Sorry, I somehow lost track of this thread – it sounds like it’s been a rollercoaster but I’m SO impressed by the new school (and continue to be unimpressed by the old one, haha) and it sounds like they have a handle on things, that they love your son for who he is, and that they know what to do! That’s sooooo great.
(BTW, this story might not even be relevant now if this school is a great fit for your child – I can’t remember if I told you that my child got rejected from the gifted/2E-friendly school I knew would be a perfect fit for her, but that they thought we should apply again the next year after she’d had a chance to mature a little. We did, and she got in, and she ended up “graduating” from that school (the school only went to 8th grade, and I think it’s weird to talk about 8th grade graduation, but that’s what they called it).)
Yeah, and we paid a premium to move to this school district. Much higher cost of living and right on the edge of affordable but you do what you’ve got to do. This area has several magnet schools, a gifted school, and very well funded award-winning public schools. You should see the size of the classrooms. They are huge, with less than 20 kids.
We should have started here. We’d heard great things about their treatment of 2e kids but of course we figured the private school for autistic kids would be better.
I honestly can’t think of anything better.
Tonight we went through the visual aids with Wee Weasel and we decided to put one up on the fridge every week. He wanted to do them in alphabetical order.
This one says:
Bottom Line:
It’s never okay to be hurtful.
It’s never okay to be disruptive.
He’s been reading it and reciting it to himself. We will all be working with him on examples of hurtful and disruptive. He’s already trying to guess examples. He is so enthusiastic about this. He wants so badly to get help.
I’m grateful because I really didn’t have the tools or language for how to help him respond in the moment. They’re actually equipping me to respond better.
Well, it sounds like the support is fabulous. I teach middle schoolers, and the first day of school, I tell them, before we even get to know each other, let me tell you what the expectations are. They need to know from the start. They cannot be held accountable if they are in the dark.
This is a great update! It’s always darkest before the dawn.
Public schools really seem like the best places to handle challenging students. They have to educate these kids, so they have to become experts on how to do so.
I’m sure the Weasels (Spice, Spouse, and Wee) are a breath of fresh air, too, since the family is so receptive to their program.
He has officially started ADHD medication. Given his issues with feeding/swallowing pills, we opted for a patch, which is hard to find. My husband had to call 9 pharmacies to get it. The brand name, Daytrana, has been discontinued so now there’s only generic. I’m not sure how long generic will last. This is a stimulant medication.
It’s been two days with that and I have to say, I see it working. He hasn’t lost his silliness or all of his distractibility but he seems emotionally more stable. Many times when things happened that would previously result in a fit, he just rolled with it.
Because of the time limit of 9 hours it’s not going to kick in until 2 hours into the school day, but I think that’s okay because afternoons are the main struggle. I didn’t want him crashing in after school care where he doesn’t even have support. But so far his crashes have not been that bad.
He was a bit nervous to start but it helps that I have ADHD and I take stimulants so I could explain what it’s like.
Tomorrow is the first official IEP Meeting.
Spent the weekend trying to get caught up on household stuff including overdue cleaning. There’s so much on our home maintenance list including a hole in our bathroom ceiling. Not sure if roof or pipe. The roofer is dragging ass on coming out to look.
One thing I did was buy a paper academic calendar and write down everything I need to do for him for the week. It’s so hard for me to keep track of everything that needs doing for him. So I wrote it down. I will review that every day after school so I don’t forget anything. I also transferred the week’s tasks to my Finch app (self care app) in its own separate section so I can look at that and say, “What must be done for Wee Weasel today?”
In another bit of good news, I just won a big federal grant. $358k. It’s my first federal grant win in many years and lord did we need it.
This week at work should be very low key. I’m seizing on the rare down time while I have it.
There are also dissolvable, chewable, and liquid suspension forms of methylphenidate that might be easier than swallowing a pill. For a time, and for unknown reasons, my wife was unable to swallow pills, so she mostly used the dissolvable one. We ended up getting it from a place called Capsule Pharmacy, which is delivery only. For some reason they had much better success than the major chains at getting access to hard to obtain medications.
Congratulations, that is such a fantastic achievement, and will help so many people.
That’s all fantastic news! I’m so glad that it’s working for him and you have a plan for him (omg, that sounds like So Much), and your grant!! That’s tremendous!
IEP meeting this morning went well. He’s struggling with pretty much everything, but they’ve seen reduced instances of aggression with 1:1 support. They are working on the Adult Support plan piece over the next couple of weeks. It looks like he’s been approved for some form of 1:1 support but it has not yet been determined whether it will be all day. They indicated this was a decision made higher up based on proof he did better with support than independently. But for now he has 1:1 full time.
The gist is that they are going to dial up the level of support he’s getting overall. They gave us more resources so we are all on the same page.
They believe a majority of his issues are related to executive function, which is exactly what the neuropsychologist told us.
These people seem to “get” him in a way previous schools did not.
This morning before school, incidentally, was really rough. He had an aggressive meltdown which he took out on the inside of my car and the shovel in our garage (not wielding the shovel but kicking it.) I haven’t seen this level of aggression from him at home in a long time. It wasn’t pretty, but I will note I saw him try to pause and redirect many times. I think he just didn’t know any alternatives so he kept lapsing back into destruction mode.
It seemed too early to be medication related? This happened within less than 20 minutes of putting on the patch. But we are monitoring.
I continue to be incredibly impressed by this school. They understand it’s executive function! That sounds better than any other school you’ve been to by a mile. It sounds like he is in great hands. I’m glad you’re at this school.
I’ve been nothing but impressed with this school. The team is fabulous. They genuinely love our child despite all these challenges. Incidentally when I was waiting to go inside I saw the principal outside helping another little kid who was dealing with separation anxiety and refusing to go inside. You can tell the difference between trying to get a kid to fall in line and trying to meet them where they are and help them grow. It’s clear that that these people really love their students.
I said to my husband, “We have a long road ahead of us. But I think we’re in the right place.”