The 2012 ARD Meeting

Well it was today! I had the usual butterflies going in. I know what to expect but still...going into this sort of meeting where you are not sure what's going to be said or etc can be a bit nerve wracking. My husband was able to come this time so that makes it that much easier. He's only missed one, and that was unavoidable.


For those unfamiliar, an ARD is an annual meeting REQUIRED by public schools for any child that has an IEP (basically a special learning plan designed for them due to some academic challenge or medical challenge). You go over the goals set last year, pick some for this year and next, and address any and all concerns over the child any side has. It is typically a parent, a diagnostician...any special ed teachers the child sees, the child's regular teacher, and Admin from the school. In our case, the Principal.


For all that they are a nervous time I also acknowledge that it is a pretty big deal to get to sit down once a year (or more if a parent calls for it) with all these people...in the same room, and discuss ONLY your child. That is huge and I honestly wish ALL parents could do this at LEAST once a year. I know it's pretty much impossible but still. Being able to raise a concern and have the Principal and every adult responsible for your child on a given school day...right there in front of you to discuss and talk with, is really something. They cannot hide from you, give you the run around...ignore you...foist you off etc. Not that all schools or school personnel do that...BUT..


So anyways it seems like our boy is doing about as well as he should be now. He is struggling with out of the box concepts in math and reading/writing...as to be expected with a person with Asperger's really. Speaking of that? I had in my head going in, asking for a re evaluation on him for that very thing. Right now his IEP is ONLY addressing issues with his ADHD, as he was found NOT to meet the criterion for a SCHOOL Asperger's dx last time in Kindergarten. I was wanting to re-visit that because I am seeing more of an effect of being Aspie as relates to schoolwork and such...


Turns out the wonderful Diagnostician at the school brought that up even BEFORE I had a chance! She was very frank in saying she see's more NOW than then...when he was younger and see's some of the social and academic deficits he has NOT narrowing in the way they would if he was just a "late bloomer", and so she herself suggested we try again for the dx of Asperger's. BUT, and here is where she differed from me...she wants to delay the re-assessment until next year as opposed to doing it now. 


Her reasoning was...sure right now he MIGHT pass because he DOES have some deficits...BUT if we wait a year, when he is in 3rd Grade and doing 3rd/4th grade work...those deficits will be MUCH easier to spot, harder to ignore and she WANTS him to get a "yes" this time from the Board because she thinks he can benefit from it and needs some services that would afford him. I had to think about it for a bit because my first instinct is to get him re-assessed NOW. But in the end the important thing is to GET THE DIAGNOSIS put onto his file because then it STAYS and goes with him as he moves along. If we try again, and get another "no"...well that wouldn't be so good. And bottom line right now he could not be picked out in his current class by much else from his poor writing as "special needs"...and therein is the worry about testing now. He is an average student doing average work, and struggling in some things the way other kids are.


So the decision was ours at that point and given how much his teacher is doing already and plans to maintain and ADD to this year, we agreed to wait. The assessment itself involves time out of the class and he is holding his own right now and we just don't want to mess with it or make him worry etc right now and throw that all off.


BTW his teacher is just in love with him, you could tell thru the whole thing. She talked about his little idiosyncrasies and such with such candor and amusement and tenderness that we could tell that. She is doing A LOT in the course of the day to make his experience in the classroom better, and she is using his resource time well. That made me much more comfortable waiting. One cannot stress enough the importance of a teacher willing to accept a difference and learn to work with it and most importantly not look on it as a dreaded, mandated duty or "ugh", but as something she wants to do to help a student she genuinely would like to see succeed. I am so grateful to her :)


I also am going to share that the work I did with my therapist was in force here too. I felt so different leading up to it. Butterflies and nerves but not that loin-girding...battle axe rattling momma Grizzly like RAWR facade over myself. It's hard to describe but before I did that work I felt almost like I put on a different person over the real me because the real me wasn't strong enough or assertive enough. Today I felt like it was just me...and momma bear was still there but she was behind me (just in case I needed her but it would be MY call to make), and we were working together. I hope that doesn't sound to nuts but if it does...consider the source. LMAO!


Anyways. I am happy with how things went, grateful to not be alone in this, my husband and family and my friends are all so helpful and supportive of us. I thank them each and every one!

Baseball buddies

Hey all. Not much to report since the last blog BUT I did want to share something about Lily,


She is headed out to the Texas Rangers game tonight with a little girl from school. This is BIG news for her because it's the first time she's done something with a friends "sans parental units". So needless to say she is very excited and nervous too I think.


I admit I am worried...I have such a hard time allowing space for them sometimes. Remnants of some pretty serious trust issues. I can count on one hand...the number of people I trust with my kids. Something to work on...cautiously LOL!


