(no subject)
Andrew rode the bus for the first time yesterday, coming home from school. He was SO excited. (So was I; it meant I had a bonus 45 minutes to putter around the house.) He apparently was bouncing all the way from the classroom to the bus, and talked about it all day.
The way the buses work with the pre-schoolers, the kids are dropped off directly at home - so the bus pulled down out street and dropped Andrew off right at the bottom of the driveway. Andrew got off the bus and gave me a hug...and then the bus pulled away, without him, and Andrew sat down on the pavement and began to cry because the bus was leaving! And no amount of telling him that he'd ride it again today was going to soothe him.
(But he is, and he double-checked with me before I left him at the school. "I ride bus today?" "Yes, you will ride the bus home after school." "I ride bus!")
(I'd let him ride in the mornings, but as he's the last kid to be dropped off, he's the first kid to be picked up, and that's at 7.30am. I can't even get him out of bed that early most mornings - school doesn't start until 8.45. I'm not sure a bus is enough incentive to get him moving in the mornings.)
So school seems to be going well - even the shorter hours and four days a week. My biggest issue at the moment is the lack of communication with the school-provided therapists. A good chunk of the reason we're sending him to the school's preschool is so that he can have the additional speech and occupational therapies that comes with it. There's supposed to be half an hour of each every week. But in the three weeks he's been there, I've only heard that he's had one session of Speech, and nothing about OT. I asked his teacher, and she said they don't usually send reports home about the therapies (I do get a general classroom report every day - or most every day, some days it's busy and the teacher can't fill it out).
And okay, I get being busy and having a whole lot of kids and activity and places to go and people to meet -- and the therapists don't really have offices or a classroom or even a desk that's all theirs, they go wherever they're needed -- but that I'm not even sure when Andrew sees them for his sessions is a big concern, since hello, that's why he's there.
Plus, if I don't know what he's doing in those sessions, how am I supposed to reinforce what he's learning at home? Maybe I'm spoiled because he does get outside OT and Speech, and talk to his therapists before and after every session, and they send homework. (You know: "We worked on on/under/behind today." At which point that's what Andrew and I talk about all week long.)
That's really all I want. We're trying something now: Andrew has a notebook, and we're using the notebook to track what he's doing with each therapist. He's had it all week, and so far, the only people writing it in are the outside therapists.
Grr.
So, this is what I'm thinking. There's two weeks left before the Christmas holidays; I'll give them the next two weeks to try to write in the notebook. And if they don't...well, people keep telling me that I can call an IEP meeting if I'm not happy, so that's what I'll do, and I'll try to have it understood (and possibly written in) that I need to know what he's done when he has his sessions. Just a line will do me: "Today we practiced cutting circles with scissors." That's all I really want.
The way the buses work with the pre-schoolers, the kids are dropped off directly at home - so the bus pulled down out street and dropped Andrew off right at the bottom of the driveway. Andrew got off the bus and gave me a hug...and then the bus pulled away, without him, and Andrew sat down on the pavement and began to cry because the bus was leaving! And no amount of telling him that he'd ride it again today was going to soothe him.
(But he is, and he double-checked with me before I left him at the school. "I ride bus today?" "Yes, you will ride the bus home after school." "I ride bus!")
(I'd let him ride in the mornings, but as he's the last kid to be dropped off, he's the first kid to be picked up, and that's at 7.30am. I can't even get him out of bed that early most mornings - school doesn't start until 8.45. I'm not sure a bus is enough incentive to get him moving in the mornings.)
So school seems to be going well - even the shorter hours and four days a week. My biggest issue at the moment is the lack of communication with the school-provided therapists. A good chunk of the reason we're sending him to the school's preschool is so that he can have the additional speech and occupational therapies that comes with it. There's supposed to be half an hour of each every week. But in the three weeks he's been there, I've only heard that he's had one session of Speech, and nothing about OT. I asked his teacher, and she said they don't usually send reports home about the therapies (I do get a general classroom report every day - or most every day, some days it's busy and the teacher can't fill it out).
And okay, I get being busy and having a whole lot of kids and activity and places to go and people to meet -- and the therapists don't really have offices or a classroom or even a desk that's all theirs, they go wherever they're needed -- but that I'm not even sure when Andrew sees them for his sessions is a big concern, since hello, that's why he's there.
Plus, if I don't know what he's doing in those sessions, how am I supposed to reinforce what he's learning at home? Maybe I'm spoiled because he does get outside OT and Speech, and talk to his therapists before and after every session, and they send homework. (You know: "We worked on on/under/behind today." At which point that's what Andrew and I talk about all week long.)
That's really all I want. We're trying something now: Andrew has a notebook, and we're using the notebook to track what he's doing with each therapist. He's had it all week, and so far, the only people writing it in are the outside therapists.
Grr.
So, this is what I'm thinking. There's two weeks left before the Christmas holidays; I'll give them the next two weeks to try to write in the notebook. And if they don't...well, people keep telling me that I can call an IEP meeting if I'm not happy, so that's what I'll do, and I'll try to have it understood (and possibly written in) that I need to know what he's done when he has his sessions. Just a line will do me: "Today we practiced cutting circles with scissors." That's all I really want.