Got a message from teacher today that he was continually defying instructions and her attempts to get him in the “calm corner” were not terribly effective.
I’m still processing that when I pick him up at school, and then the teacher tells me there’s more since she talked to me: he eloped twice today, once down the hall (they couldn’t find him at first - he did this to me last week.) And somehow he ran outside? Both times he had to be chased down.
So I’m taking him back to the car and the principal pulls me aside, says my son did not want to eat with other kids at lunch so the principal let him sit on the stage, but then he refused to go out for recess and just sat on the stage eating the whole time.
He told me he doesn’t want other kids to be there. I asked him why, and then I asked are they too loud? He said yes, too loud, but then he said they are always telling him to be quiet. And I can attest I have a loud kid.
Then he asked me if I still love him when he makes bad choices. I told him nothing will ever make me stop loving him.
Tonight’s his first social skills group - as we speak - and oh my God is it a pain in the ass. Pick him up at school right at dismissal, fight through the school parking lot, drive down the main road (8 lanes) during rush hour, then after dropping off I went cafe hunting because what the hell else am I going to do? But that’s just more fighting with traffic. Can’t wait until I’m doing this in the dark when I can’t see for shit.
I know he needs this but it’s not just my schedule getting fucked, it means he’s not getting to bed until later, also.
Guess right now I’m having trouble accepting the new reality.
Thanks. I think it’s hard for me because I had no problems with school, I did well, even with ADHD, and my son is diagnosed autistic but I’m pretty sure he’s also ADHD I just have this ideal in my head about what school should be for him. Especially because he’s gifted. I know it’s not helpful.
And the thought of him being alone at school just shatters my heart.
He did well in social skills group tonight, at least. I’m really hoping it helps him.
We talked to the BCBA and he recommended we try to get as much info as we can from the teacher when we talk to her on Thursday. He says he can’t give advice until he understands why he ran away. Which makes sense.
Oh I am sorry to hear this. I had a similar experience last week. I am still having symptoms 7/8 days later although improved.
I hope it goes easy for you.
UK Emergency Rooms need to start giving elocution lessons to their nurses. A lot of them seem to be from the Caribbean and their accents are so strong as to be almost completely impenetrable.
I’m in an ER. A few minutes ago, a nurse called my name. She managed to make “Walter Bishop” sound like “Huarrrltih Pisssh” (obviously, Walter Bishop isn’t my real name, but I’m just trying to give you an idea how badly she mangled it.) If I’d been hard of hearing I definitely wouldn’t have caught it. In fact, I almost didn’t catch it. She called my name. I sat there for a few seconds thinking “Could she mean me?” and then I decided to approach her just in case and it turned out I’d guessed right. Being in ER is stressful enough without worrying that you’ll be called and you’ll miss your name. Especially since the wait times are hours.
We got the scoop on why my son has been running away at school. According to him, he’s overwhelmed by the crowds and sticky, messy hands at the lunch table and in art class.
We’re exploring letting him have a different seating arrangement for certain activities. Talking to the teacher tomorrow AM.
I had really hoped that things would be smooth and easy by now, but I see there are probably always going to be some issues.
That’s actually an interesting question. I’ve not really looked into it but it appears that there’s actually a surplus of UK native nurses, but the NHS simply can’t afford to give them jobs. The whole system is an utter clusterfuck for about a thousand reasons. Having experienced plenty of both, UK healthcare is definitely worse than US healthcare, and I fucking despise US healthcare (free Luigi!)
My wife tells me there was a big influx of Caribbean nurses about 5-10 years ago, so there was a shortage but the shortage seems to have disappeared.
I hate when I finally figure out how to put raw thoughts and feelings into words only after it’s way too late to be useful. Basically, fuck the whole shower phenomenon.
Company pensions
Here in the UK, it’s widely acknowledged that the state pension is tiny and people need to invest in “stakeholder” pensions and the like. I’ve done this my whole working life.
However, I’ve also changed jobs a lot. And it turns out finding what pensions you have in your name, how much money they have in them, and consolidating them, is a monumental PITA.