I am spending today presentifying the house so they won't be assaulted by dog hair when they walk in LMAO, 'tis the season. Or by cat stink...yeah we got that too thanks to Flopsy and crew! But all will be well. I've met the gal's pop before at a school function and he seemed very nice...if a bit conservative.


Let's hope Lily keeps the bare chest comments to herself tonight folks! (she's been noticing boys and men without shirts and clucking her tongue or saying PUT ON A SHIRT...SHEESH!).  I had a talk with her about not everyone being as silly as we are as a family and trying her best to respect their rules and still enjoy herself at the game.


I need to get outside and blow out this DOG of mine, no sense vacuuming like I did if she is still dropping it like it's hot! Have a GREAT Friday all. Busy weekend so I mighn't see you's til Monday!

Monday Meeting

Today was the meeting to go over the school Psych's findings on Master Elias. Young Master Elias is not getting a recommendation for an IEP relating to an Autism disorder...which actually, is fine with me and I agree with, and he IS getting one for his ADHD/ADD which I also agree with.

We went over their Autism related testing, done with a panel of 4 adults with various credentials and reading what went on, had me interested and impressed. Eli has apparently made a LOT of progress and after some (appropriate given he is a 6 y/o boy taken to a room with 4 adults he did not know at all in it) apprehension he proceeded to interact with the testers, talk with them, laugh with them and look them in the eye. he completed all but a couple tasks and did them in a "non disordered" manner. That is good news as I see it.

Now I am not saying or believing my son does NOT have some sort of small difficulty likely to be some spectrum issue...BUT I agree with the school that those minor difficulties are NOT the reason his schooling is tough right now. That is ALL the ADHD and attention based stuff...well, most of it.

Likely some Learning Disorder too, which the will also be keeping a close watch on. I made it clear that under NO circumstance do I want to be late to the party on that score. My son WILL be checked on, often and ANY LD like issues will be dealt with promptly. There simply is not a crack out there with his name on it..for him to fall into, as far as we are concerned.

I think that was made very clear by us...

The formal ARD meeting where the plan for his education for the next 12 months is going to be presented, will be on Friday and I will certainly have my thoughts on that then for you to peruse LOL.

I feel in a better place now to deal with this, largely due to the man next to me during this meeting. Hubs has been such a rock thru this once I realized it's okay to lean on him and not handle all this weirdness on my own. Why I thought that necessary to begin with is...lame. Work in progress, folks!

I am looking forward to Friday.

Did I mention my daughter brought home STRAIGHT A'S?? I am sure I did lol...but there it is again. She is such a nice breather from all this. NO everything is not easy for her...she struggles and pushes our buttons, too sometimes...but her bright nimble mind is a good reprieve, and I enjoy so much watching her blossom into a very intelligent and confident young lady who knows her stuff and has set goals for herself.

Both my kids are so very different but they love each other so completely and without reservation is it a great comfort to me. They support one another and help one another when it counts...minor squabbles aside. They are a great example of how people should ALWAYS treat one another...with love, with fun, with joy, even thru disagreements and outright wars...you always come back to common ground and rebuild your love.

Happy Monday, all!

Mad Tea Party

Lily found, in her closet an unopened "cherry" Hummel tea set her grandma purchased for her years ago. I had been keeping it out of her reach because it's actual porcelain and well, yeah...you know.


Anywhoo she found it last night and wanted to play with it so we let her...and immediately right there in the living room a Tea Party happened. First the only guests were her stuffed animals...the two wolves and Brownie the dog.




Of course brother came into it late and wanted to play...tea parties are genteel affairs and he came in, boxers exposed, head first slide style onto the living room roaring "TEA PARRRRTTYYY" I swear he should have been wearing a frickin TOGA!!








It was funny to watch Lily visibly flinch everytime he clattered a teacup against a saucer or plate LOL...it's evil of me to laugh but he WAS being as gentle as he knows how to be. She was doing her BEST Hyacinth Bucket lemme tell ya...worried about her "Royal Doulton with the handpainted periwinkles" *cackles* all was well tho, nothing broken.

She packed it up and put it away when they were done exclaiming grandly "I will have to have a tea party every week at least!"

Hope everyone enjoys their Thursday. Kids get out early and as mentioned it's CHIK FIL A NIGHT!!! whoo hoo!!! Where's my toga??

Elias, the kiddo has (had?) Fifth's Disease. I figured as much. He showed up with a bright red cheeked rash Friday or maybe Thursday which we assumed was his eczema flaring up due to the extreme cold and lack of humidity...

