You sound like a really proactive parent - awesome.
Some days. Some days I am overwhelmed with trying to coordinate both their care, be a good spouse, and help provide for the family. One day I feel like I just wrote the most awesome letter or came up with the best idea for helping them, the next I feel like I'm just winging it, and winging it badly. I am really upset with myself regarding ds8's handwriting. He was tested as low side of average in kindergarten and first grade for handwriting, and we did some OT work on it outside of school those years. Second grade was the year where our support was horrible, and no one said anything about his handwriting, but I should have noticed that it wasn't progressing. We could have spent the summer working on fixing his grip.
Hope the new special ed teacher /coordinater is MUCH better than last year's.
I am positive -- she doesn't have much ASD experience yet, but she is a competent person making a huge effort to learn, and that's a big improvement from before.
Dbat, I'm so sorry about your last year. Our special education teacher was terrible, but luckily all our regular ed teachers were fantastic people, and we've yet to get a bad regular ed teacher. I really dislike when people put the ODD label on Aspergers/ASD kids. I am sure in some they are comorbidities, but I know a lot of ASD kids, and 99% of the time their defiance stems from being freaked the hell out. They or you (the teacher) did something that triggered a sensory problem or a transitioning problem, or you've just broken an internal rule they've developed and they don't know how to handle that. It has nothing to do with being defiant for defiance's sake.
Our best luck has been in stumbling upon some really awesome teachers who have made their expectations clear, given reminders and then if necessary followed through with a consequence (that was explained/reminded about with the reminder).
Totally agree. "Patient but firm and very organized" is what we always ask for in his teachers. He absolutely has to have someone who gives him consistent and fair consequences. Otherwise he'll turn into a fixture in the corner who refuses to do anything but play some sort of ninja anime-animals action adventure in his head on repeat for hours. The sweet-but-not-firm kind are the least useful with him, because they tend to let him turn totally inward. Interestingly, he actually does okay sometimes with the cranky-and-rude kind. He is completely forgiving, I can't remember a person he has ever disliked. Ever. And he doesn't take unkind actions personally.
I just can't deal with that kind. I saw a guest teacher roll her eyes and make fun of my son because he teared up when he had to return a library book once, and I thought I was going to jump across the table and start a hair pulling cat fight.
We tried keyboarding but I think that is also affected by the dysgraphia, or at least she hasn't been terribly enthusiastic about it, so we still haven't figured out a solution there either.
We're doing keyboarding right now. I was really loathe to do it -- I didn't want to give up on handwriting, but I think keyboarding JUST for long writing assignments might be the way to go. Fortunately, our ds8 has also done piano, and is still with it and pretty decent with fingering, so we have hope about typing. I hope y'all find a better solution for you. Have you tried touch pad keyboards (like an ipad)?
Do you think you might try public schools again? I think there are some good points to public schools, particularly their legal obligations to things like IEPs.
