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.

18 years and a dozen roses.

18 years ago I met my bride. I can remember the day like it was yesterday. My daughter was there, but too young to remember. I remember going to her staff Christmas party that night, because her girlfriends asked me if I would take her. I was surprised at the number of cousins I had that were employed by the day care that she was working at. Here is to another 50 years, Love you, mry. I miss you, and can't wait till you come home on Monday.

I was a bit of a cad before I met my wife. she might say I am still sometimes. I went to this pool party hoping to "hook up" with this lady. She knew I had a thing for her, and told her girlfriends. They in turn offered to baby-sit my daughter so that I could go to the Christmas party with my wife. At the end of the night, I had to go to work, I was a route driver for the Tribune at the time. One of my stops was the young lady that I was hoping to "hook up with". I walked in the door and told her I had met my wife, and needed her phone number. In my defence, I had been too shy to ask for it. Three weeks or so later I proposed. in June 1994 we were married.

I wouldn't trade the last 18 years for anything in the world. Marriage is a full time job, and we have had to work at it. There have been some cynics who said we got married too quickly. There are those who thought I was getting married because I needed someone to care for my daughter. Through sickness and health, mostly sickness the last 10 years, she has stayed at my side.

I don't have any secrets or key ideas for a successful marriage. My mom was married more than four times, so I can't use family background as a measure. No regrets. I have a wife who loves me, I have a family, I have a home. I am the richest man I know. Wealth has nothing to do with it.

Tell your significant other or spouse that you love them. Tell them often. Show them by doing little things to surprise them. I like to think that argument can be healthy in small doses for a relationship. We have had some doozies. Through everything in the last 18 years, we have has our love for each other.

IEP's and Frustration

Had an IEP meeting for our youngest. He is scheduled to be released from the residential facility next Tuesday. At the meeting, the school gave us our options. 1. Public School - either in our community or a neighboring one. 2. another day treatment program that is 50 miles away from our home. We talked it over as a team and agreed to try for the school in another district. With second option being available as a back up if the first failed. Well, the other district isn't willing to take on our son. So, our district rather than trying to accommodate him, has decided to schedule a visit to the day treatment program. They are willing to pay his travel expenses to go there. Why does nobody want our child? In the last year, we have done everything that the school has asked us to do. We placed him in a residential treatment program in part on the recommendation of the school and the psych team. We have done the med wash, we have joined a state run program that provides mentoring for him. I had to give up my work. Our son has completed his program at the residential facility. His release from there has already been pushed back once at the request of the district because they felt it would be better for him to start at the beginning of the new term. Now he is looking at being delayed again in his release because he doesn't have a school to go to. At this point, we are just about ready to home school him with an online program. The school will pay me round trip for the drive to take him to school. that is 200 miles a day. Or I can stay in the nearest city during the day, and only log 100 miles. but they won't pay for an aide in the classroom for our son. Does that make any sense? Earlier this week, we had an IEP meeting for one of our other kids. There was someone at the meeting who we had asked to have excluded from the meeting. She refused to leave. So my wife said, "we aren't having a meeting then." Why did we ask her to leave? Because in the past, that individual has been rude to the point of telling my wife to "shut up" during an IEP meeting.

the new year

It seems like yesterday we were dropping our son off at the group home. In a little more than 10 days, he will be moving home. I am so excited, as is the rest of the family. He has made so many positive strides in the last 6 months that I can't believe sometimes that he is the same kid. Kudos to the staff at the care facility that took him in, took the time to get to know him and through him, got to know our family. The work that they do is fantastic. I would be remiss if I thought that there would be no bumps in the road. But bumps in the road is what leads to a good life. A life well lived. Now, when he comes home, he will be returning to public school. How his life is will depend in a large part on how they treat him, and how he responds to what happens in the district. Of course, our response to events in his life will determine a large portion of his success. We have a new rule in our house. You can't speak bad about the school in our house. Why? negativity feeds on itself. by promoting the bad things, we bring nothing positive to the table about having to spend time each day at the school. If all the kids hear and say is negative, why would they be excited to go there? and shouldn't school be a good place to go? This doesn't mean that we are going to rest on our laurels. We are still going to be vigilant. We are still going to be outspoken about what goes on in our district, but we also will be mindful of how we speak in front of the kids. They know that there are issues in the school system, but they also need to know that school and education is a negative thing. They need to learn through us that there is an appropriate way of dealing with things. It is my hope that this lesson will not fall on deaf ears and blind eyes. School and education are an integral part of the american dream. It is out duty as parents to help the kids be excited about learning. That said, if the school does something that is contrary to the education plan for any of our kids, I will be screaming loud and hard about it. If necessary, my wife and I are both fully capable of home-schooling our children at any point in their scholastic life. We choose not to at this point because the kids need social skills. They need to interact with other people their age. More later,Happy New Year everybody.