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| Tue, 05-16-2006 - 7:01pm |
Was wondering how people manage having a job and also getting your ASD kid to school on time. I don't have a formal dx yet, but my ds has so many characteristics, I am sure he is on the spectrum.
The problem I am currently focusing on is getting out the door in the mornings. My ds is in mainstream all-day kindergarten where he gets pulled out for ST two times a week (which btw has worked out fairly well in most respects). He does fine once I get him to school - but getting him there on time has been a major problem for several months. Some mornings, I can't get him to eat breakfast and usually he will not dress himself without some help. Sometimes we're late because he'll have a melt-down. There have been mornings where it has taken more than an hour and a half to get him ready and out the door.
When we get to school, he doesn't want to go in without me, he said he is scared of the empty hallways. So I walk him to the office to get the tardy slip.
The Vice-Principal approaches me on a regular basis about his tardiness and there is a lot of pressure to get him to go to the office by himself to get his tardy slip and to walk by himself to his classroom. Yes, I can see that this will be a good skill for him to have. We have made progress compared to where we were in January. My ds would have a death-grip on my hand and I had to walk him into his classroom. He'll now go down the hall without me after we go to the office together.
Sometimes we both end up stressed out and so often he is not in a very good place emotionally by the time we get to school - so trying to get him to do what they ask seems like so much! Thank goodness school is almost over.... but I am concerned about how to handle all this once he hits first grade.
The school is being fairly lenient with his attendance problems because he is only in kindergarten - but I've been told that they expect me to to drop him off before the school bell rings with enough time for him to go play in the school yard and then go into school like everyone else once the bell rings. I've talked to the VP about what has been going on (ds has been VERY hard to handle ever since he found out his Dad was engaged), that I am in the process of getting him evaluated (appointment is not until Oct 2nd), etc. And she says she understands, but I don't think she really 'gets' it. Are they really going to understand it when you explain that your kid was late because he missed his favorite promo on PBSKids and had a major melt-down because you wouldn't 'rewind' PBS for him?
Then, to top it off, I end up being late to work. My boss has been pretty sympathetic and lenient as well. But I worry that they'll run out of patience and then I'll be out of a job. How does a person hold down a job with this kind of nuttiness going on? Somedays I think I am just a bad parent and I should be able to figure this out - and I'll hit on something that works for us for a few days, and then we're back to melt-down city.
I worry about being able to keep a job, make a house payment, etc. and somedays I get so depressed about it all. Sorry this is so long, but I have so little support - some from people at work, very little from the ex and my family but plenty of judgement.
What do you guys do in your day to day lives? What works?
TIA,
Abby

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LOL!!! good Question.. i don't actually know yet!!! We've only had a dignosis for about 6 months and I have been really really blessed with an EIS who was AMAZING - she did all the work getting DD placed, and her current teachers have done all the work getting her into this new special program. But my old boss at the firm is...get this...general counsel to one of the statewide Autism organizations so I am hoping to learn this stuff in my free time (yuk yuk yuk) and be very well versed in it by the time DD is ready for kindy!!!
Now NCLB....i actually think it is a great idea IF,...and this is the huge IF...it applies only to entering kindy students and perhaps first graders. I am all for standards, but I think it is wrong to penalize teachers and students for not knowing things they didn't learn in previous years......and I don't think teachers who teach in special education should have their compensation tied to statistics. I have a cousin who works with children with learning difficulties.... If she has a fourth grader, who has the reading skills of a first grader, and she works with him and gets him to a third grade reading level - according to them, she is unsuccessful!!!! that's a load of crapola (that is a legal term of art!)lol
NCLB GRRRRRRRRRR. Don't like NCLB for a million reasons and most of them are not because I am going back for my CA credential.
Ya know, the best school my kids have ever attended (and we have been through alot) is considered a underperforming school because it has a mix of students and a large number of students from non-english speaking houses. Our principal is bilingual and hispanic. Obviously it is a priority for her but it is really hard to get the NCLB high standards when you are still teaching them the language. Our school does a fabulous job teaching all the kids. It isn't liek they scored horribly low either. They didn't meet thier goal in one area. The non-english speaking kids didn't make enough improvements from the year previous. They improved but the point spread wasn't enough.
On the other hand, Cait is in teh highest performing middle school in the district. Is it because of the fabulous teachers and school? NOPE. It is because it is in a wealthy neighborhood and has almost all whities there.
When we know that standardized testing is a bunch of crappola most of the time how on earth can we judge schools based solely on them?
You can tell NCLB was written by lawmakers and not educators.
Renee
Thanks for the serious answer to some semi-serious questions. Of course I don't want to overwhelm you in youer first six months.
