitude worked because The Elder had 2 weeks in a row (recall there are only 2 weeks of school in Dec) of FIVE blue cards. A perfect score. The first week I was so excited!
Me: You had SUCH A GREAT WEEK!
The Elder: (very matter of fact) I know.
We experienced a positive IEP and I finally shared the low-down on the IEP team in the latter part of this post.
We also had a good trip to SC for the holidays. When we got home, The Younger was asleep and The Elder walks in and stops in his tracks. He had the most excited look on his face.
The Elder: [The Younger] is going to be happy!
Me: (confused a little) Why is that?
He points at the Christmas tree behind me where instead of the usual holiday appropriate books we lay under the tree, there were gifts – unwrapped so it was obvious that one was a firetruck and one was a recycle truck.
The Elder: Mommy, I think Santa Claus came here while we were on vacation.
That’s when I knew that it was time to start having our own family Christmas Celebrations. I had been waiting for The Younger to get to the age that he was really getting into the Christmas Spirit and understood all the joys that come with the season. Now we have never talked about Santa Claus. I think with the Autism I wasn’t really sure how to approach it to program The Elder’s brain for the long-term. Both are very aware of the reason for the season. They even wrapped a gift of their own toys as a present for Baby Jesus. But Santa Claus they learned from outside the home ( btw I am not anti-Santa by any means). But when I just observed The Elder being excited for his brother and predicting his emotions, I made the decision right then and there. We are ready for some Christmas Spirit!
- January, 2009 – God has a weird way of preparing us for life. You can see last month as a tease or you could call it clearing off a part of my plate to make room for more. I was only a week behind de-throning myself from the president position, but I hit a double brick wall when some totally unrelated to anything else in this blog up until now sprung out nowhere. It’s one of those things that could really screw you later and needs to be fixed now because you never know when D-day is. This caused some turmoil amongst folk that don’t need to have turmoil. As of today, this is yet to be resolved. Ay ay ay!
Later that month, The Hub and I traveled to Phoenix for a Leadership Conference. I go every January. I almost didn’t go. But I figured that if I didn’t then I wouldn’t be doing my part and God might do something REALLY crazy to get my attention that I was going in the wrong direction. So out of fear, I went. I did feel much better and much more confident. However I still felt like my life was surreal. So many things coming at me at so many different angles. The following week we got a call from a local business who was doing a charity event and wanted to sponsor ASD Athletes as the benefactor of the fund raiser. It was so cool to see our name in the newspaper in the press release. WOW. We were so excited that we impulsively said yes, not fully understanding the amount of work that would be involved to get ready for the next 2 months before the event. We quickly drafted up a plan of action to get prepared and went into February fired up.
- February-March, 2009 – I spent the first 2 weeks SUPER MOTIVATED. Perhaps it was because it was obvious that I had to be productive. It’s sad when money for our family isn’t a good motivator to work, but money for the foundation got me going. But because I knew if I totally engulfed myself with ASD Athletes that that would be pretty much putting my business on hold (which also meant turning in my car – which I love), I made sure that I had a solid plan for MK. By mid-Feb, that plan was in place and I was so pumped. Until…the 3rd week of February, The Elder started to bring home bad behavior reports from school. He got 2 pink slips from the school that week. The next week, I got a call from The Asst Principal that The Elder was going to stay in his office for most of the day. The depressing part of it was that it was only 9am when I got the call. I don’t know why he didn’t get written up that day too. But the icing on the cake was the following week (week 3 of the tantrum series) which was also the first week of March, I got a call from The Other Asst Principal informing that The Elder had thrown his shoes and glasses and spit, which isn’t unlike most of his meltdowns, but now he is aiming for people. Specifically The K Teacher and The Other Asst Principal. Great. She wanted to know how I discipline that kind of behavior at home. I was totally speechless. How embarrassing. Then I thought, well it depends. Of course I let him know it is unacceptable but when I am there I usually know what the trigger is or I just know how his brain works and most of the time I prevent it from escalating to that point. Then The K Teacher gets on the line. The first thing I do is apologize and empathize with her frustration. Her frustration came back at me in such a shocking manner that I started to cry and could only say I’m sorry. Later, when I wasn’t so panicky and emabarassed, I sent her an email with the words and advice that she could use and she was receptive. I called the IEP to come together for another meeting. It was scheduled for the following week. I was impressed for the immediate booking, but I suppose they were as motivated as I was. Unfortunately both The Elder and me caught a mysterious virus that week and I wasnt able to attend the meeting. The Elder was basically out for 2 weeks because the 3rd week of March is always Spring Break. Shortly after it was obvious that I wasn’t going to the meeting, I get a message from The Resource Teacher with the new date and the news that was going to stress me out beyond belief for the following 2 weeks.
