9/9/09 Thoughts

What a great date. I can hardly wait till 10/10/10 just to see what awesome movie or whatever will be released.

Oh I must blog about school. The first week was great -- "Student of the Week" even -- I was so impressed. We cheered about it and praised him for it! He was proud of himself too which was so encouraging.

The second week good. We praised him for that as well. He even had homework a couple days. The first time he complained and tantrumed but got it done within 1/2 hour (unlike the usual 3 to 4 hours). The second night he brought it home he immediately completed it without any trouble. Oh boy what a treat and oh boy did he get priase for it. He earns tickets at school every week for good/positive/respectful behavior and this week he brought me home something -- what a thoughtful boy!

The 3rd week not so good and so on down the hill. I'm just at my whits end about how to help him understand common respect and social interaction. He's been his usual aggressive self with a whole lot of bad attitude and back talk thrown in. The other day he had an assignment to write "Why the Pledge of Allegiance is Important". He wrote something like "It's dum, my school is horrible and my teacher is mean. Love, ...." Wow -- even I was shocked at this. He also told the teacher that he didn't have to redo it because his mom wouldn't do anything about it anyway. Ha! He knows better than that he was just testing her. If anything is for sure it's that if he has homework it's to be done before any other reinforcing activity starts. So we did the homework and I added a little extra assignment which was to write 5 ways I can show respect to my teacher. He didn't know and basically wrote what I told him about how I would show respect to my teacher, but he did it. I'm also concerned that he is regressing back to far in his schoolwork -- he is transposing b's and d's again and not sounding out or spelling easy words well. I'll give this a couple more weeks, but it's on the radar.

Much to my surprise we have been awarded a partial scholar ship to the Autism Treatment Center of America. I am so jazzed. We have been wanting to do this program since a seminar we went to in June. With so many things implemented and unsuccessful it's hard to be too excited, but I have to tell you the little bit we got from the seminar worked positively immediately -- none of this "it will get worse before it gets better".

We do our best to teach him, but he just does not get it. I know it's hard for others to grasp -- shoot it's still hard for me to grasp, but he just does not tick the way "normal" folks do. We've tried this way and that way and every other way we could think of or our therapists could think of to no or little avail. I'm not even sure how to explain it, but his perspective is backwards kind of like his pain threshold -- if cut severely he won't even hardly notice but if gently nudged he will scream bloody murder.

I have great hope that this program will help us from and completely different and positive perspective (that's what I got from the seminar and all the references I've check anyway). It would be nice to have a relationship with him and bond with him on a larger level.

I have put all this going to the Autism Treatment Center in God's hands as if it is supposed to happen He will make sure it does. The hardest thing is humbling myself enough to ask for financial help. Oh, I hate it, but I feel it's OK this time. I think this might be the only time I've ever asked for financial help from anyone other than my parents and I think I've only asked them a few times. I'm also anxious about leaving for a week alone to a strange place, but am hopeful they have a spa or something relaxing to do in the evening as the time to destress is much overdo. It would be nice to come home recharged, full of information and ready to make lasting, impactful changes.

These blogs are starting to sound like I'm constantly complaining about my son. It's not my intention to only report the bad things, but it is my intention to use this blog to get them off my chest so I hope not to depress anyone who may read it, but it's a bit of therapy for dear old mom.