What are You doing right now?

[Litigious]

Post whoring, thinking of eating something and drinking my last single malt. My brother has bough me a new bottle in Germany, though, but he hasn't brought it here yet. 

[DirtDawg]

Heading out to a "yearly case conference" for my son. I'm going to bring up the possibility of holding him back in the second grade and maybe his maturity level will match better with his classmates, next year ... who knows?

We made a small presentation of ourselves, yesterday, as concerned, but confused parents, wanting to keep our son back a year, in order to demonstrate how the system they have tried to adapt to our son is not working. His high grades were the first thing they held up as reasons not to make him repeat the second grade, but I shot that argument to pieces by making them admit that credit for his incredible academic scores goes to him, my wife and me, far more than anything they are doing (since he is not doing their work, anyway) and making the point that he is in school to learn socially acceptable behaviors, mainly, since we are all doing a good job with most of the rest.

It seems that there are other alternatives that are available to us, which have not yet been tried. Sending me a note every other day about him not behaving properly and a check list of expected behaviors every week, with the "Needs Improvement" box checked off in every column is unnecessary. FUCK! I already told them he was autistic! He's there to gain some experience with kids he can have fun with, in my estimation. I think we shocked the crap out of them, when some realized that they had a lot more work to do for us than updating our son's educational plan. We need a whole new plan and they know we know it, so NOW(!) they are sending "smarter psychologists" from the state board to observe the weekly routine and offer suggestions. (at least it's a start)

Smart kids who can't throw or catch a ball are the rage, at our house. When they showed us the graph of the school's top scores with the top kids' names highlighted, his scores were in separate categories, above the whole school, which includes third and fourth grades, except for the math. There is one other fourth grader who has his math skills. He's got that part of schooling down - he needs some assistance in other areas, now, to catch up emotional-maturitywise, if he is to stay with his peer group.

Right now, I'm gloating a little, after stirring their comfortable jobs up, a little.

[Callaway]

So they don't want to hold him back a year, I take it?

We made a similar offer to my fifth grade daughter's elementary school, that if they can't find a suitable middle school placement for her, that we could keep her in the fifth grade another year to learn more social skills.  They pulled out her test scores too, to show how much academic progress she has made.  She is pretty bright.

[DirtDawg]

So they don't want to hold him back a year, I take it?

Oh, HELL NO! It was almost like ... actuallly, I don't know what it was like. I have never seen such a solemn and gravity-burdened atmosphere fall over one of those "simple" meetings. They were all (his teacher, his OT, his teacher's assistant, his county case representative, the principal, the district psychologist and the county special needs coordinator ... it has taken me several tries to figure out what they all do, exactly.) exchanging horrified glances at each other and trying to do so without us noticing it and showing me his scores and mentioning the new school they are building, as if that should make me stop, while I was using his scores, his letters to me from the teachers and his previous assessments to blow holes in their existing plan for him.

It was not really a bluff, because I will keep him back a year, if we have to, but we tried to think of some way to show how broken the present approach is. I did not want to ask about home schooling, because they might have taken that as a rejection (seems to happen, a lot), instead I wanted to point out that we are ALREADY home schooling him, successfully, in the areas where I can, but the areas, which you pointed out, before, where I have deficits, I need help! I want to see more special options become available, for all of us, but my kids are there now and needing something more than this education system has offered, so far. I want them to do more social-based work for him, since we have no problem with the three "R"s. I have not read the complete NCLB legislation, but it seems to have some back-office memo "Code Red" that we engaged or something. I have high hopes for our little school district, sometimes.

[Callaway]

Yes, they referred to studies showing the negative impact on children's self-esteem if they are held back, to which we said, her child psychiatrist doesn't think it will harm her self-esteem, since she interacts so little with her classmates anyway.

They propose sending her to a special autism school starting near the end of this school year.  They specialize in handling children with autism and children with challenging behaviors and teaching them.  There is a small class with three boys, probably with either AS or HFA, which is where they propose placing her.  There are as many adults as children in this classroom.  I hope they can handle her academic needs, but like you, we could teach her the academic skills much more so than the social skills, especially the ones involving other children.  She needs help controlling some of her challenging behaviors, especially the hitting, kicking and hair-pulling, before they land her in more trouble.