The Resource Teacher: (paraphrased) Monday after Spring Break, [The Elder] will be in the CDC room and earn his way back into the classroom. He has to “want to be in Kindergarten.”
That line haunted me for 2 weeks as I had to wait for the meeting on March 30 (yesterday).
- March, 2009 – Back up to February from the perspective of MK and ASD Athletes. I’ll make a separate bulleted list here to highlight the rest of what was going on in our life. I’ll have to make a separate post reporting on the weekend of craziness (Last weekend) because it was just that crazy.
A month before the ASDa event (which was held on March 28th), I discovered that NO PROGRESS was being made in preparations for the event. Important things like getting our mission statement and vision out of our heads and down on a piece of paper, or even more importantly, our website since it was only PR resource we had. I ended up taking on the Executive Director role, which honestly I don’t mind because I am a big-picture person and know how to delegate. One problem. I didn’t have anyone to delegate to.
- March 15th – A huge deadline in MK and I missed it. For the first time I think in 5 years. And it was a really bad quarter in the year to miss. I’ll be missing out on some stuff later this year. bummer.
- March 24th – Our first public appearance on WVLT our local CBS affiliate.
- March 26th – The Lola arriving to attend Career Conference here in Knoxville.
- March 27th - gets its own list:
- Day 1 of Career Conference. Registration begins at 2pm
- Our second public appearance on WBIR our local NBC affiliate, for the segment Live at Five at Four. (3:30pm – so I missed the first class of the conference but The Asst took my place)
- Dinner meeting with conference attendees (5:30pm)
- Opening General Session from 7-10pm
- March 28th -
- Day 2 of Career Conference. Classes begin at 8:30am. I sent The Asst just in case I needed to do some last minute things for the ASDa event.
- 11am-2pm ASDa Event at Boogie Down Baby
- 2-4pm the last class of the conference
- 3-6pm The Hub had to work the Knoxville Marathon expo
- 7pm Slumber Party at my house for consultants who earn an invitation (I ate gluten…crab rangoon…they were hard to resist, but fortunately I didn’t have a gluten hangover the next day. Today however I’ve been a little sluggish. I have been writing this post in installments all day.)
- March 29th -
- 5am The Hub leaves my bedside to go run the Knoxville Marathon.
- 11am I’m freaking out because The Elder chose to have a meltdown right before we left and I seriously thought that we were going to miss The Hub at the finish line. That’s a whole different story. i’m sure he blogged on it. We were back home around 12:30.
- 4pm I had to take The Lola back to the airport so she could return home.
- 8:30-10pm (no joking) I spent talking to The Teacher in anticipation of the IEP meeting. She really calmed my nerves and gave me back my confidence which really probably all I needed and had I known that, we might have only been on the phone for 15 minutes. lol.
- Oh yeah. and it was my birthday.
- March 30th – THE IEP MEETING – the very thing that motivated me to even attempt to write a real blog post yet only managed to create this monstrous timeline. You’d think that alone would motivate me to blog more often. If you’ve made it this far you must be a really good friend OR you are nosy OR you are OCD and have to finish everything you’ve started right now or you’ll lose sleep. If you stopped reading before now, then…it doesnt matter because you wont ever read this. right? right. For those who have hung in there. please dont lynch me but I’ll dedicate a post just for that.
- March 31st – Today. I have about an hour left to close the month. Thus far its not bad considering everything that’s been happening this month.
The last post of my blog
for 2008, that is. No I haven’t given up blogging, though it may appear that I have compared to what I started 18 months ago or so. But I need to force myself to blog. Not because I owe anyone a narrative of my life but because this blog does serve as a journal, and besides, it’s very therapeutic. I haven’t blogged since this post leading up to the IEP meeting on the 18th.
