Friday, October 27, 2006

Speed bumps

Wow, it has been kind of a crazy week here in the Anthrope household.

Monday the boy child got in trouble for hitting another student and disobeying his teacher. Here's what happened: the boy has been playing this game at recess wherein another boy who we'll call Sylvester has claimed one of the playground structures as his "castle" and has hired the boy child and a few other boys to act as "guards". The guards are supposed to collect a fee of two quartz stones (which are all over the playground) from any child who wants to play on this structure. In return, Sylvester pays the guards in more quartz stones. The boy told me about this game several weeks ago but I didn't think too much of it. I was just happy to hear he was playing with other kids instead of moping around the playground by himself.

So, on Monday a little girl wanted to play on Sylvester's castle but refused to pay the fee, so the boy child slapped her. When his teacher tried to talk to him about it, he became very upset and uncommunicative and started throwing rocks. She told him that wasn't safe, and he immediately threw another rock. The teacher became very frustrated and called us to talk about it. I wasn't home at the time, so DH said we'd discuss it and one of us would email her.

We talked with the boy child extensively about what had happened. He said that Sylvester did not tell him to hit anyone who refused to pay and he wasn't able to tell us why he had done that. My impression was that he got a little too caught up in the game and took his role way too seriously, which tends to happen with him when he's role-playing (which is why we don't own an Xbox or anything similar -- we need him in the real world!). As far as the rocks were concerned, he said he threw one rock into the air out of frustration. When the teacher said that wasn't safe, he thought she meant it wasn't safe to throw them into the air. So he immediately threw another one and aimed it at the ground so it couldn't hit anyone. It was only after he threw the second rock that he realized the teacher was telling him not to throw rocks at all (because she hadn't said that!).

So. We talked about good choices vs. bad choices, how the hitting thing was wrong, yadda yadda. I emailed the teacher and explained the boy's version of events (including the background about Sylvester's game, which I don't think she knew). Then I gave her some additional info on his disability, like the thing where he needs VERY SPECIFIC instructions. If you want him to stop throwing rocks altogether, you have to come right out and say that or he will misunderstand. I also told her that the boy doesn't handle pronouns well so you do have to be extremely specific (i.e., if you just say "stop it" he has no idea what "it" is -- he will just get very confused and stressed which will likely cause him to act out MORE as a self-stimming kind of thing).

She had asked for our suggestions on how to handle the situation, and I told her that we would leave any school-related consequences up to her but that we would prefer they be instructive rather than strictly punitive. I suggested that if he needed to sit out of recess, he do it in the counselor's office and use that time to talk to her about what happened and what other choices he could/should have made instead of hitting. Usually kids who have to miss recess for punishment just sit in the principal's office, and that will do no damn good whatsoever as far as teaching him anything about what went wrong. I also suggested that he apologize to the girl he hit, either in person or in writing. That would be an exercise in empathy, of which he has very little because of his disability. It turns out that the teacher followed my suggestions so that's all well and good.

I always feel a little weird when stuff like this happens, though. So much of the boy's behavior is tied directly to his disability, and I will absolutely take every opportunity to point that out and explain in detail exactly what is happening when he behaves a certain way. They seem to know very little about Asperger Syndrome up there and I feel it's important for them to realize that while he is extremely high-functioning academically, he really does have severe deficits that affect EVERY AREA of his life. Grades and test scores do not give a true or complete picture of how he functions at school, and I will hammer that home as forcefully and frequently as I need to.

On the other hand, I don't want to sound like one of those parents who insists their child is a little angel who never deliberately misbehaves. He does! It's just that USUALLY, whatever is happening has something to do with his disability -- the perseverations, lack of social skills, executive function deficits, etc. Particularly at school where he is in approval-seeking mode.

ANYWAY. We are only up to Monday, and there's more!

Tuesday was just the boy facing consequences at school, which went fine.

Wednesday is the day the girl child has an art class after school, but this week she forgot about it and went outside for car pickup after school instead. I don't think she realized what day it was until I showed up with only the boy's name on my little window card. She was VERY upset. It was raining hard that day at dismissal time so it took a long time for me to work my way through the car line to get them. By the time I got there, she had missed 15 minutes of the art class. I told her she could go back in and do it, but she didn't want to. She was a little too freaked out to handle it, I think. So all the way home in the car she was screaming and melting down and freaking out in a major way, which of course set the boy off, and this ended up going on for FIVE HOURS. Five hours of a full-on bipolar meltdown. And she wanted me with her, like RIGHT with her, practically physically attached, the whole time. I am trying to learn how to handle things when this happens, but I'm still not very good at it. It is so unbelievably draining. I have to stuff all of my own issues down deep so hers can fill me up and I can respond the way she needs me to. But we are talking five hours without any sort of break at all, not even for a minute. Not even to PEE. Oy.

