Finding Miss O a New School, Part II

So I have come to a bit of a decision. Enough to get us started, anyway.

I made a list of all of the things, knowing what I know now, I would have done differently with Isaac, school-wise. To this list, I added my school goals (read - "dreams") for O.

MESD and PPS have a policy of putting kids in the "least restrictive environment" possible. But that didn't work for Isaac. It should have been the other way around. He should have had time to adjust to a restricted (but academically typical) Kindergarten, then slowly moved into a typical room.

So although O is a different kid with different needs, there is no way a "sink or swim" methodology is gonna cut it. PPS does not like this way. It is more expensive, I am sure, but also PPS gets a little ding on its record when a child has to be in a restricted environment. Does not work with their Inclusion Model. I will fight, bitch, moan, and manipulate to get this. I have learned all about that damned squeaky wheel, and am bitter that PPS has made me so freakin' noisy.

Back to this fall, and EI. We are not starting in September, unless by some miracle we find the perfect private program. In the fall, O and I will visit a few programs once week one has passed and calm has settled. I am not going to rush to make a mistake - O is just too sensitive. She even became overwhelmed at Edwards around Halloween 2009, and had to be pulled for two months while we worked with private therapists. If none work, that's OK. We will also be visiting private programs and go on waiting lists. Unlike so many other parents, I have one resource I can use - time.

So please, please let me know how your kids are doing in the fall. What do you think of Grout after two weeks, one month? How is Childswork going? Sharing so others can learn is the idea here.

Kids are leaving for grandparents in two days. Then 6 days with hubby doing nothing more than road trips to Eastern Oregon and the Wine Country. Will load up on Pinot. Might go to a movie that is not in 3-D.

And Now Back to Child #1...

Transition Meeting #3 with Isaac's teacher at Pioneer. Should be the second to the last prep meeting before the Big One with his new teacher at the end of August. Am I ready? Of course not. I was going to do that today while O was at school, but was wrapped up in more Edwards-talk with parents and teachers. Then there was a promised few hours this evening, but I was happily distracted by husband's suggestion of sitting in the Beer Garden at Amnesia on Mississippi (my mom is in town, yeah grandma!).

In all of this chaos, must remember to sit in a beer garden surrounded by hipsters and Irvingtonians slumming it more often!

That's all for tonight. Back tomorrow.

Land of the Lost

It is not just the words of concern, or the expressions of confusion and anxiety. It is also the body language. Shifting back in forth, listlessly meandering around the hallway, not knowing what exactly to do or to say. Parental Zombies.

The latest refugees from the PPS Cost-cutting Pograms.

For some it just SUCKS in a big way, as they scramble to find another preschool for the fall term, mere weeks away. And for those who know, most decent schools have been full since sometime in Feb/Mar. And then there are those of us (and I do mean "us") who are trying to avert an all out crisis. Sticking our little ones in an overcrowded EI class somewhere else just really isn't much of an option.

But I have complained about that enough already here.

Need to get practical. Where to send little Miss O.

One option under serious consideration is a private preschool, with supplemental visits by a "community-based" educator, a specialist who comes in and provides speech and OT, a few hours a week. There is, of course, EI at another school, but I have already gone over why that isn't going to happen (I know, famous last words). And then there is Home School, with the same community based educator as the private option. Not so great of an option when one of our focuses is socialization.

So, breaking it down. My short term goal for Little Miss O (LMO) is to increase her socialization with her peers, as well as adapt her independent ways to fit the structure of the classroom. Academics are in there too, but I can work on that from home. I can't provide the other goals for her by home schooling.

So, home school off the table. Now the other two.

EI in a public school would help her with the structure piece, but due to size, over-crowding, and an MESD system in flux as they attempt to implement the Inclusion Model, it may be so over-whelming as to shut LMO down socially (this has happened before, so this is more than speculation). But, on the other side of the coin, maybe I am underselling her, maybe she just needs a little push to break through that boundary and succeed. Am I being over-protective? Helicoptering in a little too close? Isn't my long term goal to move her towards a typical school experience?

Hmmm. Private Preschool it is, if I can get her into one. Or, maybe...

Many of her classmates are attending both. A few days here, a few days there. Is that too much transition (she seems ok with shifting gears most of the time)? Test both models, see which one she flourishes in.