So there’s great news, and good news. The good news was that The Elder did not qualify for OT services. Ok if you read my last post, you might remember me hoping that he gets the services based on some of the triggers that led to “behavior reports.” But when the OT showed up some of his work, I was really floored by the amount of progress he has made with his motor skills. I was really floored by the amount of progress he has made with his motor skills.(I have video to support this too, but won’t be posted until next year. lol) When she showed us a piece of paper (one piece of paper) that was smooth (not crumpled), in one piece, with no “frustration” stripes all over the page of his ALPHABET, my mouth hung open. Yeah, sure he could recite his abc’s both forwards and backwards, by letter and by phonetics, by age 2.5, BUT at 4 years old, he couldn’t draw a consistent circle. About a year ago his circles, triangles, squares, and rectangles were pretty much indistinguishable. And don’t even DARE give him a pair of scissors to cut more than a 1/4in thick straight line (large zig-zags were ok though), without expecting a meltdown.**Thank goodness that his implusive glasses/shoe/food-throwing hadn’t migrated to scissors. It couldn’t have been pretty scary, tho I’ve gotten hit by a fork once or twice. Yay for plasticware. We’ve been recycling them from parties (our own parties…not other people’s. That’s just weird.) so we have a good supply in stock when they get lost in flight, snapped in two, or eaten by the disposal (oops). They are pretty darn sturdy. So seeing a perfect letter O made me giddy, but seeing a perfect S and a perfect number 8 put me in a bit of shock. I think me and The Hub blurted out at the same time, “HE did this?”
–wow–
She even showed us a picture of where he drew a person. It is all in pencil and has hands, feet (and stilts “like at the circus”), eyes (big circles), nose, mouth, ears, etc etc. Then in orange crayon there is a line drawn straight down the middle of his body (a), and then a line crossing it at the person’s waist (b) so that it looks like a cross. (Boy I wish I had a scanned version of it) He had explained to the OT that:
a) This is his spine, and
b) This is his belt.
–HI-larious–
So, his fine motor skills were no longer in question. And at home (and at school, as witnessed with my own personal eyeballs) his gross motor skills have improved as well (re: video that I have yet to post). His proprioceptive sense is maturing OR he is just getting braver/trusting more. Because he is starting to climb (I’m sure as taught by The Younger, expert monkey boy) and The Hub has a picture of him swinging on the HIGH “fireman” pole on the playground at his Fall Festival.
So…no OT. yay!
However The OT did recommend that he attend a handwriting class because he has an aversion to lowercase letters (especially the ones that “sink” below the line: g,j,y,p,q) and the d’nealian style in general. The OT is worried that if we “program” his chip to learn it this way that he will not be able to change it later. I’m not 100% sure that that is true because he does really well with a slowly communicated, very logical, self-motivating explanation to changes in routine, rules, etc.
So that was the big outcome. There were some other changes made in his IEP so that he wasn’t taken out of the classroom for any additional time than he already has been. He’s been having a “social group” session 2 days a week, and his reading group. But he is so accelerated that in his 15 minutes session 2 days a week, he would read a book and then take the test with a perfect score with time to spare and The Resource Teacher would have to provide him with an extra activity just so the others in his group could “catch up” (not that they were slow or anything). he was finished before she even got back to her deskShe said that the first time he took the comprehension test on the computer that he was finished before she even got back to her desk which is literally less than 5 steps away. Her classroom is about the size of a college apartment’s kitchen(nette). She said that at first she thought he was just clicking any ole answer just to get done as if it were a non-preferred activity. However, after multiple sessions of perfect scores she realized that not only was he reading the five questions on the test that fast, but he comprehended the book (that he just read) and could recall the answer at the same lightning speed.
–wow–
I also got to meet The Behavior Analyst who will begin her observations in January. She has a good reputation. We are SO BLESSED. Again, The Resource Teacher bragged on The Elder to her about how sweet and funny and smart he is.
“I just wanna eat him up with a spoon.”
were her exact words. Giddy Me! I could have kissed her on the lips. But I didn’t. Probably not very appropriate or socially acceptable.
So needless to say, I enjoyed my time and I didn’t need a kleenex unless you count tears of joy/shock.
Since then we experienced a FIVE DAY SMILEY FACE WEEK!!!!!! It was a first. He was SO proud of himself!
The Elder: I know.
So he definitely earned his Batter Batter Baseball.
We also had a successful trip to SC and back. A 7hr trip, that takes 10hrs with 2 kids who are potty trained and a dog. You can check out my tweets for an idea of what went down that week. Other than my ear/sinus infection and The Elder missing out on the presents, it was a very successful trip, only a few minor behaviors (like hitting and pseudo-biting) that I’m sure were triggered by the changes in routine and the excitement of seeing their cousins.
We are on the last week of Winter Break and I must say that I have really enjoyed having the boys to myself (The AP is on vacation too).
Stay-tuned for the following topics in (near-) future posts:
- Timeline – so what exactly happened during the last 6 months hiatus? cliff notes version.
- Video – shocking video of a hidden athletic talent. Goooooooo gross motor skills and coordination! Well, he still has the “Phoebe Run.” (soooo cute)
- Photo Album – Jesus was a carpenter so why can’t we?
- Christmas Quips – to be echolalic, to not to be…that is the question.
Happy New Year folks!
