I am officially into the 8th day of 8th grade with my youngest son who is on the Autism Spectrum and already the school has made it a miserable thing to go through.
The 7th day started with him being informed that his new aide was being replaced.
I was informed of it much later in the day when I was told that he was upset with the change because he liked the aide that had been assigned to him.
I spent a lot of time this summer making phone calls and sending emails to the district to arrange meetings with his IEP team to arrange for a full time aide to be placed with him. I had my son meet with her the week before school to make the transition easier for both of them. Discussed with both him and the IEP team what was expected from him and what the consequences would be for him if there were any issues that arose.
It was all very successful ! He had a great 7 days !!!
After placing a call to the administration and "expressing" how I felt about how the change was handled I was given lots of "It's not our fault it's the Union's", we have no control over how these jobs are bid on and how people are assigned to them.
Are these people for real ????
Is it the Union's fault that you couldn't place a call to me LAST week when you knew this change was coming to give me time to prepare him for it ??
POSSIBLY to allow my son and myself to meet this new "biddable aide" to once again make this transition easier ???
If you have a child on the Autism spectrum and have had to spend hours explaining to the special education department how transitions for kids on the spectrum can be difficult and still not be given the courtesy of a phone call ... I feel for ya.
Sadly, it is not and will not be getting any better. It truly is all about the bottom line, job bids, politics and funding.
Your child is an after thought in all that is administrative within a school district, or at least in the school districts that surround where we live.
Constant scandals in this whole area concerning nepotism and kickbacks to the powers that be of not just the school districts, but our local legal system as well, makes getting my son the best education afforded to him impossible and just sad.
What's even sadder is 90% of the time it is not the teachers in the trenches with these kids that cause the problems .. but rather they become the fall guys for irate parents and administrators who dump all their problems on top of them. The teachers do try their best, but get no support either.
My son will move out of the district next year to attend a tech school.
THANK GOD I have at least that option.
Is it ideal.... probably not, no school with kids on the spectrum is but at least the population of the school is smaller and the teachers and administrators will at least "know" my child as he travels through it.
I hadn't yet made that descision, but last night confirmed it was the only thing I could do for him. I just can't deal with the nonsense and the same robot responses for 4 more years from my district. I am over it.
And to think .. this whole rant could have been avoided with a phone call.
Things that make you go hmmmmmmmmmm........
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Reality TV ... Scary ?
I LOVE reality TV.
There I have admitted it in caps.
I was trying to recall which show first hooked me, and I do believe it was the original Trading Spaces with Ty and Paige !
That crazy hunky Ty with cute as a button Paige keeping him in line, on time and within budget. The designers which could either WOW you with their creations or leave you crying for weeks on end while you sandblast hay that has been glued to your walls. (seriously Hildy what were you thinking ??)
Reality TV has morphed into a whole other animal since the hi-jinks of Ty.
My next must see was Big Brother. At first I was satisfied with the thrice weekly shows on TV ... after 2 seasons though I purchased the live web cam link to watch them 24/7. Yes watch them sleep mostly due to the time change difference from the east to west coast, but I have also witnessed things on the 24/7 cams that must make the participants Mothers cringe and go into hiding indefinitely.
I am not sure why I am so drawn to the drama of others except to think that it is nice to know drama is not just reserved for me and my family.
I am guilty of watching "The Hills" and "The City" which I'm sure just kills my older teen/20 somethings nieces and nephews. I DVR the "Housewives of the OC,NYC,ATL" and the "Bad Girls Club" too.
(for the record "The Amber's" are annoying, but annoying enough to get arrested in a foreign country over ??? .. ok more on that theme later)
I am fully aware of the creative editing that is done on these shows. I know it more certainly because I have subscribed to the 24/7 feeds of the Big Brother house. What you see and the order they portray it is not always how it actually played out.
While I obviously have an "issue" with reality shows, as of late I am finding some of them quite disturbing.
No .. not the ones that contain full grown adults, you signed on the dotted line deal with it, but more the ones that film families with young children.
Ahh ok, so yes I do watch Jon and Kate plus 8, Little People Big World and the Duggars.
These family shows all have their own unique dramas. Amy and Matt Roloff. I like Amy I think she has to work hard and have a ton of patience to keep Matt from jumping the shark on his next "visionary project". It leaves her often seen as the naggy, bitchy wife, but I have to side with her most of the time. Who REALLY needs another pumpkin catapult in your backyard ??
The Duggars. Are these folks for real ?? 18 kids all with J names ??
