Catching Up

I am trying to catch up.  The kids are now out of school so life has gotten quite busy.  We have been working fast to try and prepare the yard for a church party this Wednesday and Tasha and Ethan's wedding party on Sunday.  we have several projects going on at the same time, lots of multi-tasking.  Pictures will come later.


School ended well. Anthony had his IEP meeting and will receive more services next year.  Treating his educational issues as though he had a brain injury in the past is actually very beneficial.  Once I mentioned that to his teachers they were able to come up with more specific ideas. It is a totally different way of looking at some of his issues.  He has educational and behavioral issues but we have come to realize that some of his behavioral issues were in fact educational/processing issues.  Dr. West wrote me a little chart which showed the learning curve of a child without any brain injury, the curve went up.  Then he wrote the curve for a child with a brain injury.  It also went up but at a certain point it didn't increase at the same rate as a child without an injury.  It seems that at this point we are seeing issues with Anthony struggling to keep up.  His curve is starting to lag behind in areas other than math.


I have been asked why I am willing to accept the brain injury diagnosis so quickly.  I don't think that it matters why he is struggling, just that with that diagnosis the school is much more able to deal with his challenges.  Whether he has had a brain injury or not really doesn't matter.  It fits him and helps everyone to better deal with his challenges.  His behavior issues still exist but are easier to deal with when we are able to separate out the processing issues.


Larissa has decided that she wants to go back to school, kind of.  I met several times with the school trying to determine how to help her to be successful.  She has the behavioral issues (anxiety, bipolar), educational issues as well as health issues.  Her epilepsy has a huge impact on her ability to cope.  Tiredness is a big problem.  We wanted to have her seizures under control this year but are still working on medications.  There is a balance between dealing with the effects of her medications and her seizures.  Her seizures have reached a point where they are impacting her IQ. 


After many discussions we have decided to put Larissa in a self contained classroom next year.  She will come out for several classes.  They will have a couch for her to sleep on if she needs it (she used to sleep at lunch, recess and on the bus).  I have looked at the classroom and feel that it will be a good fit for her.  I believe that her teacher will be able to help her with her anxiety.  We really don't want to medicate for anxiety since we are struggling with the seizure medications.  She will have much more wrap around services.  I have talked to Larissa about our plans and she is very happy with it, actually she seemed relieved.  We will meet again before school starts.  Putting her in a self contained classroom was a very hard decision for me.  However, seeing her relief made me realize that it is really in her best interest.  Once she realized where she was going she was very excited about going back to school.


Emma and Michelle have no educational issues, they do very well at school.  However, we are dealing with mumbling from Emma.  Her teacher sent her to speech for an evaluation but she Emma spoke great during it.  I have the mumbling at home as well.  I didn't realize that she was doing it at school until I thought to ask her teacher about it.  I thought that she was just doing it as a control issue with me.  This is something that we will be working on over summer.


I actually have several issues that I am working on this summer. Control issues, stealing, lying, fighting and such.  The pool is a powerful positive reinforcement.  As far a travel plans we will be making it down to Florida later this summer.  That is about all we can afford, our vacation money went to helping a family.  We will recover because next summer we have big travel plans.


What do you hope to do this summer?