[DirtDawg]

I just got off the phone with the OT and she was at home, so she was more candid with me than she could be at a meeting, which was called "for the record". I have been led to believe that there is a special class starting next year for the first time, that may help us, some. Someone has been hard at work getting the ball rolling and the only thing left to prove, in order to justify the scope of the newly proposed class, was an increasing NEED for these services. The class is set up for ten to fifteen students, each with his/her own adult supervisor and my son could be number twelve. The class will have kids of all ages, but they will all be "smart", yet socially challenged. Sometimes I think they are afraid to say autistic.

I have mixed feelings. (That should be an Anti-Emo slogan)

[Callaway]

That sounds a lot like the class my daughter would be in, but hers is much smaller and probably for more challenging behaviors than your son's.

I like that one to one ratio.  That sounds really promising. 

I know what you mean about mixed feelings, though.  The school where my daughter would go is about a one hour drive from home.  While the school district would transport her there, they want her to ride in a harness that functions as a physical restraint and they say if she becomes aggressive during the drive, they will call 911 and let the police take her away and deal with her, which could be extremely traumatic for her.  It looks like I'm going to have to drive her myself.

[DirtDawg]

I don't understand that at all. Why should they call 911? Can you give them your number, instead?

 
I would transport her myself, too.

I would like to volunteer as a fly on the wall in the new classroom. ... or to keep flies off the walls, maybe. I can do a live capture and release or we could get a pet spider for the class.

My mixed feelings are mainly revolving around the possibility that I could further dramatize his differences by further separating him from his "friends". By "friends", I mean the kids he has known since he was four or five, who, now, entertain themselves by getting him into a tizzy that will get the teacher involved, so they can go ahead and do whatever they do when the teacher is distracted. He is somewhat attached to a few of them, but there are two buttholes. He tries so damn hard to fit in that he can be easily be controlled by a couple of mean-spirited kids in his class. That's my observation, from what sketchy info I have been able drag out of him, concerning his side of the story behind almost every bad behavior note I have had to sign and return. It just seems absurd that they are still telling me that he behaves badly and he needs to learn how to interact with others properly, when I started out the year telling them he behaves badly and he needs to learn how to interact with others properly.

[Litigious]

DD, I recognize that only too well. I was also always blamed for my reactions on provokations by "friends" in school, and those stupid teachers actually were totally unable to see what was really behind my behavior.

[DirtDawg]

I've been holding my water, trying not to make things worse, while I fully recognize that the only reason for the public schools, for my kid, is to learn about interacting with other people. I don't have access to "other people" very easily at all. We don't exactly have a parade of social oppurtunities knocking on our door. In fact the last time someone knocked on our door, it was a person trying to sell heater service and he called me a freak ... that was about three weeks ago, I think. I took them with me when I went door knocking and looking for our dog, but there weren't really very many social lessons covered that day.

[odeon]

My son's class is one of those small ones, two teachers and three students, including my boy. Sure, they specialize in ASDs but sometimes I think that they've become too arrogant, thinking that fifteen years of experience means that they've seen it all.

The kid's off camping tonight, with other auties. He's finally began to like it, after seven or eight months of rejecting it either on sight or the next morning (phoning us at seven in the morning). Or maybe it's that we've managed to drug him with that dangerous substance, melatonin, and he's finally able to sleep some.

Maybe I should post in the bitching thread and let out my cynicism, all at once.

[duncvis]

Yay for cynicism!

I'm getting a little merry after a few beers and postwhoring. Yay for beer! I'm in a fucking good mood actually. 

[odeon]

Me too, actually. I've not had enough beer but I feel pretty happy anyway.

I have a job interview coming up next week, and one the week after that. A third company promised to be in touch by the end of this month. It looks good.

[duncvis]

good stuff, mate. I keep vacillating - I'm gonna be considering my work options when my youngest starts school but haven't decided what to do yet - I really didn't want to be an accounting technician but I'm pretty sure thats what I'll be going back to. Maybe when I can manage full time work again I can finish my accountancy training and find a socially responsible way to use it. MEH. 

[odeon]

When's your youngest going to start school?