All parents are afflicted with the same thing - Parental Guilt (goes along with being a Parental Zombie sometimes). Oh, the guilt. My daughter is in the living room now watching Wow Wow Wubbzy, I am probably killing off her brain cells at this very moment (and she is eating chips - hey, they ARE organic). I am sure there is a circle of hell set aside for parents like me. I am second guessing every move I make, hoping to God she doesn't end up on Oprah talking about how I ruined her by putting her in the wrong academic program (wait, Oprah is retiring, right?). How if I had just put her into THIS school, or got her a few more hours of THIS therapy, she would not be a drug-snorting former boy-band groupie with a serious stimming habit.

*sigh*

So, if you have seen any of my other posts, you might now Isaac academic history has him labeled in our home "Hurricane Isaac". That soon-to-be second grader is packing some serious baggage. Dude has a PPS rap sheet! I have asked him what he remembers from Sabin, from Roseway Heights (he doesn't recall Jason Lee Elementary at all). He remembers his friends from Sabin, especially Jackie. At Roseway, he wondered why he couldn't go back, that he didn't really like Chase and Kevin, but otherwise, he doesn't recall any of that unpleasantness.

If you ask Isaac about school, what kind of student he is, none of that matters. My little Buddhist is living in the here and now. He knows he likes school, has friends there, likes his teachers, has fun with his social skills aide, is really good at math, and always gets 100% on his behavior/IEP goals sheet. He is confident about Second Grade, and is excited about going to a new school in the fall (but more excited about having August off).

Basically, he has moved on. And if EI (dear god, NOT at Roseway), even part time, does not work with LMO, then we will cut our losses and move on. Because, at this age, my kids do move on, and maybe testing those waters just a bit at this age isn't a completely bad idea.

Yeah. I know. More Famous Last Words. I am full of them of this week.

Finding Miss O a New School

Because our EI options through MESD are crap.

I know there is no way to save the EI program at Edwards, but will continue to send out bitchy emails to anyone I an think of. So now the practical move towards finding Princess Pea a new "home".

My options break down to this:
Find a copy of the Edwards program so we can slowly draw her out.
Throw her into a more structured program that mimics kindergarten.

Isaac did well in the latter. His EI experience at Jason Lee (and if you don't know where that is, neither did I before we attended there), was very good. He liked the structure, started to speak much more clearly and more often, and made friends with a lot of the typical kids there as peers. One of them ended up being in his K class at Sabin, and it was her move to NY half way through their kindergarten year that triggered Isaac's anxiety attack.

So I am trying to be clear on what I have for goals for Olivia, and which program will be best to reach those goals.

The greatest heart ache of Autism, for the parents, is that for the most part we all have the same little goal, and yet that little goal seems so unattainable.

We want our kids to be happy. To make friends. To get as much out of the world around them as typical kids do. We don't worry about getting into the TAG program, or our kid making the baseball team. We just want them to be, well, kids. With all of the good and bad that comes with growing up.

Instead of being locked up in their own heads, restricted by their own bodies that sometimes just won't do what they want them to do.

Isaac is already so close. He makes friends, does well in school, likes to play sports, plans his future (he wants to work at McDonalds, but I tell him he has to go to college first), and tries very hard to control his anxiety. It is hard work, but he is on his way.

Now, little Miss O, what about you?

This is Unacceptable: PPS Fails Us Again!

This will have to be short and to the point, since I am far too angry to think clearly and am posting this from the parking lot of the Hollywood Library.

The Early Intervention program at Edwards is closing. The kids are being moved out into other programs, the teachers are finding places to move on.

These kids are already at a disadvantage. They have a disability, or are socially vulnerable. Or in the case of my daughter - both. Now, they are being shoved around in an already over-crowded system, with little or no warning. Oh, no, we were told with one week to go. Thanks, PPS.

Now I have to think about what to do. Write to PPS, of course. But I am pissed, and that isn't going to be enough. The Oregonian? The local news channels? We as parents need to write in individually, but we also need to present a united front.

The nearest EI program for us, by the way, would be Roseway Heights. And that is NOT going to happen. I know this program, and loved the staff. Isaac did his EI with this team. But it is crowded, they get fewer services, and this little band of pre-K kids are shoved into a giant school full of K-8 graders. And for a child with ASD, social anxiety, and a fear of chaos, my daughter would fail miserably. Olivia will go to a private program.

And I know personally what happens when PPS fails these kids. They end up at Pioneer. Last resort. Kids being brought to class in security vehicles to prevent them from harming the driver. Kids hurling curses in the hallways sounding as if they suffer from Tourettes. And expensive per child due to the staff ratios and need for special services to help these failed children.

