Getting the sickies

We all have been passing the sickness bugs to each other. It's my turn now...gee thanks, kiddos. First it was Cora, then Shay got it, and now I do.

I think the tough part about when Shay gets sick is he is a completely different child. When Cora gets sick, she's a bit whiny, listless, withdraws a bit and just wants to chill out. Shay, on the other hand, flips out majorly about EVERYTHING. He had a new shirt on from his birthday that had a quality control sticker inside the arm that kept scratching him and he screamed at the top of his lungs the whole way to Cora's school. He flailed his arms and kicked his legs while he screeched like an owl.

Not to mention when he gets sick, he starts having bowel issues, no matter what he eats. So that of course causes him to freak out as well. I have tried telling him to calm down about these things, but he still flips out and has high pitched tantrums all over the house.

Once he's all better, though, he's the same kid again, it's weird. It's like that time that he doesn't feel good is a time for him to get every frustration and emotion out as loudly, high pitched, and as baby-ish as he can! It's quite annoying to deal with it. My patience runs very thin when he is sick. I really rely on Chris coming home to give me a break during those times.

I'm just glad this kid doesn't get sick very often. For some reason, he gets only about 1 or 2 bad colds a year, has never had an ear infection EVER, unlike most kids. He has a pretty good immune system, he just never gets sick. Cora, on the other hand, will get sick more often and often requires antibiotics. I think it's because she was born 5 weeks early. The lungs are the last organ to develop while growing in the womb, and she required steroids to develop them early enough to be born at 35 weeks. Still, I have been blessed with kids that don't get sick too often, so I guess I shouldn't complain!

Shay is 6!!!!!!

So much time has passed since I first started this blog. And so much progress has transpired as well. Shay is not the same boy he was a year ago. He's not even the same boy he was 6 months ago. Even his teacher told me he wasn't the same boy from last year, she has noticed the huge transformation. I remember wondering what was the magic number...what age would we really see progress. And five was it. Actually, 5.5 was it. He turned into a different boy from the late spring and over the summer. It feels like we are actually beating Aspergers, and that feels GREAT!!!

I am so proud of him! He has his days, but he works so hard to be such a good boy! He has found ways to overcome emotional distress and he's worked hard at keeping his behavior in check.

We decided to get him a Leap Frog DIDJ for his birthday, which is a handheld educational game system. He has Star Wars and Indiana Jones games to go with it. The way it works is he plays the game like any other game and along the way, there are stops where he has to figure out math problems. When I saw the math required to continue, I thought for sure he wouldn't understand it yet. I showed it to him, with a problem of 54 + 5 on it and asked him if he knew the answer to it. "Yeah, mom, it's 59." Like it was nothing! 72 + 8? 80, mom. I couldn't believe he could add a double digit to a single digit! I knew he could do digits up to 10, but he figured out how to do it on his own, I was impressed.

Later on, I saw he was figuring out the place value of numbers as well on it! He knew how to add 10,000 + 9000 + 600 + 90 to equal 19,690. It just clicked with him I guess. I was hoping that he would have good math skills since his reading skill were so good, and I am glad he's doing math above his level so far.

He's also about to start the Accelerated Reader program. We'll be able to see how high his reading comprehension level is this way. He will get to bring home a book of a certain level, read it a few times, go to school and take a short quiz on the computer. If he gets at least 4/5 right on several books, he can go ahead to the next level. We know he's reading words at an extremely high level but this will tell us exactly what he understands. I'm really looking forward to seeing him start this program.

So tomorrow is his party. We're having just a few family members over this year. He'll have a Star Wars the Clone Wars theme. He's completely obsessed with that show!

Speech at home

Part of Shay's IEP meeting requested that I start utilizing speech tools at home in order to help wean him off speech classes in school. This will mean I am now working with him all week on words, thus more practice, and he gets to spend more time in the classroom with his peers. I was given an enormous packet of pages to work with him on, two pages a week. Basically we are just repeating words over and working on him correcting his pronunciation of them.

