Update

Oct 15, 20146 min read

Deviation Actions

Published: Oct 15, 2014

1.2K Views

Update:

Update:

Well, just when I thought things were getting better, reality reminds me that it can be a vengeful bitch when it wants to be.

You guys are probably tired of hearing about this, so I'm not going to update on it anymore, or talk about the details of what's going on. Just know that James apparently pissed off a lot of rich parents with lawyers, and their complaints trump everything.

I guess it might be better this way, and this could be the best thing for him....but I can't help but feel a little upset about this.

So. I have some good news and bad news.

The Bad News: My son is being taken out of his current class indefinitely. Today proved to be the last straw--my son cheekily slapped his teacher on the butt, and she was outraged by it. Now, this is partially the fault of my hubby and I, since he sees us slap each other on the butt and giggle about it all the time, so to be fair to him, he didn't know it was inappropriate behavior. But, he won't be able to interact with the kids he's been making friends with anymore, so it's going to be hard to break this to him.

The Good News: Well, this is sort of starting out like bad news--originally, the guys in Administration and the Superintendent wanted to take him completely out of the school, due to over a dozen complaints from various parents, on the grounds that he is a physical hazard to the other children. However, they recanted when his psychologist showed them the progress he's made recently, so that's a good thing.

What he'll be doing now is going to a class with about five or six second-grade children, all of which have some sort of disability. So, he's in like a Special Ed class. We'll be meeting with his psychologist again tomorrow to talk with her some more and see the classroom he'll be attending and all that.

We're just going to treat this like a new adventure when helping him understand what will be going on.

Alright, so last Friday we had the meeting with Jimmy's teacher, psychologist, and principal, and then had a longer separate meeting with just the psychologist to talk about family history and Jimmy's life before he went to school.

It went pretty well, I thought. His psychologist is really super nice, and seems very engaged in helping Jimmy out however she can. Apparently he meets with a group of first graders once a week so he can play with and observe older children, because the way he is, he can't learn anything from being around children his own age. She tells us that he is slowly developing friendships with certain children in his class now (one of them being the kid he beat up before, funny enough), but he's still having sort of a hard time handling frustration. He moved on from hitting others to hurting himself now, which is worrying, but we've agreed it's because of stress, because he never used to do that before he started school. And I'm feeling more comfortable about him riding this special van every day; the psychologist seems to think the bus was the place where he acted out the most because of all the sensory input bombarding him there--lots of kids talking and moving around, the bus driver yelling from the front every once in a while....it was probably driving him crazy. But now, he rides a bus almost by himself in a more quieter environment, so he's a lot calmer when he arrives at the school.

As for the Asperger's/autism question, the jury's still out on that front until he's observed and tested a bit more. I think the school has been handling this very, very well--and damn well they should, being one of the highest rated school districts in the state.

Life at home is still a bit trying, but my husband and I have been working together more often, and have come up with sort of an effective way to quell my son's temper and distract him from his frustration. It has about a 60% success rate so far LOL, but it's better than nothing.

Anyway, the frustration is sort of letting up a little bit. I'm starting to feel better slowly but surely.

Okay, so we have spoken to the school psychologist, my son's teacher, and the school principal, and we're going to have an official meeting with them tomorrow. They only have a week and a half's worth of data, but here's the deal so far:

My son is extremely intelligent for his age. He's only five years old and already at a second grade reading and math level. However, he lacks a lot of social skills that he should have developed by now. The psychologist thinks that it COULD be Asperger's---he has been showing some signs of it--but she also says it could be a form of "institutional autism". It's a possibility because he never went to preschool like most of the other children, and in fact never really interacted with children his own age, due to the fact that we have moved from place to place A LOT--five times in the last six years. That's once for every year he's been alive. So, he doesn't know what's acceptable behavior in that kind of environment. But they won't know for sure what's up unless they collect more data on him.

At any rate, the school psychologist is fascinated by him, and is looking forward to working with him more. He is going to be taught in a strictly Special Ed environment right now, which I think is great because they'll be able to work with him on a more personalized level.

Oh yeah, and to give you an idea of how smart he is--Mrs. Shulti (the psychologist) saw him drawing something on her chalkboard, and when she asked him what it was, he told her it was "plans for a building." He had seen architectural drawings in a book in her office and was trying to draw them from memory.

So, my son has been suspended from taking the school bus for spitting on the other children, hitting them and pulling their hair.....the other parents complained at the Superintendent's conference yesterday, so now he has to take a special van to school because we can't drive him ourselves.

I'm so confused and upset. I've been trying my hardest to teach him and guide him in the right direction, but nothing I'm doing is working. I don't want an unholy terror for a son. I just want this nightmare to end.