Maybe I'll come back in November... ;)
-Paula
visit my blog at www.onesickmother.com
I don't much like NCLB either. There are several Moms in our area that have special needs kids that keep their kids home on testing days. They say they don't want the school penalized by their child's low scores. How nuts is that?
I think trying to force all kids to fit into some kind of mold is so counter-productive. It seems like we are trying to manufacture adults in a factory instead of acknowledging that each child is an individual with their own strengths and weaknesses.
Anyway - thanks to all you lovely ladies, I've gotten some ideas of new things to try. We did better this morning - only 15 minutes late versus 1 hour yesterday.
Some of the suggestions we do have in place - like having backpacks in place the night before. We recently got a closet organizer with a cubby for each day of the week. If I can get my ds to set up his clothes for the week on Sunday, then we are set in that department. The hard part is keeping my kid on task - he gets so distracted by toys. We started doing tv again - just watching Clifford during breakfast, because the show after Clifford has theme music my ds cannot stand to hear - so it is usually a good signal that it is time to go get in the car. Things get out of whack if breakfast has not been eaten by the end of Clifford or if toys on the way out the door catch his interest.
Sometimes my ds just wants to spend more time with me - I try to spend as much time as I can with him - but sometimes he thinks we need to do even more and stay up later and not go to school or work - so we can 'play ALL the time!' This always seems to be more of an issue the day or two after he's seen his Dad. Could be that some of our problems aren't directly related to what is going on at Dad's - I will keep my eyes and ears open for more clues.
Thanks again!
Abby
Abby,
I was thinking more about this this morning. Most of my kids school career they have been consistently on time. However, there are a few periods of time when no matter what I did they where NOT going to get there on time. Often as much as an hour late due to meltdowns over shoes or something similar. It was in 1st grade and in 3rd grade for Cait and the beginning of 2nd for Mike.
In each case the kids were horribly stressed in school, did not have particularly understanding teachers (all mainstream) and didn't have effective ways of communicating that stress. Getting ready and going into school each morning was torture. Each time all that helped was a placement change (homeschooled Cait the end of those years and changed Mike's school and added supports)
So I am wondering if possibly you guy is under a whole lot of stress at school. Is this placement an appropriate one? How understanding and helpful is the teacher? The principal doesn't seem very understanding or helpful.
This is your son's first year of school so it is hard to say if this how he would be anyway, but I would bet dollars to donuts that there is something stressing him out about school and if that wasn't the case, getting him there on time would be a whole lot easier. It might even just be that it is all day. Or it might be the teacher, the noise and sensory stimulation of the class or the expectations.
Find some ways to reduce his stress and it may get easier on both of you.
Renee
Thanks Renee!
I sometimes wish maybe I could homeschool my kid - but I am not sure what I'd do for work if I did that. I could look into that a little more and see if it is something that is even doable given that I am a single Mom and David's Dad gives us so little support. (His excuse: "you know I've never been a very good parent." Ugh.)
I think - based on some comments David has made - that he is having a lot of trouble with social interactions. I was really glad that they started a friendship club at school where kids got to work on their social skills. He seemed to enjoy it, but they stopped having it a few weeks ago. I am hoping they'll have it again next Fall.
Sometimes David will do just fine playing with another child, and then something will set him off and the other kid is, of course, pretty clueless as to why. And David doesn't understand why the other kids won't cooperate with his 'suggestions'.
I am going to do what I can to reduce his stress. He was really stressed about a weekend trip coming up where he was going away with his Dad and the fiancee. He was pretty upset that Mom wasn't invited. We've talked a lot about it and he seems OK with it now, so I am hoping that if that was contributing to the stress, since the trip is this weekend, we'll be past it soon!
David seems very advanced for his age - academically. (For a week, he chose to read Home Depot 1-2-3 book at bedtime - the electrical section - and he could read it and seemed to comprehend what he was reading!) He just has a lot of trouble speaking and being understood by others, staying on task, a few sensory issues and trouble with social interactions.
I am definitely going to see what other supports I can get for him. I do not know who his first grade teacher will be yet. If I find that the first grade teachers at his current school are not a good fit, then I do have the option of enrolling in another school (our district does have open enrollment). There is another grade school that actually has several programs in place for gifted children - perhaps they could challenge my son academically and hopefully deal with his funny quirks as well. I'll see how things go this Fall.
David was in special education pre-school in our school district for a year and a half - the change this year is that he is now mainstreamed, there are about twice as many kids and he is there all day. I really thought that he would feel too rushed in 1/2 day kindergarten, so that is why we opted for full-day. They cover the exact same curriculum, they just add a little more depth to it. But it could be pretty stressful to be at the school all day.
His pre-school teacher was marvelous - but then she had had experience teaching autistic children before. His current teacher seems fairly understanding - though it seems she doesn't know that much about autism.
Thanks again for the suggestions, I appreciate it!
Abby
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