School and Being Off Track

I just realized how long it's been since I blogged. Probably because the kids are off track, and then before that there was all the IEP stuff going on.

Let me start with the IEP. Micah was having trouble at school. It started with the bus. His route had changed a in January, and he was basically on the bus for an hour to an hour and a half every day. That made him mad. It would irritate anyone, really. It takes me about 20 minutes to get home when I am able to pick up Micah from school, so I'm not expecting a really short time, but an hour and a half is just ridiculous.

Of course, that really was just the start of it. He started to hate going to school. He would wake up every morning and tantrum immediately, saying that he was sick and didn't want to go to school. It got to the point where Tony or I had to physically put him inside the classroom in order to get him in there. Once there, it depended on the day whether or not he would actually calm down and do work.

He really isn't able to get individual attention in this class. There is a teacher, an aide, and 18 students, all of which have a language disorder of some kind. Micah doesn't like being ignored.

All of this led up to calling an IEP. I was actually in the process of getting kids ready to drop off the paperwork to request the meeting when a phone call came from Micah's teacher telling me that a meeting was being set up. Funny timing. Anyway, the meeting was set up for the last day of school before going off track. I got my paperwork together with assessments from Micah's at home behavior therapist and all of the notes that I had taken about Micah's bus behavior. I was all hyped up and ready to ask for a bunch of assessments done so that the process could be started to get him a one to one aid. This is something that I have asked for in almost every IEP since he started in preschool. I was always told that he just wasn't that low functioning to get his own aid. HA!

My son isn't low functioning in a lot of ways. Seriously. He's remarkably intelligent, he speaks (mostly in rote sentences, but he gets his point across most of the time), and he does very well with an established routine. Still, when Micah is irritated, all of that is just gone. The problem lately is that Micah starts his day irritated, and it's hard to get him out of that attitude when he is there. Where the one to one aid comes in is that Micah will be getting all the attention that he wants, and there won't be a huge distraction from the rest of the class to make that happen. It also means that there will be someone there to make sure that he doesn't get out of doing work when he is behaving inappropriately.

So the Friday that was the last day of school, I went in expecting a bit of a fight. Why? The school district doesn't like to part with money for this kind of thing. To my surprise, when I went to the meeting, I wasn't the one to bring up the idea of a one on one aid. As a matter of fact, they already had the assessments done and just needed me to sign off on the idea.

I was blown away.

I took a look at Micah's assessments and saw that they were missing the point of Micah's tantrums, though. They thought he was just trying to get out of work. It's probably true that Micah liked getting out of work, but I really think that was a secondary purpose. The way that they described his behavior was screaming "give me attention!" The final straw, I guess, was when Micah decided to run out of the classroom and ended up spending the entire day with the principal just to keep him calm...he was doing work for her in her office, though. Does that sound like someone who just wanted to get out of work to you?

Anyway, I signed off on the aide, had them add the purpose of the tantrums (which made the teacher say, "that makes so much more sense now!" even though the others didn't necessarily agree with me) to the assessment, and then we went to the other problem.

When they called the IEP, I suggested that since one of Micah's major problems was the bus, someone from transportation who could do something about it, as well as the bus driver, who had to deal with it, should be at the meeting. I didn't think it would actually happen, but it was worth it so that things could actually be arranged immediately instead of someone saying that they would call and ask about it. When I got to the meeting and saw that they were actually there, it was a good sign right away. I got it arranged that his bus route home would be changed that afternoon. Instead of an hour to an hour and a half, it only took 35 minutes for Micah to get home. Now was that so hard?

Ok, so you see my excitement when I talk about how great of an IEP I had? I got what I asked for, and almost without asking for it.

So that was my awesome IEP, then the kids went off track. They are excited because neither Micah nor Becca were assigned any homework for while they were off. Life without the big responsibilities that usually rule their days was something for them to look forward to. The thing is, for me, that means that I have to come up with things to keep them from getting bored. Besides the obligatory appointments that come when they are off track (it's so much easier to deal with dentists and doctors during this time), there really isn't much to do. Of course, a lot of their friends are not off track right now, so they can't just do play dates and that sort of thing, so I have to come up with stuff on our own. No biggie, but Micah just doesn't do well with down time. They do deserve a break, however. There is a balance to be achieved.

I am apparently failing. The kids are bored. It's not good. They are driving me nuts. I have to figure out more stuff to do.