Ummmm .. in my reality world watching experience I think they are indeed the most real of them all. I do not agree with the choices they have made for their children. (girls in prairie dresses serving as "helpers" to the younger Duggar kids) In my eyes the boys but more clearly the girls are kept from really exploring other options as adults. Homeschooling,jurisdictions and the outfits (ok I went back to the clothes.. sorry) at times reminds me of religious compound living.(HBO's Big Love show comes to mind)
All that said, I do believe that they have the right to believe in whatever it is they want to believe in. This is the USA after all. I don't seem them as a dangerous cult like some have compared them too on message boards ..but I do believe their children are not given the opportunity, good or bad , to see how the real world lives. The children seem to be happy,some of them are downright funny (Jinger cracks me up) overall just good kids. Something we don't really see that often on reality tv.
The Josh got married episode though .. set me over the edge a tad. The father/son talk the night before the wedding was demeaning to his new bride.. Grrrr .. the turning over of Anna to her new authority husband Josh ..Grrrrr. Talk about setting woman back a hundred years !
So while I am still on the fence about the Duggars, I have seen worse on reality TV where kids are concerned.
OK OK OK this brings me to Jon and Kate plus 8.
When this show first aired I was as sucked in as millions of other viewers.
How could you not be? Adorable twins, a set of just huggable sextuplets and what appeared to be a "normal" parents whose world was changed overnight with the chaos of it all.
Anybody watching the early shows could not help but feel for Jon and Kate. Poor Kate looked exhausted trying to keep up with it all and her over the top OCD tendencies for cleanliness and order. Jon pitched in as much as could. Sometimes they had helpers .. Aunt Jodi, Beth, Joan the laundry folder but the show did give you the impression that for the most part Jon and Kate were a dynamic duo of parenting.
The kids didn't seem fazed by the cameras too much, after all the sextuplets were raised with studio lighting installed in the ceiling and cameraman all around. For them this was their normal. The twins were young too when the show started, barely out of toddler hood themselves. Mady was never shy about showing her displeasure in front of the cameras, if anything it made this show more real. Any parent knows meltdowns will and do happen. As a parent though I don't know if I would want to explain to Mady years from now that she had to take one for the team because it made good TV.
Brave thing to do when you still have to get her through the teen years, lets hope Mady develops a better sense of humor by then.
The show has changed A LOT in the last few seasons.
The Gosselins have been on wonderful vacations, received many freebies and appeared on the talk show circuit many times. They have also been the subject of many a message board on the net.
Ok here is where the scary part of reality shows comes in.
There are message boards and blogs out there that were developed soley to discredit Jon and Kate and to "save the children" from the cruel world of being reality show participants without a vote or voice to say otherwise.
Look Kate Gosselin has not been portrayed in a positive light for some time now. Some of her worst moments have been recorded for all to see. Once again if you are an adult and want to participate so be it, deal with it. Whether or not you like Kate or not really doesn't bother me at all. I won't defend her either way.
What is scary is how far the message board/bloggers will go to make their point to "save the children" from what they see as exploitation.Their Mom and Dad making a buck off the kids backs to get vacations, appliances, cash and now a new house.
In their efforts to be saviors, these bloggers and message board participants have exposed where these people live with Ariel views of their new home along with their address. Sure in the days of Google Earth you don't have to be a computer geek to find this yourself but do we have to post links to take folks there ?
There are crazies on the net .. that is the scary part.
How does this help the children ?
There I have admitted it in caps.
I was trying to recall which show first hooked me, and I do believe it was the original Trading Spaces with Ty and Paige !
That crazy hunky Ty with cute as a button Paige keeping him in line, on time and within budget. The designers which could either WOW you with their creations or leave you crying for weeks on end while you sandblast hay that has been glued to your walls. (seriously Hildy what were you thinking ??)
Reality TV has morphed into a whole other animal since the hi-jinks of Ty.
My next must see was Big Brother. At first I was satisfied with the thrice weekly shows on TV ... after 2 seasons though I purchased the live web cam link to watch them 24/7. Yes watch them sleep mostly due to the time change difference from the east to west coast, but I have also witnessed things on the 24/7 cams that must make the participants Mothers cringe and go into hiding indefinitely.
I am not sure why I am so drawn to the drama of others except to think that it is nice to know drama is not just reserved for me and my family.
I am guilty of watching "The Hills" and "The City" which I'm sure just kills my older teen/20 somethings nieces and nephews. I DVR the "Housewives of the OC,NYC,ATL" and the "Bad Girls Club" too.
