Fighting the Rain

Outside it is pouring rain.  My son pointed out, as we waited in the warmth of my SUV at the end of our longish driveway for his bus this morning, that pouring rain is his least favorite weather.  For him, it is because his sensitive sensory system makes the wetness that results on his skin [...]

A New Reality

It should have been more momentous. Sitting there, in a classroom last week, listening to my autistic son’s teacher tell me that he was doing well in all his subjects was the stuff of my dreams a few years ago.  A reality I couldn’t imagine, but one I hoped to attain in the far away [...]

Two Steps Forward, Three Steps Back

“You need to come to the school and pick him up,” said the voice of my son’s special education teacher on the phone. We’d been riding a positive wave of good news as far as Michael had been concerned.  His last conference had brought me to tears; he was working on grade level, in the [...]

Vacation

I am on vacation this week, going back to my family who still live back in Michigan, as I alluded to in my previous post.  I tried to make sure I had enough posts to get me through the week while staying at my sister’s house, but unfortunately I am going to not be able [...]

Finding the Right Fit

I sighed as I listened to the speaker on the other end of the phone line.  ”Really?  He’s going to switch special education teachers for the third time in three years?” It was a week before the close of Michael’s first grade year.  It had not been a stellar year, by any account, from the [...]

First Day of School

I got in my car and followed the school bus.  R followed me in his car, both of us nervous and wanting to make sure that Michael didn’t freak out or meltdown on his first day of kindergarten. It was a big day at our house, a warm late August day.  R had almost missed [...]

Playing the Game

I cornered Michael’s afternoon teacher at the end of the day.  Normally he came home on a special bus, the “short bus” as it was commonly known.  A bus that I’d sometimes had to belt him into, kicking and screaming as traffic backed up behind its red lights.  But today I was picking Michael up, [...]

A New World

I looked around the classroom, slowly, holding Michael’s hand.  It looked a great deal like your standard issue preschool classroom:   letter block foam play area, bins of toys tucked neatly into cubbies, perfectly penned nametags pasted to the wall near coat hooks.  R stood silently next to me, his face unreadable. “Look, Michael,” I [...]

Special Education

“Do you have the paperwork?” asked the school psychologist, one of five people assembled around the table. Before we’d moved, the Help Me Grow people in Ohio had told me that there was a federal law governing special needs children.  It didn’t matter where we lived, if a child was identified by the “Birth to [...]

Nervous Energy

It didn’t last long. R and I were sitting in Z’s parent teacher conference a week or so after I’d returned from my Academic Games tournament with Z’s second grade teacher.   I had only met her one other time, at Z’s fall teacher conference.  I felt woefully out of touch with the school and what [...]