Last year I managed to consolidate down to 2.
Even doing that, there were one or two jobs I worked on for short periods (12-18 months) where I have forms saying I started a pension pot, but the provider in question says they have no account in my name, so I had to just write it off.
But anyway. In the last couple days I tried to check up on the status of the two final pots and both have emailed me that they can’t find my details and I need to phone up!
At least this time I have clear forms with the account number, the funds I have and what they’ve been invested in etc, but FFS.
It’s just as well I now know to keep checking on these periodically, because I have no faith whatsoever that if I leave them for 20 years they’ll “remember” me and cough up appropriately.
I don’t know if Arm & Hammer multi-cat litter has changed it’s formula or once, but my cats’ pee never stunk with that litter until recently. Now every time I scoop the box I get hit with a blast of ammonia. I had to get a box of cat litter deoderizer, which I haven’t had to use since the 1990s.
Both of my phones (one Android & one fruity one) had updates this week. Both changed the UI on the lock screen. Both for the worse. Why can’t they leave what works well enough alone???
Early morning meeting with the teacher followed by a fight with my husband followed by two hours of conversation, sigh.
One thing that became apparent is that my son isn’t getting enough sleep. It has affected his behavior at school. So we have to figure out how to get him more sleep, even though my husband is drowning in work (which is why we moved to an earlier schedule anyway) and my son isn’t getting home until 7pm on social skills days. It’s has completely thrown off his schedule. Part of the argument was whether or not it was reasonable to give him only 30 minutes to eat dinner. He has a feeding disorder. It’s complicated.
The only thing we really settled on is letting him sleep in a little more every morning and starting our day later. But I had to change my schedule. And that’s less time for my husband to work.
The location of my son’s therapy place used to be super convenient and it was the best possible situation, a mere seven minutes from our house. Then they moved locations to a place 30 minutes away that may well be unsustainable for us. Even though it could be really good for our son.
Right now it is so hard to balance all of our family’s needs. I don’t even have eight hours in the work day right now. I asked if we took the nuclear option and I became a stay at home Mom if it would make a difference for his ability to get work done and generate more income. He said probably not.
It’s just a fucked situation and I don’t know what to do. But my son is literally running away at school and something has to give.
We were talking about how parenting a special needs child has an overhead expense. It’s not just the extra hours of therapy and commuting but the time consuming necessity of having to constantly have these conversations and figure shit out. We’re hoping to make a trade off - we’re sacrificing 30 minutes of work time per day in hopes it results in less frequently having to have these conversations. It may or may not work.
It is incumbent on the worker to continually “roll over” funds from one job’s pension pot to the next or risk losing them forever. Likewise, it’s incumbent on them to interact with their pot provider(s) on a regular basis to keep physical & e-mail addresses up to date, logins functional, etc.
Everyone is jut one website replacement or merger unnoticed until 5 years later away from losing a hefty fraction of their net worth.
At least in the USA we have this thing called an IRA where one can remove the contents of a former employer’s pension pot (“401k”) to an “individual” account unrelated to any employer. And at each job change, just keep emptying the old 401K into that single consistent life-long IRA rather than the new employer’s 401K.
That doesn’t stop the merry-go-round, but it does lend some long-term consistency to your long-term management of your long term assets. Just don’t lose access to that through long-duration neglect either.
& just in case, check your state’s escheat site; you might have anywhere from a single digit to five or even six-figures sitting out there; especially if something got overlooked along the way.
Remembering that @Mijin about whom this sub-topic was started is UK, not USA. I mentioned US practice to trigger the idea that perhaps the UK has some analogous retirement savings mechanism that works broadly similarly to US IRAs.
But yeah, one would expect any sensible government anywhere would have a mechanism where money long-abandoned in a financial institution of whatever nature would not simply be taken by the institution as free found profits. But would rather be given to some government entity for safekeeping until the rightful owner shows up to claim it.
I told him nothing will ever make me stop loving him.