moving

Hi!! Just a quick note, I am moving the blog over to http://www.whynotfathers.com. At the top of the page is a link "Blog" click that, and you can follow everything from here. :) Cheers C.

Day 2 the evening. ~ frustrated

Well, everyone is home with our son and I. Five kids plus my wife and I. Our son seems to be content with pushing as many buttons as possible all evening long. Time-outs aren't working. Quiet time isn't working. He just wants to push push push. Every one is getting frustrated.

I wish that they hadn't been forced to take him off of the clozeril. Things are going to be much rougher than they were when he was in the residential facility. We did home visits and all of that before he was discharged and these behaviours weren't in evidence at that time.

Trying to cope. He isn't like this during the day time when it is just him and I.

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An hour later, we covered him completely with the blanket. Maybe too much input, as he is fine now. He has stopped pushing buttons and is relaxed.

I think that it is a matter of changing my parenting style. We shall see.

IEP 1 of 3

Well, we have one IEP done for this year. Things are going well for our middle son, despite the autism. He is developing friendships with his peers, flirts with the girls, had an issue with electricity and gotten detention twice.

He is high functioning in reading, comprehension, processing, and reasoning. He has issues with verbal communication. He reads at a level that they have a hard time measuring and comprehends at the same level. He is in the 7th grade. The teachers have issue with him just knowing the answer, they need him to write out how he comes to the answer, this is most prevalent in science and mathematics. In ag class, he can identify every tool, every seed, and can tell out of 10 or 15 different tools, which one is missing and what they are all used for. Considering we don't live on a farm this is quite a feat.

The teachers have issues with his personal hygiene. Mostly that he doesn't tie his shoes, and never tucks in his pockets. I explained that some things are just not on his radar of important things to worry about. He wears slip on shoes now, so shoe laces are no longer an issue, but even when he had shoe laces, he never tripped over his laces. The science teacher is concerned about when they get into human anatomy and reproduction, and how our son will react. I asked how any other 7th grade boy reacts. So we will wait and see. In time, they will need to do some dissection, hopefully our son will handle it well.

Moving forward we talked about him joining some brain athletic teams, and the golf team. Overall, things are looking very positive for our son. He has a memory and level of understanding of the topics that are presented to him that they are not able to always quantify.

Now we have two IEP's left. Our oldest boy and our youngest. Both of which promise to be a struggle with the school. Oh, and the detention happened because our son the linguist dropped the f-bomb three times when walking into a classroom.

Transition

I am transitioning to a new blog location called http://whynotfathers.com. check it out when you get a chance. everything that is here, is also there. :) thanks

Day 2 ~ Much better ~ or Butterflies and more.

Day two started out very well. No eruptions or complaints.

Got a call from the psych nurse regarding missing the blood draw yesterday. She was very grumpy. I understand that there is a protocol to follow with the blood work for his meds, but what can I do if the people who draw blood are not at work? Draw it myself? I tried to explain that we live in a town of less than 1700 people and don't have all of the resources of the big city.

So we went to lab this morning. Our son was sure a trooper about it. He pointed out the best spot to take blood from his arm, and then asked if they could use a butterfly needle. He watched the whole thing from start to finish and never complained once, even when the veined rolled and they didn't get blood with the first poke.

Now we are on lunch break, after lunch we will be doing some homework about Martin Luther King Jr. I am so very pleased with how he is doing. And if I have to scold him about something, he takes he scolding fairly well, or at least as well as any other typical 10 year old would take it.

Still working to get the school and all of the players in our drama about education back to the table so that he can be in public school.

Day 1 5am wakeup

Good morning friends. Our son is excited about something, he has been up since 5am. Doing his level-headed best to wake up the rest of the house. It is now 3 hours later and he is trying to push buttons as fast as he can. Just trying to remain firm, and keep my head about me. Although I am quite irritated. Hopefully we can figure out his stability med quickly.

As soon as the other kids leave for school we will start his school day. This afternoon we have to go into the city for a medical appointment, going to see if Grandpa can keep him while I go to that appointment.

More as the day progresses.

A new day

Starting tomorrow, we will be home-schooling our youngest until which time we can get the public school in our district to accept him and his disabilities.

Anyone know anybody associated with the ACLU? How about the NAACP?

The reason I ask, is because my son's civil rights have been violated. He is diagnosed with a number of very specific mental and emotional disorders, and he just happens to be African-American. Why is that an issue or should it be an issue? He is the only African-American in his school that I know of. While I can't say for certain that they are discriminating against him because of his race, I know that they are discriminating against him because of his disabilities.

Even after they accept him back in the district, either by legal mandate or their own volition, how can we guarantee that he will be given the opportunity to succeed or fail on his own merits. How do we guarantee that they won't sabotage him just to get him out of the building?

If you know of someone who could help our case, please leave a comment and let me know. I will be in touch.