That sounds nice.
I have recently gotten a new job, which is the same job I had been doing as a volunteer for over a year, riding the bus with my daughter and some other autistic children to two special schools for autistic children in a nearby city.
that sounds nice too, you actually get paid for it?
I haven't gotten any money yet, but I expect to be paid at the end of this month. I started riding the bus as a volunteer last year when it was just my daughter because the transportation department wanted her to wear a harness on the bus and both my husband and I strongly did not want her to be restrained like that. So I offered to ride the bus with her instead. They did not realize that attempting to strap her down would just cause more problems and that having me there would be much more effective, but they agreed, provided I agreed to strap her down with their harness if she misbehaved in such a way that the bus driver thought it became necessary for safety to do so. Then I worked to build a rapport with the bus drivers so they could see the wonderful child my daughter is over 95% of the time and hopefully become a little more tolerant of the 5% of the time she was not so wonderful.
Building a rapport was hard for me, and I did not really succeed with the first driver, because she tattled on my daughter for every little thing she did on the ride at first, so I was called onto the carpet. My husband and I fought back hard, and demanded to see every little scrap of paper she had written about our daughter because what we were hearing in the meeting was slanted and distorted. They did not kick my daughter off the bus and after that meeting if the driver tattled on my daughter again I did not hear about it because I was not called onto the carpet again for a long time. They changed drivers in the summer and then again the next school year and I worked even harder on building a rapport with them.
When they added another little girl who attended a different autism school to our bus, I looked after her too. I was called onto the carpet again in a meeting near the beginning of the summer after another change of drivers because my daughter misbehaved a few times on the bus. I thought that they intended to kick my daughter off the bus so I told them some of the things that the other little girl had done and that they would need to hire someone to look after the other little girl if they kicked my daughter off the bus, while they had been getting my services looking after both children for free. One of the people in the meeting, the woman who has just been put in charge of special education for the school district, decided to hire someone to look after all the children since they were adding two teenage boys to the bus this school year. So I decided to apply for the job based on my volunteer experience. It was a good argument, so I got the job.
Sorry, I did not intend to write a book about my new job in your ask away thread. I think that you and Kevv both gave good advice.