Sunday he got his bath and dh noted the rash was down the back of his neck and arms too...decided to slather him in lotion, pop him a Benadryl, and send him to bed.

I got him up Monday (yesterday) and dressed and didn't notice much, it'd faded even...but on picking him up from school it had spread and darkened from pink to a nice red. Ugh. I thought heat rash since he was wearing a long sleeved shirt and he is NEVER cold and sweats like a pig.

This morning...it had taken over his legs and torso and was not looking like anything that was going to go away so I kept him home...which he hated.

Appt just now, Fifth'sDisease. Of course once you KNOW you have it via the rash, you are no longer contagious sucks for his class and their parents eh? The symptoms are really no big aside from looking strange lol. Minor cold on the onset...really minor in his case, we thought his allergies got him...gone in a day or two...you think you're fine then you wake up spotty.

I called the school...lettem know. In case there are any preggy ladies on staff. It's bad for preggy ladies.

Elias does like to pick up the exotic stuff! He yelled at me all mean like when I didn't send him to school at 2pm because there's just an hour left.

In other news...our water was briefly turned off! My sister came by to swing us by the docs and handed me the door notice "water turned off for lack of payment" WHHHHAAAAAT! I called "the man" of the house and he figures it was the old card getting switched off and the new one getting switched ON, that he did online that caused the issue. He called them and by the time we were back from the appt it was back on...in fact the guy was out front right when we pulled in! Lordy...for a second there it felt really weird, never had that happen before. But thankfully just a hiccup...

I wanted to make meatloaf tonight...and mashed taters...not sure I have the energy after a day with Elias...and I am sure he'll have some makeup work at school to grab and get thru...*sigh*. Oh well, at least there's a hockey game on tonight...GO WINGS, GO!

How many acronyms...

Can we stick onto Elias? LOL.
Hmm...I might add another soon...
"LD", learning disability. Most likely...aside from the other two issues his doc suggested, after a discussion about his eye doctor visit today...that his lack of connecting what he SEES...to what he WRITES, or SAYS...is probably a Learning Disability of some type.

I can ge behind that because now that the Concerta has removed a lot of the distraction for the boy, he STILL has trouble writing especially copying...something already printed on his own, and staying within the confines of his lines or paper. Let alone making legible letters or all the same size letters.

I read a bit on "dysgraphia" and boy that does seem to be a possible. It seems there a lot that can be done for it, and he will be able to eventually learn how to make the most of what he can do, in spite of it. Which I already knew...I wouldn't let it be any other way!

So now after Xmas break I am going to grab hold of the school again and make sure they have done some LD testing in addition to the other stuff for ADHD and Aspergers and are adding that into any IEP that comes about. Mustn't let them get away too long without being called to the carpet to report! TEEHEE!!

Christmas nearly upon us I can reflect on what a bumpy end of the year it's been...but I am certainly more educated and invested in my kids, both of them as a result. I feel like I've grown as a parent and as a wife too. So that makes the bumps a lot easier to manage!

Merry Christmas all! I am saying that in case I don't get to the blog again til afterwards! :)

Middlin' Monday

Dare one say so far so good? Lily and Elias are both snot factories BUT...no fever or overly scary symptoms of "you know what" so they're off to school.

Blustery cool morning and day today is on tap to balance out the just scary good weather we've had. Indian Summer? heck it was more like just plain ole Summer...you know the good part before it gets to where you wanna strangle the sun?

Today I have an I feel, much needed and welcome appt with the very nice therapist who helped us out with my other sis's healing this past Summer. I have many things to get off my chest and many things I want to ask about how I can cope better with the Eli thing...so here's to a good head-shrinking!

This weekend was busy...but not frenetic. We drove Manny (now Polo BTW) to his new people. A longish drive, but short by Tx standards at a mere 2.5 hrs. Not too much in the way of traffic, the kids behaved like road trip champs (like they are!) and the ride back was even more enjoyable.

D had a wonderful idea this weekend for Elias and his meltdowns...which BTW have become a lot less common of late (good sign I think?)...we apparently need to catch them BEFORE they reach MACH 5...and to that end D found some CandyLand cards in red and green and because verbal things tend to push him over the edge when he is teetering...we just hold up the GREEN one and he knows that means "settle down or the red card comes next". The RED card means "to your room to cool down...and we'll be in to talk".

Green card came out once and the red not at ALL this weekend I don't think. He really seems grateful to have some sort of non verbal cue to help him know when that edge is getting too close. He spent a lot more time voluntarily with us in the main room this weekend, more engaged with us...more apt to speak and conversate in a pretty normal kid way. I feel another small triumph. :) Not jumping around just yet tho because that seems to court disaster lol.

