One chapter has ended and another begins ....

Well A graduated preschool on Friday. Such a bag of mixed emotions. Sad that the little baby is really well and truly gone in the past. Happy that he has passed this milestone and is really ready for kindergarten and disappointed that when standing next to the other mostly NT (neurotypical) kids he really shows how different he is from them. As a parent you just want to make things better. Unfortunately you cant make autism better no matter how much effort or medicine or therapy you do. All you can do it work to give them coping techniques. And when things are more than usual, more noisy, more chaotic, etc, those techniques fail.

Fortunately his preschool actually specializes in kids with disabilities so when his coping techniques failed during the ceremony they handled it with grace, unlike another preschool in the area who failed miserably in regular situations with A that I hate to think what they would have done during the ceremony if he was still going there. He only went there 4 weeks before we were summarily "fired". Even though the school system was paying for their services they didn't bother to tell them until after my "lovely" confrontational interview in which I was told how horrible my child was and that they couldn't reasonably do what they had been hired to do, educate him and provide a setting for his therapy at school district expense. I get my "revenge" every year when same daycare asks for $$ from the town to help fund their programs. I and my husband vote no and let everyone we know, know why we vote no. They didn't get their money this year and for that we did a happy dance.

But now we play the waiting game with A. There is a new kindergarten being set up locally that would be perfect for A. A full day program (public school is only 2.5 hours) ,very small class size (under 10), 50/50 mix of NT and non NT kids and lots of adult support in the classroom to help the kiddos including an MD to help them on their social skills. But they haven't been rubber stamped by the state yet to be an official kindergarten so the school system cant make arrangements for placement there yet instead of the regular school. The program has been certified but as we all know govt rubber stamping can take a while and September will be here faster than we can imagine. So holding our breath and crossing all our toes and fingers for the moment seems to be the plan.

I dread A going to the regular school system either this coming year or the year after. He looks like N so much that I'm afraid bias will be preset for him. I've already run into teachers at the school who have commented on how much they look alike. N didn't get diagnosed on the spectrum until he was 10, and the school didn't acknowledge the diagnosis until he was 13 so he had a very rough elementary school experience. I dread to think what will happen when these same "professionals" ( when a teacher actually laughs at a student and not in a nice way they have lost any respect I have for them) have my younger and much more disabled son in their classrooms and think because they look alike they are the same.

My 2 children are very different and its not just their level of disability. N is lazy (something the school actually helped to teach him by just passing him along to the next grade instead of making him complete things) where as A is very willing to work to learn. N didn't have speech difficulties and A has verbal apraxia. N wasn't reading when he entered kindergarten, A is reading and doing mental addition and subtraction and can tell time like no other. In someways I think A is actually smarter than his brother, and N tested just under Mensa qualified at age 7 so he's no dummy either. With A's sensitivity to sound and light a full school with hundreds of screaming kids at lunch , recess and dismissal time will be beyond challenging for him and I have real fears that the school will be less than understanding.

And so I wait and hope that at least for this coming school year A will be placed in the progressive and proactive new kindergarten and pray that I will be able to negotiate a safe passage through the public schools when that times comes for A. N on the other hand I'm just hoping that he passes all his classes this year as I sit and keep prompting him every 10 minutes to write his end of the year joint English and world cultures paper/project.

In the beginning

Im the mom of two boys on the spectrum. My eldest N who is a teenager has aspergers. My youngest A has "regular" autism and will just be going to kindergarten this fall and both have adhd. This blog is my way of a) sharing what raising children on the spectrum is like because I can say from experience that raising autistic children is an isolating experience at times and nothing seems to help mentally more than knowing someone else has gone through what you are and b) therapy for me because there are things I need to say and sometimes telling family doesn't have the same therapeutic effect as telling others who aren't there everyday.