Thursday after school she did it again, but this time it was over her homework and it only lasted maybe two hours, with a break for taekwondo (which I think was good for her as it gave her a physical outlet and kind of derailed her emotions) in-between. Today was okay although after school, a brief playdate, and a Halloween party she was starting to lose it by bedtime.

She is not in a good place right now and I don't know what to do. She worries me to death, this kid. I HATE seeing this disease just eat and eat at her the way it does. We still have an appointment with a child psychiatrist in January but we have not been able to get her in to see anyone sooner than that. She's not bad enough to take her to the hospital or anything -- she has never threatened to harm herself or anyone else -- but she is just completely out of control sometimes and I know it scares her probably even more than it scares me. I just want her to be happy! Argh!

Wednesday was by far the worst -- her meltdown set the boy's sensory defensiveness into overdrive and and one point I had them both screaming at the tops of their lungs and completely unresponsive to anything I said or did. They both had their disorders firing on all cylinders and I was caught in the middle of it, trying to give them both what they needed but unable to reach either of them. That was a BAD DAY.

Whoever said "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" did not have a bipolar kid, I'll bet.

Anyway, the weekend is here so maybe we can keep things on an even keel for a couple of days at least. And then Monday it's back to school. Oy.

Friday, October 06, 2006

504

Okay, so we had the 504 meeting on Monday and it went pretty well, I think. DH and I both went, along with the vice principal, the boy child's teacher, his counselor and a special aide who acted as secretary for the meeting.

First we explained the boy's problems with executive functioning. This is his major deficit and it governs his ability to organize and to generalize. This is why it is nearly impossible for him to remember what he needs to do at the end of each day in terms of getting all of his homework papers and stuff into his backpack. It also affects his ability to get started on assignments and to ask for help when he needs it.

We stressed that the most important thing for the boy, particularly when it comes to teaching him these skills for which his brain is simply not wired, is consistency. He needs a routine, and it has to be done the same way EVERY DAY so it will become a body memory. That's the only way he's ever going to be able to do this stuff independently.

Anyway, everyone seemed to be in agreement and so the meeting went very well. We were able to get the following:
  • Extra copies of all the boy's school textbooks that we can keep at home. I read this suggestion in one of the AS books (can't remember which one, sorry) and it made a ton of sense. Half the time when he does remember to bring home his homework, it will turn out he needs a textbook to complete it and he will have forgotten the book. Or vice-versa. This makes one less thing he has to remember to bring home, which alleviates a lot of stress for him.
  • A checklist that the teacher will use with him at school. This spells out explicitly what he needs to do at the end of each day (write his assignment in the planner, put his homework in his homework folder, put the planner and folder in his backpack, etc.). The teacher will go through this with him step-by-step at first to get him started, and she will sign off on the checklist when it has been completed. Then we'll also sign it at home. Eventually we hope he will be able to complete the checklist independently.
  • An aide who can be available to accompany the boy on field trips when I can't go. I decided to ask for this just for the hell of it. It's something he really does need, but I wasn't sure we'd be able to get it. Turns out it was no problem at all! Yay! This relieves a ton of stress for ME because I have worried myself sick on every field trip that I've had to miss. There are so many things that can (and have) set him off when he's outside the routine of school, so this is really pretty huge.
  • Continued weekly meetings between the boy and the counselor to work on social skills training (they have been doing this since last year and it has been working out GREAT).
  • A meeting between DH, myself, the boy's current counselor and the counselor he will have in sixth grade, to be held this spring. This isn't actually part of the 504 plan; there was some mumbo-jumbo about them not being able to officially set that up for some reason. However, the counselor, who has been WONDERFUL and in every case has absolutely followed through on what she said she would do since the beginning of last year, has promised that she will set this up for us. This will let DH and me have face time with the new counselor and kind of open the door for the boy to be transitioned from his current counselor to the new one. It's really important that when he moves to middle school he has at least one adult that he knows on campus who can be a "safe" person for him, especially during those first few weeks.
In addition, his teacher has rearranged the desks so that he sits closer to her and she can keep better tabs on him for in-class assignments. He literally does not know where to begin sometimes and has trouble figuring out what steps go in what order. We all agree that he is EXTREMELY bright and can absolutely do the work (and get an A, usually) once he gets going; he just needs a bit of prompting to keep him on track sequentially.

I've forwarded some general info to his teacher about AS and highlighted the bits that particularly apply to the boy. We've also asked that in-class partners/groups be chosen by some arbitrary system rather than letting the kids choose. Like many kids with AS, the boy is often left out in the latter case -- not necessarily because the other kids don't like him, but because by the time he figures out what "choose a partner" means and what he needs to do to make that happen for himself (both from a proactive and receptive standpoint), the other kids are already paired off. It's part of the whole social skills deficit thing. So hopefully the teacher will make a few changes there.

Anyway, so far, so good. We're in the trial phase of all this now, so we'll see how it goes.