Lily had a fun project this weekend..."disguising" a Turkey (paper cut out) to hide him from Thanksgiving LOL. She went to Grandma's and decorated him up with Xmas stuff! lol...it looked SO cute! Little mini light embellishments around his fan tail and a Santa Hat on complete with jingle bell. That's an A+ project if ever I've seen one :) Thanks Grandma!

I guess I've rabbited on enough for now...this weekend was good...I hope everyone else's was as well!

Steps forward, steps back...

we've been trying some new things as far as how we deal when Eli's impulsivity causes issues at school.

Yesterday we picked him up early for a Ped appt and he'd flooded the bathroom that day...sigh. He was upset and his teach sent him a paper to write an apology to the janitor on (good idea I think)...

I decided to try the technique the psych taught us and said we'd not talk about now, but we would later and we'd all be calm about it.

Well we did the appt (which was pretty stressful since he got a blood test, bless our Ped for being so thorough..she wants to rule out ANYTHING else that could be causing lack of focus or impluse control) and came home...and relaxed a minute or two then had the talk...

He started to get worked up like he does, and both of us pointed out that WE were not upset we only wanted to talk about what happened so we could understand...We went step by step...leading him by saying first you went into the bathroom, alone? or with a buddy? got our answers and went from there.

We got the whole story out (with remarkably little stress), and we asked HIM what might work better next time, and how he could do things differently to get a better outcome...and he seemed really receptive to that. We made some step by step very simple rules for the bathroom at school....go in, pee, pull up pants, wash hands, leave...NOTHING ELSE.

I sent these steps to his teach to get her on board...hopefully she will do so and help us help him.

It could have been a screaming fit where he sat alone in his room to "think about what he'd done" and just a month ago that is what it would have been. But I think this was so much better for his self esteem...and gets him involved in the process of behaving well and offering his own thoughts on that...

When he asks one of his myriad questions (he does this a lot when he is bored or anxious) we ask him what HE thinks instead and at first he was taken aback and said "I don't know..." but now he offers his thoughts which are very often..spot on.

It can work, I know it can...we are making progress even tho there are certainly steps back...

As an aside, on the Pediatrician visit. We knew she'd be conservative and she was but also so sweet and supportive and genuinely worried and almost sad that Eli got the diagnosis he did...she was kinda feeling what we did I think. Hadn't had as much time to work thru it. But she ordered the blood test as a first step and suggested that Concerta is one she has Rx'd and seen good results with. The next appt (next week) will likely be the one we get a scrip at. Kind of scary but we need to explore this avenue and see if help can be offered.

It's good to know tho, because of what occured with the bathroom incident that we CAN talk to him and get thru, using those techniques...and that is comforting.

School Daze

Okay so "the report" is now in the hands of the school and all the folks who need it, have it. I spoke just briefly with the diagnostician and VP about it, we arranged to meet again w/ the Pysch for the school present and She Who Must Be Obeyed, on Friday next.

Apparently the wheels of school beauracracy grind slow so this is doubtless the first of many as we inch our way forward to actually helping Elias...*sheesh*.

I am glad outside of the school we can move forwards at a quicker pace. Doc final meeting Mon., Eye specialist Tues. then from there finding the person who will guide us thru the medication maze....intimidating but maybe a ray of hope for a more focused young man.

As a sad but interesting aside Elias came home and told me he had a sub because his Teacher's husband died. That is incredibly sad...he said his Teacher was crying. : ( In spite of our rocky start my heart goes out to her...I cannot even imagine losing my best friend, I hope she can heal. Elias seemed untouched but that would be because of the Asperger's...I did tell him it was a sad event, his Teacher was probably sad...and he maybe could bring her some nice flowers or something when she returns to school.

A toothy tale

My daughter Lily...is 5. She got her teeth early and lost them early too. Both front's were gone right when Kindergarten started. One made an appearance and only just now has the other broken thru. I can hardly recall what she looks like with teeth in front!

I cried when she lost her first tooth...I admit it. She was about to go with G-ma to preschool and it had been loose...but I didn't truly think what it meant...in the bigger scheme of things. She said "ouch!' then held it out to me...tiny, pearly, perfect...I started sobbing.

How could this happen? Where's my baby girl? She's going to be growing boobs and liking boys and giggling and getting that 'angst' stuff...IT'S OVER! I couldn't take it. My Mom took her off to school and I cleaned up that tooth and cried the entire morning.

I'm better now...she's growing up...but she's still, just 5. She still believes most of what I say is true, and still watches Dora and Diego...albeit with a condescending air. Coltish and awkward as she is now, gap toothed and knock kneed...she's a wee thing. A girl still...and I'm trying to ignore the signs I see of the young woman and just enjoy the little girl while I can!