Thursday, January 25, 2007
Oh boy
May I just take a moment to ponder the joys of being the mother of an autistic child. Ok. Done.
Honestly, do you ever feel like you're in a situation you just can't win no matter what you do? Ian has a pretty typical anxiety issue with autistic kids. He chews his clothes. It came to a head during the holidays when they actually had to change his shirt because the one he had on was soaked through. So. We try a denim cuff from one of my old coats. That doesn't work cause it gets all wet and he lays it down and gets stuff wet. Ok. We try hosptial tubing. Works alright, but not very flexible. So. I buy
Chewlery. Works great. His Special Ed coordinator says after a little settling in and setting up some rules, the chewlery is accomplishing what we need.
So today I get an email from his classroom teacher saying "The chew things aren't really working, as he just spends all his time chewing and touching everything with his wet hands." Well, gee chewing on it is what he's
supposed to be doing with it. So now I have to send an email to his SpEd coordinaor asking her to speak with his classroom teacher about "Yeah, he chews on this stuff, but if he's getting his work done and not being disruptive then we can work on the wet hands thing." UGH! I had him pack the Lilo and Stitch washrag Aunt Shirley got him in his backpack so he can keep it in his desk to dry off his hands before he touches stuff. I'll have to see if his SpEd coordinator can work that out with his teacher, too.
The classroom teacher also said that he's been trying to throw out or tear up his math speed tests. Now I know why he's doing this. Because he can't get it done as quickly as everyone else. And I don't think it's totally because he can't do the math as fast, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that he has trouble in general getting things from inside his head to the paper. Anyway, I sat him down when we got home today and after we talked about the chewing stuff we talked about the speed tests. I asked him if Mrs. S. was making him feel bad about not getting the tests done fast enough and it didn't sound like she was, so I think it's just him not wanting to disappoint us. So I told him that I talked to Daddy about it and we don't care how fast he gets the speed tests done. We're not going to be disappointed in him if he doesn't get it done as fast as everyone else as long as he's doing it as fast as he can, not dawdling and learning the math problems. Because the whole point is to be able to do the math in your head, not to be able to write it down fast. He seemed to perk up after that so we went on to study for his spelling test tomorrow. Did alright on the verbal bit so we went to do the written quiz. Spelled everything right but "nice" (used an s instead of a c). So he had to fix it and write it ten times like he always does. But DANG did he get it done fast. Generally it takes him an age to do that bit, but tonight he just flew through it. And when I mentioned to him that I thought that was the fastest he'd ever gotten his written bit done he said "Well, mommy, that talk we had really made me feel more confident".
Honest to all the gods on high, I'm just swinging at every pitch and hoping I hit something. Every once in a while I do. LOLOL
So now I'm rewarding myself by eating pizza, chips and dip and watching a story on
El Chupacabra on the Discovery channel. And waiting anxiously for 9:00. :D
posted by Unknown
at 6:24 PM ::
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