Splat Goes Life.

The County looks at these areas when determining if a child with Autism (or, I would assume, any disability) qualifies for services: self care , self direction , capacity for independent living , mobility , learning , and language . Jack meets the criteria for the first two. (Now, how they can say that he cannot care for himself, but he can still show the capacity for independent living? Yeah.. ok..). He's "aced" the last three, so no major concerns there. On Monday, I called Jack's "Service Coordinator" to find out how long I should expect to wait for a decision. She emailed me to call her back. That's never a good sign. On the phone, she told me that as of that moment, none of the examples that I had given, or that she had passed along, were enough. Everything we came up with fell under the category of "self direction". Even some examples that clearly affected health and safety- which is the biggest issue for "capacity for independe...

After receiving a letter from the district reminding me that in order to re-enroll Jack (or to continue with homeschooling), I needed to submit his state assessment results. However, having NOT yet received the results, I decided to call in to the main office to find out what's up. I left a message and got a call early the next morning, letting me know that Jack ROCKED his math and reading tests! (The Special Ed director called me hours later to congratulate Jack, as well). He did great. I was worried, because it took him just less than half the time allowed for each. Did he skip questions? Did he skip pages? Ack! He scored "advanced" for reading, and "accelerated" for math, so of course I'm thrilled for him. I did my best as his teacher, he did his best as a student (for the most part LOL), and now he can move on to the Fourth grade. :) In other news, my search for a new doctor continues. We have not been back to the psychiatrist, and we are down t...

Friday morning was Jack's interview with the County for "redetermination". If I don't come up with one more example of how Jack struggles in and around the home in terms of knowing how to be safe, and knowing how to care for himself, then he may no longer qualify for services. I guess it's nice that the lady gave me a heads up, and gave me a week or so to pick through my brain for memories.. or follow Jack around and take notes. But come on, man! There are 6 areas they look at, and there must be a deficit in 3. So far we're at 2. (Of course one could say this is a positive thing, and may be for the best). I don't want to lie and make stuff up, so that's not really an option. Really, I don't want to be dependent on the County. We haven't used their funding in some time now anyway, if you don't count his visit with a psychologist recently. (That was just to find out if he still has Autism, which he does). I just don't get why a ps...

I'm not sure why I'm doing this to myself, but it occurred to me earlier that Jack's Speech Therapist was retiring, and I felt compelled to email him. I spoke with him for a few minutes after school, but had no idea why he was holding flowers, or was walking with the 5th graders. (I'm not that self-involved.. I don't think). I sent him an email, then sent Jack's 2nd grade teacher an email. She was his favorite teacher there, and she was just so great- not even because she had to be. I think she understood that there was something about her that he clicked with. Even when he was upset with her, she wouldn't stew about it.. at least not that she would ever let on. She reminds me so much of my younger cousin, who was a teacher before she got married and had kid of her own. This is exactly the kind of teacher that I envision my cousin being. This teacher was someone I wish I could get to know personally, but well, I'm way older than she is. LOL So then...

Well, the last two days have been very interesting, to say the least! Yesterday afternoon was the Pet Sharing day for the 3rd graders, and Jack's teacher was nice enough to invite us to be a part of it, so long as it didn't rain. I am very thankful that the weather stayed nice enough to take him over to the school with our dog. :) When we arrived, all I heard was Jack's name in a very loud collective yell. It made me so happy! His friends came over and hugged him, everyone wanted to see his dog, and he spent about 20-30 minutes reconnecting with his good buddies. They got a kick out of the shirt he was wearing- one that I had him make as one of his end-of-the-year (fun) activities. It's the name and logo for a "company" that he and a couple of other friends made- the name has the first letter of each of the boys, and I only just learned that this is where the name came from a few days ago. Silly me! I sat down with the dog, who was quite a hit with Ja...