(for the record "The Amber's" are annoying, but annoying enough to get arrested in a foreign country over ??? .. ok more on that theme later)
I am fully aware of the creative editing that is done on these shows. I know it more certainly because I have subscribed to the 24/7 feeds of the Big Brother house. What you see and the order they portray it is not always how it actually played out.
While I obviously have an "issue" with reality shows, as of late I am finding some of them quite disturbing.
No .. not the ones that contain full grown adults, you signed on the dotted line deal with it, but more the ones that film families with young children.
Ahh ok, so yes I do watch Jon and Kate plus 8, Little People Big World and the Duggars.
These family shows all have their own unique dramas. Amy and Matt Roloff. I like Amy I think she has to work hard and have a ton of patience to keep Matt from jumping the shark on his next "visionary project". It leaves her often seen as the naggy, bitchy wife, but I have to side with her most of the time. Who REALLY needs another pumpkin catapult in your backyard ??
The Duggars. Are these folks for real ?? 18 kids all with J names ??
Ummmm .. in my reality world watching experience I think they are indeed the most real of them all. I do not agree with the choices they have made for their children. (girls in prairie dresses serving as "helpers" to the younger Duggar kids) In my eyes the boys but more clearly the girls are kept from really exploring other options as adults. Homeschooling,jurisdictions and the outfits (ok I went back to the clothes.. sorry) at times reminds me of religious compound living.(HBO's Big Love show comes to mind)
All that said, I do believe that they have the right to believe in whatever it is they want to believe in. This is the USA after all. I don't seem them as a dangerous cult like some have compared them too on message boards ..but I do believe their children are not given the opportunity, good or bad , to see how the real world lives. The children seem to be happy,some of them are downright funny (Jinger cracks me up) overall just good kids. Something we don't really see that often on reality tv.
The Josh got married episode though .. set me over the edge a tad. The father/son talk the night before the wedding was demeaning to his new bride.. Grrrr .. the turning over of Anna to her new authority husband Josh ..Grrrrr. Talk about setting woman back a hundred years !
So while I am still on the fence about the Duggars, I have seen worse on reality TV where kids are concerned.
OK OK OK this brings me to Jon and Kate plus 8.
When this show first aired I was as sucked in as millions of other viewers.
How could you not be? Adorable twins, a set of just huggable sextuplets and what appeared to be a "normal" parents whose world was changed overnight with the chaos of it all.
Anybody watching the early shows could not help but feel for Jon and Kate. Poor Kate looked exhausted trying to keep up with it all and her over the top OCD tendencies for cleanliness and order. Jon pitched in as much as could. Sometimes they had helpers .. Aunt Jodi, Beth, Joan the laundry folder but the show did give you the impression that for the most part Jon and Kate were a dynamic duo of parenting.
The kids didn't seem fazed by the cameras too much, after all the sextuplets were raised with studio lighting installed in the ceiling and cameraman all around. For them this was their normal. The twins were young too when the show started, barely out of toddler hood themselves. Mady was never shy about showing her displeasure in front of the cameras, if anything it made this show more real. Any parent knows meltdowns will and do happen. As a parent though I don't know if I would want to explain to Mady years from now that she had to take one for the team because it made good TV.
Brave thing to do when you still have to get her through the teen years, lets hope Mady develops a better sense of humor by then.
The show has changed A LOT in the last few seasons.
The Gosselins have been on wonderful vacations, received many freebies and appeared on the talk show circuit many times. They have also been the subject of many a message board on the net.
Ok here is where the scary part of reality shows comes in.
There are message boards and blogs out there that were developed soley to discredit Jon and Kate and to "save the children" from the cruel world of being reality show participants without a vote or voice to say otherwise.
Look Kate Gosselin has not been portrayed in a positive light for some time now. Some of her worst moments have been recorded for all to see. Once again if you are an adult and want to participate so be it, deal with it. Whether or not you like Kate or not really doesn't bother me at all. I won't defend her either way.
What is scary is how far the message board/bloggers will go to make their point to "save the children" from what they see as exploitation.Their Mom and Dad making a buck off the kids backs to get vacations, appliances, cash and now a new house.
In their efforts to be saviors, these bloggers and message board participants have exposed where these people live with Ariel views of their new home along with their address. Sure in the days of Google Earth you don't have to be a computer geek to find this yourself but do we have to post links to take folks there ?
There are crazies on the net .. that is the scary part.
How does this help the children ?
Monday, February 23, 2009
Flunking Band on Purpose
I don't have any musical instrument ability.It kinda ranks up there with my math skills after the add,subtract,multiply,divide portion at least. Algebra PLEASE it is sooooooo overrated. So back to the title of this blog.