He does pretty well with it. If you really didn't pay attention, you wouldn't notice that he has a slight lisp. He just sticks his tongue out just a tad when saying the /s/ sound. And not all the time, either, it is pretty sporadic. It's funny, everytime he has that lisp with a word, he blames it on his tooth that fell out. It doesn't matter that he has already had the adult tooth in since before the other one fell out, that missing tooth is to blame in his mind!

I'm still working with him on his reading. I still think he has a higher reading level than a 13-15. I think he comprehends much more than that. I think that he gets stuck on certain details, gets distracted, and therefore doesn't show his potential on the reading assessment. I'm still working on this area with him at home as well. We try to read about 5 books a day, at least one of those books he's reading himself.

I'd like to start working with him in math now since I think this is the academic area that he might need some work in. I have some first grade workbooks that we are starting to get him going with that.

IEP meeting was GREAT!!!

I just had to brag about it! This morning we held Shay's annual IEP meeting - Individualized Education Plan - with his teacher, speech therapist and occupational therapist. For those that don't know, kids have IEPs when they require special services from the school. It is a great way for everyone to come together and set goals, look at progresses, and be on the same page.

As for speech, he is now almost completely age appropriate in pragmatics. Pragmatics is a fancy name for comprehending what is being said or talked about. Many people with Aspergers are a bit behind in this area and can take things very literally(which Shay does) and speech therapy helps him with this. He is now getting his speech days reduced because he is improving on these skills and also because his slight lisp is getting better. He will gradually move down to once a month instead of once a week. Oh, one other thing about speech...we still haven't figured out how to get him to tone down the loudness of his voice. He seems to not realize that he speaks so loudly. His hearing seems fine, he'll be tested again this year to confirm, so it may just be an autism related issue. In case you have never heard my son speak, he yells constantly when regularly talking to us and we are constantly trying to get him to speak more quietly. He either whispers or yells, there doesn't seem to be an in between!!!

In occupational therapy, we discussed his writing. It still seems to be his week spot, although he is improving. He can write a letter when he sees it but has a hard time when he can't see it. We think that he is having trouble transferring it from brain to paper. Since Aspies are so visual, this is probably why he is having such trouble in this area. He seems to "forget" letters and has to think about how they are written, even though he has recognized the full alphabet since 20 mos.

His teacher tested him in reading again. He is comprehending MUCH better this time around. Last May, Shay was at a 6 DRA level. He is now about a 13-15 on the DRA scale, which is about mid 2nd grade reading level. He can still read words MUCh higher on the scale, but his comprehension isn't quite there yet. Meaning he could read the words in an adult book, but not understand what he is reading.

I found out that the school has a blended class for 1st & 2nd grade and it is possible that I could request that class for him next year. Since technically, he could have been in 2nd grade next year and considering his academic level, it might benefit him. I have to see how far he matures this year because I want him to be able to handle the extra challenges(especially socially) he might face. I think that he may benefit from this class, but I will just have to wait and see how the year goes and if his teacher thinks it would be best for him.

So all in all, everything went great!

Another milestone - the Tooth Fairy has come!

Shay lost his first tooth!!! Yet another milestone!!! And another reason for me to see that he is really growing up and is less of the baby I once knew! His other tooth is already halfway in, it started growing in before the baby tooth was loose. So we put it under the pillow and the Tooth Fairy visited and left him a letter congratulating him and reminding him to brush his teeth, along with a dollar. He was very excited that she came, it was sheer joy on his face. It was priceless!

Halloween is also here! Shay is dressing as Anakin Skywalker and Cora is a china doll. We have already been to Greenfield Village for their Halloween celebration and had a great time. Pics will be added soon of the kids in their costumes.

Learning to let go...

