Since my last post at the beginning of January, things has careened on down the roller coaster that is life.
I continue to have a text relationship with my neighbor to schedule our cats outings. Apparently, his cat spends the time indoors staring out the window at our house or he is at the door trying to defend his territory from our cats. When they do meet, (my 2 and his 1) there are usually fights. But then there are fights with my own cats, likely due to hormones, or cabin fever, as H is pissed with me that I don’t let him out and fights with S. *sigh
My 47th birthday came and went. Um… my birthday present was…. oh yes, us taking the kids out to see the final week of GLOW Langley. Due to COVID-19, they turned it into a drive thru experience. We took many pictures and listened to Christmas music. It was nice to do something with the family. We got mini donuts and my son discovered that he likes these donuts as well.
Last week, I took him to the Tim Horton’s drive thru for timbits. All chocolate of course, as they are his favorite. He saw a picture of the chocolate dip donut and asked for one. I asked if he has had one before. He had not. I explained that the cake part would be different than Timbits or the mini donuts. “Why do you think you want one?”
His answer was ” I like chocolate and I like donuts… so….”
We got one. I asked for some and he refused to let me have any!! He liked it that much! so WIN…. he tried and liked a new food.
So back to my update; after my birthday came the first week of February. I had been at my wits end about the online school thing. My daughter was not doing well. I was struggling as I bounced back and forth between rooms and my kids’ screens where they take the same class. I said to my husband. “I need help. But I don’t know who I’m supposed to ask. Is it the school? the principal? the teacher? the BI on my home team? the EA? who?”
I attended the online sessions that were offered by BCEdAccess. The sessions were part of a grant that they were given to facilitate online social groups and support for parents. I signed up and hubby attended with me from time to time. There were various topics for their COVID-19 Outreach Conversations and in advising a parent about his struggle to get appropriate support for his child, it clicked for me that I needed to go back to basics of advocating for my child. There is a tier system of who and when to contact.
I started with the teacher. Specifically, writing a note in my child’s communication book. The incident was that they were to create and draw a character and then write a detailed description of the character. The purpose of this exercise was that they would then read their description to a partner in their class who would draw the character based on what they heard and then compare to the original drawing. I set the kids up with the WORD program to type it out and my son shooed me away, so I went to help his sister. When I returned, I discovered that even though the teacher had clearly explained what to do, 3!! times, that my son had written a story instead.
I lost it! I may have grabbed the tablet to verify what he had done, while loudly telling him that it was wrong. He then melted down (a rare thing) and it took 10 minutes to calm him down, thus missing the exercise experience totally.
I wrote a note in the communication binder to the teacher about his lack of ability to process and follow the instructions in this incident. She replied on the phone that she was shocked to read this note. Obviously the experience of school online as seen by me and kids is quite different from what the EA and teacher see. In my daughter’s case, the EA knows that my daughter is screaming and under the table refusing to work.
Long story short, I couldn’t do this anymore. After a meeting with our home team, hubby and I decided to go with the suggestion that we pull our daughter from this online learning and do home schooling with our home team. We did consider the full time school route, but as they already had 2 teacher changes this year due to online/COVID issues, I didn’t think that making them have to adjust to a third would be a good route.
It has been 2 weeks since we have pulled her from the public school and I am less stressed as I am able to focus on the efforts of the one twin, rather than both. In these COVID times, everything is not normal. Shopping, working, school. Nothing is normal. I hardly hear from my friends. I only see people in person when I go to the store.
We have learned how to do online meetings via Teams, Zoom or other means. I have had conversations with my mother and more with my sister on the phone and video. Video calls with either of them are rare so I’m glad that we have tried. I have learned how to use the public Library online books. I have also purged the house more. The clutter also stressed me out.
It took me a while to get back to reading. After the stress of Christmas, and the stress of children doing school, my brain could only binge Netflix (Bridgerton) or work on geneaology stuff on WikiTree.
So on the day that we pulled my daughter from school, I was also very stressed as my “birthday” present was to be delivered that day and I was terrified that we would have to send it back. I had bought a new French Door refrigerator in December. I had never liked the fridge that came with the house. It was likely as old as the house (2002) and we never seemed to use it well. Food was wasted, etc. What finally prompted me to look for a new one was the fact that the freezer decided to thaw spontaneously.
So I was fielding a call from the principal while the delivery men brought in the new fridge in pieces through the back door. (Hubby had to remove the entire door and screen so that it would fit.) I was so happy and elated that it worked and the old one was gone, as the refrigeration part decided to die the day before the scheduled delivery.
I had also been told that due to the COVID that the manufacturers were not in full force, so there were back orders everywhere. If I didn’t get it this “cycle”, the next delivery slots wouldn’t be until APRIL!!! So, I was a little stressed to say the least.
Things are better these days but autism still rears its head even today. Or is it that we have 9 year olds. My son was on the floor hollering that he was NOT going out with the BI for session. It’s a PRO-D day. I had to call hubby for reinforcement as there was no way I could wrestle my tall son into shoes and jacket.
So I have a few hours to myself. I may go out with hubby on a rare lunch date to an ACTUAL restaurant. Of course, I will have to clean the kitchen, and do laundry as I have put off doing both for a few days.
That ASD Mom 