Education
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Back in the saddle
Our first full week of school is sandwiched between a two day week and a three day week. It used to drive my crazy–this short start, full start, short start schedule. Why couldn’t we just start the school year after Labour Day, like our friends across the river in Minnesota? When J was younger, the spotty school days at the beginning of the year would mess with his poor little routine-seeking autism/anxiety nervous brain. Having just a taste of the new routine only for it to be taken away again for a few days, only then to have a full week, and then a short week when transitions were hard…
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The Virtues of Algebra
J’s academic strength has always been math. It has been his “language”—the one he has always understood the best ever since he was a toddler. Math is predictable, math is rote calculation, math is fact families. It’s predictable. 3X4 always equals 12. He has always been phenomenal at it. And then came Algebra in middle school math, and all of a sudden, J was no longer good at math. This type of math requires decisions. You need to look at an equation and decide what like terms need to be combined. You need to be able to look at the equation and figure out how to get x by itself.…
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This changes everything
There are very few clear moments of revelation when raising a child with autism. As a parent, the autism puzzle is always on my mind. I’m reading constantly about autism. I’ve gone through phases of intense research on ABA and Stanley Greenspan’s Floortime approach. I’ve read about Temple Grandin, read things written by Temple Grandin, have heard Temple speak on Youtube, NPR, and in person, and while all of these sources have given me a better insight into J, nothing has been a “perfect fit” solution by any means. So when I went to the Lindamood Bell conference last week in Minneapolis, I wasn’t sure to expect. Because I had…
- autism, Education, home strategies, learning strategies, middle school, modifications, special education, strategies, study skills
Golden moments
Living with the autism experience is a day to day, moment to moment event. There are moments of really hard, heart crushing experiences. Days where you feel like no one understands your child or your circumstances. And then there are the days where there’s a leap of understanding—your child finally understands something you’ve been working months on, or someone reaches out to your child—those golden moments. When I’m having those crappy days, I try to remember that this experience changes so drastically from day to day, that really, anything is possible. One thing that’s been hard for me to figure out in this whole middle school experience is how to…
- autism, Education, helps, home strategies, learning strategies, reading comprehension, sensory processing, strategies
Back to Basics
Because of my recent observations while working with J, I’ve been seeing examples of J’s processing issues in real time. One of this week’s highlights of auditory processing flubs was when we were discussing the new Disney movie Moana. I don’t remember exactly what we were talking about, but we were making up scenarios and one of them involved W and Moana. All of a sudden J said frantically, “W shouldn’t use marijuana!” J really paid attention in health last year, and was really concerned with what he “heard.” This is a perfect example of some of the many processing issues J is dealing happening at once. He failed to…
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Doing the same things and expecting different results
So I have this recurring nightmare. I’m in college, I’m weeks away from graduation, and suddenly I realize that I’ve been signed up for a math and didn’t know about it. I show up for the first time, knowing that even if I do everything I can in the class for those last few weeks, I’m not going to pass the class. I don’t know any of the material and I’m too far behind to catch up. The fact that I missed all but two weeks of class automatically sets me up to fail the class as per department requirements. I have zero assignments turned in. Then I realize I’m not going…
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Where do we go from here?
J can’t handle the load he’s got right now. He comes home with hours of homework. He gets home at 6pm after XC and we plug at the homework until 9:30, sometimes even close to 10pm at night. A quick supper. No breaks. No downtime. He’s defiant. He cries. His attention span is shot (remember, the kid already has ADHD). He is beyond exhausted (and I am too). His internal clock gets him up at 6:00 am no matter what time he got to bed. Then he goes to school and refuses to work. The past few weeks have been full of rough, defiant behavior. Then he comes home with…
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The transition
Two weeks and some change, J and W will be headed back to school and we’ll be doing that dance again. When J was younger (and I was younger) I would anticipate the coming school year to be “that year.” I would ridiculously hope/expect that in the new school year, miracles would happen. Even though I knew then as I do now that autism has no cure, some part of my heart hoped that this would be the year that J would be “cured” in some way. This would be the year where the speech delays would disappear, his behaviors would disappear, his sensory issues would disappear, and then we could really, really work on…
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The unofficial report card
When I fish J’s report card out of the mailbox, the first thing I always notice is that his envelope is stuffed thicker than W’s. I know what it looks like before I even open it. J’s report card is an excel spreadsheet of a few “real” letter grades mixed in with a whole lot of “S’s”–code for “satisfactory” aka “modifications” aka “not measurable to the other kids in his grade.” J’s report card is also stuffed extra thick because there’s extra documentation and reports for IEP goals included. Report cards are just another reminder that J doesn’t fit in the system the way other kids do. I really hate it. It’s funny to think…
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Prepping for an IEP
J’s IEP is coming up this week. It’s something I’ve been doing for as long as I can remember. I have binders full of Assessments, Evaluations, Re-Evaluations, Progress Reports, IFSPs (an IEP for kids under 3), IEPS (an Individual Education Program once a child turns 3),and behavioral assessments. I even have copies of “my rights” as a parent of a child with disabilities from three different states. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be a parent without all of these binders. To just send your kids off to school and collect report cards a couple of times a year. Over the years, I’ve learned some things…
