Please Keep Your Hands Inside The IEP At All Times

The roller coaster metaphor isn't just for things directly involving raising B. It applies on a macro scale, too.

Yesterday's IEP meeting went much better than the last one. The primary reason for this was the attendance of the county Autism Specialist. We love her. Once she arrived she asked questions that no one else in the room had considered.

Such as, "Where was he when the incident occured?".

We know B has problems with transitions from one part of the building to another and we know that P.E. is a stressful class for him. But it took the awesome Autism Expert to point out the fact that he was standing in line waiting to go into P.E. and that was probably a major factor.

Also, the horrible counselor turns out to not be as horrible as we thought.

Everybody in the meeting was on the same page and we added some behavioral items to his IEP along with ways to reinforce the behaviors both negatively and positively.

B is smart and very high-functioning in so many ways that it is often easy to forget that he simply doesn't make certain connections. Yet. So, it is surprising when he freaks out about something or can't calm down after a reasonable amount of time because he spends most of his day looking and acting like the neurotypical kids.

I'm going to push for the Autism Specialist to be at all of our IEP meetings from now on. She and his special-ed teacher work well together and we need her on his team. She stressed the need for the reinforcers to be consistent and immediate and she had the best, most practical advice anyone has provided at one of these things.

We're going to have to change the way we do some things at home and I might post about that later. For now, suffice it to say that we are coordinating with the teachers and other staff members at B's school to make sure he gets everything he needs.

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And the Roller Coaster Continues

Yesterday morning, my wife came home with a cute story about B. She was taking him to his kindergarten classroom when he ran across a group of 4th-graders. He impressed the older kids with his spelling and reading abilities and he made them laugh when he called one of them 'Airplane' because he thought the other child's name sounded like that. Soon, they were all saying, "Give me a nickname, too!" He totally charmed them.

Things have been up and down all week. His latest IEP has met with mixed success but it's clear that he is behaving better in the CBIP classroom than he is in Gen-ed.

I was on a sort of high after the cute story when I got a call from my wife at work well before the end of the school day. I knew something was wrong when I heard B in the background and realized the call was coming from our house. B was sent home today for something I'm not going to go into but he's been suspended until next Monday when there will be another IEP meeting.

Friday is picture day at his school so he'll miss that.

He is so smart and creative and charming and high-functioning in so many ways but he still doesn't understand the difference between major and minor infractions of rules. I don't know what to do.

The principal at his school is wonderful. She just called a few minutes ago to tell us what the policies and procedures are and to let us know what to expect. The horrible counselor continues to be horrible. I am not looking forward to seeing her at the meeting.

We'll get through this but it doesn't make it suck less. What does help is that I know he's a wonderful boy and that he will eventually learn what to do and when to do it. I just want to make things as easy for him as possible until then.

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Comic-Book Physics and Accidental Education

At last, all three of my active blogs have converged in a single link. James Kakalios is a physics professor at University of Minnesota where he teaches a class called Everything I Know About Physics I Learned from Reading Comic Books. He puts it best when he says, "As a physics professor and a comic book fan,” he said, “I am simultaneously a nerd and a geek.” Amen, brother!

The Perky Skeptic and I are often looking for ways to show our son, B, how cool science is. That physics course sounds like just the thing. When he's a bit older, of course. But it got me thinking about the ways we have already begun to help him learn about the world.

Perky is a great teacher. Even before B could walk on his own, she would take him with her for walks around the neighborhood and along the way she would point out the various plants and flowers. She's wicked smart and knows the binomial nomenclature for most of them as well as the common names so B (who has an amazing memory) learned them quickly.

Once, when he was not quite three years old, he and I were in the front yard together and I saw him pick something off the ground and eat it.

"What do you have in your mouth?" I said in the way fathers have been saying to sons for eons.

"Oxcalis," he replied

I paused for a moment and said, "Fair enough."

Now, I didn't know that it was edible but I trusted that Perky did. And I figured she had passed this information on to our son. He also went on to correctly identify clover, poison ivy, and yucca (which when he was really little used to pronounce "gucca").

B is now five years old and I am amazed just about every day by something new he has learned and processed that I didn't even know he was exposed to. It's going to take a few more IEP meetings, I think, to get his school environment to be as tailored to his needs as his home environment but we're working on it.

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IEP Meeting

Yesterday, my son's teachers called for an emergency IEP meeting. IEP stands for Individualized Education Program and is a method for determining how to address the education of special-needs children. My son (hereafter referred to as 'B') has Asperger's.

His original IEP called for him to be placed in a regular class for most of the day and a CBIP class for autistic kids for a couple of hours. This is not working. B is high-functioning and is ahead of the curve on reading and writing but he has some behavior issues that are disrupting his regular (or 'gen-ed' as they say in the special-needs biz) kindergarten class and making it hard for his teacher to get anything done.

This is hard for a parent to hear. No one wants his or her kid to be the one who is causing problems. His teacher doesn't think he's doing it maliciously, of course, but he is still making things difficult. Hence the meeting. And the start of today's roller coaster.

The first IEP meeting we had when he was about to make the transition from Pre-K to kindergarten was wonderful. We were surrounded by friendly people who addressed the challenges facing everyone involved with warmth, good humor, and honesty. I left that meeting feeling great about the future. Birds landed on my shoulder as I left the school under a rainbow-filled sky.

Yesterday's meeting was not that good.

This is not to say that anyone was mean to us but there were two participants who really need to work on their bedside manners. Present were both of B's teachers (Gen-ed and CBIP), the school's principal, the school counselor, the school's special-ed coordinator, my wife, my mother, and me. First, let me state that it was obvious that everyone there was concerned about B's welfare as well as that of the other children in the school. However, the counselor and the coordinator had off-putting personalities that did nothing to relieve the anxiety that my wife and I were feeling.

We went into the meeting nervous because we truly had no idea what to expect. Well, that's not true. My wife gets daily updates from B's teachers so we knew that there had been some problems. We did not, however, know what the recommendations would be and the counselor's comments put us on edge.

But you know what? Despite, or maybe because of, her bluntness the counselor was the only person to bring up a few things that needed to be addressed.

For example, she brought up the subject of medication for B which we had not seriously considered. We still have serious concerns about it but since she mentioned it we will now bring it up with his pediatrician and at least explore the option. She also asked "What kind of respite do you get?" showing that she understands that parents' needs should be addressed, as well.

Then the big one. The counselor advised us not to let the fact that he is advanced for his age in many respects blind us to his deficiencies. I'm not going to go into the details in this post but she was absolutely right and I absolutely did not want to hear it. I felt myself throwing up mental walls so her words wouldn't reach me. I got over it and finally listened to what she was saying but it still stung. However, if I am unable to listen to an honest evaluation of my son's abilities I am not going to be of any help to him and I love him too much to hold him back like that.

The meeting was productive in that B's schedule was adjusted so that he will be able to better integrate himself into the Gen-ed class and some suggestions for addressing his behavior issues were tossed out to the teachers. This whole thing is going to be a gradual process and, intellectually, I understand that but what I really want is the magical solution that will instantly make things better for everyone involved.

Is that too much to ask?


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