The fear goes one step deeper. What are they planning for Isaac's program in the fall?

Me and the IEP Part II

And welcome to another whiplash-inducing posting on my blog. Get used to wearing a neck brace, because over the two months I will be ALL OVER THE PLACE.

Do you ever feel as if your child's ASD is just an amped up piece from your own page of dysfunctions? My poor kids. They never really had a chance at typical, since my husband and I are skirting the spectrum at times ourselves.

I have spent the last few weeks hiding in the Parent's Lounge at Edwards School, where O gets her Early Intervention. Love the place, love the staff, BTW. I hide out of sight, armed with the tools that I will need for Isaac's transition meeting: copies of his most recent IEP, a notebook, and a copy of The Way I See It by Temple Grandin (yes I know I said I wasn't doing ASD books this summer and yes, I do know I told Temple to "Suck it" in a previous blog. I did warn you about the whiplash thing).

Awesome book, by the way, and my personal savior right now. Sorry, JC.

She has a section on teaching and education that has helped direct all of this IEP/Transition mess for me. In particular, her section on Problem Solving Skills. She goes on about how a child with an ASD has to be taught how to approach a problem, decipher what the goal is, break down the pieces, and figure out what is important to reach that goal.

Apparently, I needed to be "taught" (or at least reminded of) this too. Now the piles of books, papers, studies, and plans that are the result of Isaac's two years of PPS education are a little less frightening. Even without the vino. I am making my outline, indented and double-spaced, with a thesis, introduction and conclusion (knew all of those years in college would come in handy again someday).

Yes. I know. I am a dork. But I feel a much BETTER dork right now. As if, in all of this, I suddenly-and-just-for-a-moment, got control of life again.

Me and the IEP

There are the IFSP's. We had two years of those. Then came the IEP's. Two more years. Then the amendments. The Functional Behavior Plans. The transitional plans. Four schools worth, four teachers, two ASD specialists, and one Expulsion Hearing proceedings.

*sigh*

I have all of this spread on the kitchen island. I already feel beyond confused, frustrated, and am contemplating the bottle of Merlot on the counter. Piece by piece I pull the papers out, look them over, try to interpret all of the information from all of the professionals. Add to the pile pieces from the neurologist, speech therapist, and OHSU.

Isaac is transitioning. He is leaving his "behavioral boot camp" (my pet name for his Pioneer class), and leaving to test his new skills out on a SLP class at Alameda. And, with fingers crossed, moving into the mainstream.

This will not be our first attempt at an SLP class, nor creeping into the mainstream. Isaac started out in a typical Kindergarten class at Sabin, with a para-aide assigned to him for the first 8 weeks (she ended up staying with him for 10 weeks). We survived another 2.5 months without our safety net before it all came crashing down. His anxiety finally got the best of him, and Sabin had no resources to handle this. His kindergarten teacher (retiring at the end of that year) simply said she could do no more for him. And despite the fact that at this point I detested the woman (aren't K teachers supposed to be nurturing?) I had to agree with her. More damage was being done, so during spring break I moved him to Roseway Heights, to an a SLP class.

I had no idea SLP classes even existed. How ignorant was I? I always assumed that all options would be explained to me, that PPS and I were on a team working towards the same goal. It is most likely true in some situations, but not in this one. There was a slow leak on a need to know basis, and I was too naive to look up this information independently and ask the right questions.

Roseway was suggested because it was a small class with a stellar teacher. This was true. Ms. Margot was beyond fantastic. She was smart, organized, fully trained, and believed in each of her students' potential. And Isaac thrived. And then she left. Her husband's job took them east. Her replacement? That is another tale.

So here I am. We have been up and down, had great and then frankly crap teachers. He has been a tolerable, then an intolerable, and now a model student. For the first year and a half of his academic career, I dropped him at school with a feeling of dread. I never strayed too far away, knowing I would get a call to come help, or more often than not, come get Isaac. Since he arrived at Pioneer, nothing. I drop him off knowing he is going to have a good day. That he is going to learn, play with friends, have successes, and run out the door at the end of the day shouting "mom, I had a great day!".

Now we are getting ready for another transitional meeting, from Pioneer to Alameda, to an SLP class and then out into the world. It is a different ball game, to say the least. All of these papers, all of this experience, and naive no more, all of the information gathered from a dozen or more sources.

Feeling better equipped this time around. But still scared. A bit jaded. And, always, hopeful.