My son .. the one with ASD is a drummer in school. He is not officially in any kind of marching band .. just the regular run of the mill school band class.
This boy has rhythm. He gets drums. He gets A's. Woooo hoo right ??
Today I had to call the guidance counselor and request that he be pulled from band.
Request may be understated a tad .. but nonetheless that was the bulk of the conversation.
Anyone with a child on the ASD spectrum knows these kids have a great deficit in social skills. This is not even earth shattering information to folks that don't have a child on the ASD spectrum.. after all it is one of the main indicators to an Autism diagnosis.
While I struggle yearly,daily sometimes minute by minute with the school district to "get it" (ya know those folks with special ed degrees and administrator behind their names) the bullies seem to pick up on it just fine.
Heck they can spot a social skills deficit clear across a crowded lunch room, band stage .. or in this case both.
After 2 years of watching my son deal with this nonsense and 2 years of very clever bullying (seriously would you really be a bully right in FRONT of a teacher ?) I did what I consider was my only option, pull him from band.
Is it the right solution ? Nope
Will my son be ticked that he will now have to possibly go to art class instead ? Yup
While the boy has rhythm he sorely lacks in artistic drive and creativity.(read HATES art class)
If my son had the skills and resources to deal with the bully I wouldn't pull him. Plain and simple. If there was a program in place in the school years ago to really deal with bullies I wouldn't be in this spot today.
Is it fair to ask a diabetic to handle his diabetes without insulin ? Ok I know that could be a stretch but you get the idea.
Bottom line zero tolerance policies don't work. Waiting for the implosion of a full blown physical altercation on school grounds before acting does not address the issue of bullies. Being proactive rather than reactive is the key.
I can't risk the implosion. I don't want my son to be forced into thinking that is the only way to handle a bully. So out of band he goes .. where too ? Still no clue. If there is no class to go too then he will just have to flunk band for the remainder of the year.
The bully scores again.
My son .. the one with ASD is a drummer in school. He is not officially in any kind of marching band .. just the regular run of the mill school band class.
This boy has rhythm. He gets drums. He gets A's. Woooo hoo right ??
Today I had to call the guidance counselor and request that he be pulled from band.
Request may be understated a tad .. but nonetheless that was the bulk of the conversation.
Anyone with a child on the ASD spectrum knows these kids have a great deficit in social skills. This is not even earth shattering information to folks that don't have a child on the ASD spectrum.. after all it is one of the main indicators to an Autism diagnosis.
While I struggle yearly,daily sometimes minute by minute with the school district to "get it" (ya know those folks with special ed degrees and administrator behind their names) the bullies seem to pick up on it just fine.
Heck they can spot a social skills deficit clear across a crowded lunch room, band stage .. or in this case both.
After 2 years of watching my son deal with this nonsense and 2 years of very clever bullying (seriously would you really be a bully right in FRONT of a teacher ?) I did what I consider was my only option, pull him from band.
Is it the right solution ? Nope
Will my son be ticked that he will now have to possibly go to art class instead ? Yup
While the boy has rhythm he sorely lacks in artistic drive and creativity.(read HATES art class)
If my son had the skills and resources to deal with the bully I wouldn't pull him. Plain and simple. If there was a program in place in the school years ago to really deal with bullies I wouldn't be in this spot today.
Is it fair to ask a diabetic to handle his diabetes without insulin ? Ok I know that could be a stretch but you get the idea.
Bottom line zero tolerance policies don't work. Waiting for the implosion of a full blown physical altercation on school grounds before acting does not address the issue of bullies. Being proactive rather than reactive is the key.
I can't risk the implosion. I don't want my son to be forced into thinking that is the only way to handle a bully. So out of band he goes .. where too ? Still no clue. If there is no class to go too then he will just have to flunk band for the remainder of the year.
The bully scores again.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Dog-Sitting
Soo my sister and her new boyfriend (need a new title after the age of 40!) are going somewhere "Tropical" at the end of this month.
Sure I am in envy of them. I want to go too!
I promise not to bother them I will just hang out at the pool while the cabana boys grab me drinks.
They know how much I love sunshine especially in January, so they decided to ask me to be part of the experience.
Meet "Pearl"
This is not the real Pearl. This Pearl I googled, but she is a great double for Pearl.
Apparantly Pearl didn't qualify for a passport and since she couldn't go my sister decided that Pearl and I should share some quality time together. HERE .. COLD.
What are sisters for ?
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