So is he or isn’t he?
When someone tells you that you have a child with special needs, it can be one of the hardest things to come to terms with. Your life goes from zero to 60 in one second and you’re not quite sure what happened. It takes a long time to accept that your child isn’t going to be able to deal with things or learn like their peers. Actually, you’re not quite sure what to expect so acceptance is precarious because you’re never sure what you’re supposed to accept and whether or not that will change. No one can give you any clear indications as to what to expect and the younger they are the more pessimistic the answers are. Of course, when they are at the age where they always give you the most grim outlook to avoid false hope, that’s when you need to hear something hopeful the most.
And my point is?
I met with the school psychologist on Thursday to go over Iain’s latest round of testing and the results. I won’t go into numbers because numbers depress me but she told me that she thinks the numbers are really on the low side given the significant problems he has with attending. Another thing she mentioned is that as far as the autistic tendencies are concerned, he has improved by “leaps and bounds.” I sat and stared at her when she told me that. She continued on to say that she and some of the other staff had a little bit of a time trying to find enough traits to list to continue to classify him as AI (Autistically Impaired). I continued to stare.
They aren’t suggesting that he be reclassified or his services be lessened so it’s not an issue of them trying to get out of providing services; they aren’t that way when it comes to the kids in the district. They’ve taken an “it ain’t broke so we ain’t fixin’ it” stand as far as labeling and services because she told me that they want to work gradually with the goal of becoming more independent. Sounds good to me. I don’t feel comfortable changing too much up if it’s working well and from what I was told yesterday, things are working well.
Before we get too excited we’re still talking about test results in the CI (Cognitively Impaired) range. While the psychologist thinks that his scores are a conservative estimate, we’re still talking about a kid who is already a year behind grade-wise and he’s still testing below his current grade level (with no help and on the standardized test — with the aide and support he seems to be completing his work satisfactorily). This brings me to the next item — ADHD.
When the teacher consultant asked me something about his attention span (I’m not sure exactly how she put it but it wasn’t offensive), I knew that we had hit the time when we were revisiting his problems with attending and focus. I talked with the psychologist and we both agreed that his problems were probably impacting his academic work and I told her that I would contact the pediatrician and discuss the issue with her. We dealt with this about four years ago but any benefits we were seeing with the meds were being outweighed by the way the side-effects made him feel. This in turn affected his behavior because he didn’t feel right and was frustrated and felt out of control. We dropped it and I said we’d revisit it in kinder or whenever it became a problem again.
We had good intentions but let it go because it wasn’t important enough at the time to battle it. Now that he’s older and his academic work is more and more important, we feel we have to address this again. I really hope we won’t have a bad time trying to find something that works that doesn’t have a ton of side effects. Meds are scary but we can’t work with him behaviorally if chemically he’s in need of balance. This should be an adventure for lack of a better term.
Tuesday we have his formal IEP meeting. That should be straightforward with only me dragging things on since I do love to talk. They are adding 30 minutes daily of resource room for math since he takes after his mother in being mathematically challenged. I hope the RR teacher can help him along and we’ll see how it goes after some time passes. We’re removing the HI (Hearing Impaired) label since we seem to be done with any need for the hearing consultant now that his hearing seems to have leveled out. He’s still on the border in one ear and just into the normal range in the other but given his progress with the hearing consultant and his satisfactory auditory testing, we’re going to drop that now. I still haven’t spoken with the OT yet to discuss whether or not she’ll do a direct service or work with the aide as a consultant. It’s someone new this year so I’m not sure what they are like or what approach they prefer.
So there you go. I’m not sure how to feel about any of it and I know that sounds very strange but there you go. I guess it goes back to what I was talking about earlier and how precarious this can all be. I think a part of me is afraid to really get too excited or happy about anything since in my mind I think that it could all change at any moment. No excitement = no disappointment. Of course it doesn’t work like that but I never said I made sense.
On to other things . . .
I’m finally starting to feel a bit better for the first time since I got back from Chicago. That trip wore me out but good. I didn’t roll into town until after midnight and I drove straight through without stopping once. Well, that’s not entirely true. I did stop once when I missed a detour to I-94 East in Gary, Indiana and took a pit stop and topped off my gas tank. Outside of that I drove, drove and drove some more. The next day I was so desperate for sleep I was dozing off on the toilet (yes, I know that’s TMI but I was tired!). Even yesterday I was still exhausted and started to wonder if it wasn’t depression creeping up on me but thankfully today I’m much more in tune with the world energy-wise. Ironically, I threw up early in the day but had no problems since. Don’t worry — I can’t figure me out either.
I just got an email from Paul, the owner of LensProToGo. Thank God he did because it totally slipped my mind that I had to package up the monster lens and get it back to him. It has to be postmarked tomorrow. I’m glad shipping back is so easy. I just have to drop the case into the original box, tape it shut and slap the prepaid label on it. The convenience from beginning to end was terrific. I’m going to rent the 85mm next to give it a spin around the block. It was fun having the 70-200 to play with. I haven’t yet uploaded all of my images but it is a pretty sweet lens.
I’ll close with an email from my BlackBerry I sent my friends this morning:
Subject: Super Mom
I usually peel myself out of bed between 6:30 and 6:35. I woke then but basically rolled over and the next thing I knew it was 7:07. Crap! By 7:40 we were at school. When the kids get inside I’m headed home for a shower. The world will thank me.