I must admit that I started off as a helicopter mom. I refused to let my son get dirty in any fashion (although this was mostly to salvage his clothing for highest bidders on ebay!!), I never let him out of my sight while he played, and I made almost all of his decisions for him. I pick out what he wears everyday, I decided when he could go outside (because afterall, I had to be out there to watch him the entire time so my schedule couldn't be interrupted!!), I basically made every decision for him that I thought would be in his best interest.

I have had to learn to let go a lot in recent months, mostly because I realize he is almost 6 years and certainly not 6 months old anymore! He has been making more decisions on his own - ones that really don't have any consequence if he screws them up, but ones that make him become more independent and gives him the skills to decide what is best for HIM. He's making his own chocolate milk(although he knows he has to clean up any spills!!), playing outside without my constant supervision within his "boundaries", picking the things he likes to wear, etc. It feels like my baby is growing up! He's not a baby anymore and I can't treat him like one either - at least not all the time!

He really has made some great progress this summer and has matured a great deal. He is handling things excellently and experiencing less frequent outburts and meltdowns. Don't get me wrong, he still breaks down over the smallest things, and we still get the occasional thrashing against the couch/floor scene! But in general, he is learning to deal with his emotions on a more appropriate level.

A new school year!

I know, I know. Yet another huge break in posting. I really need to find time to journal this at much closer intervals! The one thing that I do find by posting so far apart is that I can see when something changes! I read the past couple posts and my, how far we have come!!!

So, we started a new school year. Shay is in Kindergarten and Cora is in 4yr old preschool. There is still a part of me that is so mad that he isn't in 1st grade, but I won't get into that right now. I just think of how much smarter he is than most of the kids that ARE in 1st grade it just irks me! But anyways, as everyone keeps telling me, this is best for him in the long run, he will be more successful because he had an extra year to mature and catch up socially.

I had requested to have Mrs Anderson again this year and we were very lucky enough to get her! I did NOT want to deal with the other teacher, she is WAYYYY strict on the kids and has a more harsher style with dealing with the children and I didn't even want to deal with that. Shay would have butted heads with her for sure! Shay went into Kindergarten knowing what was expected of him, the layout of the classroom, he knew the behavior system, and best of all, his teacher knew HIM. She knew about his condition, his quirks, and how best to handle him.

He is doing quite well so far! His behavior improved so much over the summer, he really did some maturing. He is listening much better to us and to his teacher as well. He has had 3 yellow days so far since he started September 2nd. That may be a lot for other kids, but trust me, this is a HUGE difference than last year! We were having yellow days every day and even reds last year. What we did happen to notice, however, was that each yellow day he received were the days he spent with his speech therapist. His teacher would tell me that he had received a few warnings to put him closer to yellow while in speech and then if he messed up one more time in actual class, he would wind up on yellow. I am planning on bringing it up at the IEP meeting because I think something is going on, but I am not sure what. He's either completely bored or not listening, I don't know.

I already have sort of an issue with the speech therapist as it is. When Shay was first put into speech, it was at the preschool. He had the most wonderful speech therapist! After she had evaluated him, she had come to the conclusion that he simply needed to see her for pragmatics. She would work with him on conversation skills, and she would help him behaviorally. She worked with him on transitions to and from class, wrote social stories for us when we had problem areas, etc. When he moved to the elementary school, he received a different therapist. I have never talked with her except for the IEP meeting, whereas his old one, I talked to about once a week. She would ask me what problems we needed to work on with him. His current therapist doesn't seem to work with him behaviorally, but instead wants him to concentrate on his lisp? I just don't get it. The kid has no lisp at all but she seems to think that he overenunciates his "s" sound. Everytime I receive a quarterly report, it's about telling me that I need to work with him more at home on this lisp. So, at his upcoming IEP meeting, I plan on asking her what the heck she actually does with him and does he even need to be in her class anymore. Cuz all I see is that he gets in trouble when he's with her, and I don't think she has patience for a child with Aspergers and ADHD to be honest with you!

Well, here's a pic of the kids on their first day of school...