results of Bub's ARD

So, Bub finally had his ARD on Friday, April 1st.  Originally it was scheduled for the Wednesday before, but we rescheduled b/c our meeting time was 9:45am, and no one had come out to tell us anything by 10:30am, and I was scheduled to work that night and I had been up since noon the day before.  I was TIRED!  I needed SOME sleep so I could competently take care of my kiddo's at work that night.  as it was I only got about 4 hours, and the nurse I relieved gave me a hard time about looking like the cat dragged me in...but I digress.  Joe was pretty upset about the meeting being held up, but I knew something had happened, that they were having a dispute and had to resolve it before the meeting could end...and I was right.

Anyhow, it went really well.  Bub has made improvements, not as much as I hoped for, but enough to be very happy with.  Next year Bub will be in a classroom of 7-12 y/o's and will spend at least 1 hr a day w/ a kindergarten class where he will also be with kids from the Deaf Education program and their ASL interpreter!  Also, the time he will spend in the Kindergarten class will be MATH!  Bub loves numbers and counting.

It was a very good meeting, and I am so looking forward to Mr. Man's next school year  :)


Nubs!

preping for ARDs

For anyone out there who has kids w/ special needs, we have entered the time of year for ARDs...yayee us.  For those of you who don't have to go thru this process w/ the public school system, and ARD is a meeting w/ your child's teacher, administrator, speech therapist (if applicable), occupational therapist (if applicable), physical therapist (if applicable), and the person who decides if the child qualifies for special needs education (Forgot the job title...oops.) and the parent/s.  so there is a lot of folks in one room.  and we discuss his progress over the past year and plan what his goals for the next year will be and what the setting will be.

Thankfully, most of my ARDs have been very calm and agreeable, as I have a rough idea what I want to see for Bub and what they want to do w/ Bub.  This year, when I got the invitation I sent it back w/ a note saying I wanted to discuss options to see Bub have more inclusion w/ his neurotypical peers (for those of you who are not autie parents, neurotypical means NORMAL)  *lucky bastages*   lol.  *kinda*

So Bub's teacher asked me to come for a parent-teacher conference today.  It went well, and she really liked my ideas for Bub to have greater inclusion.  Oh yeah, I haven't mentioned specifically what my idea was, have I?  I am a nerd...sorry.

Bub's campus has a deaf education classroom, Bub's main modality of communication is ASL, sooooo  (kinda see where I'm going???)  Let's get Bub in w/ the deaf education kids who ARE behaviorally "normal" and age appropriate normal, and get Mr. Man to model more signing w/ kids his age.  cuz right now, Bub is one of the oldest kids in his class,

So, Me and Bub's teacher are on the same page, which will make this idea much more likely to happen next year.  Yayee for parent involvement!

However....his teacher shared some disturbing info about how special ed is going to be managed under the current school superintendant...info this autie mom is going to have to start doing something about and start advocating and riling up some other parents...which isn't easy cause we special needs parents are TIRED ALL THE TIME!  you have no idea.  think of taking care of your kid after your kid just took a hit of acid...that is our ALL THE TIME!!!  so getting additional parental involvement may not happen, but I can try.  I'll write about that next time.  I'm running on 4 hrs sleep following a 18hr day.  must sleep.

loves to all! N