gcvmom
Here we go again!
On a tremendously POSITIVE NOTE... easy child got STRAIGHT A's for the first time in her life (and the first time in my life as a mom) so there was some jubilant exclamations springing from my usually pursed lips today 
After all the turmoil in our family the last three years (difficult child 1's chronic illness, husband's surgery and difficult child 2's mental illness) I finally feel like easy child has reached a point where most of life around her is stable and she is a genuinely happy kid for a change. She enjoys school, she doesn't come home saying she hates it (like last year), and she's getting recognized for her talent and smarts. She tells jokes, she whistles, she sings, she's doing her art more and more. All good signs.
difficult child 2's conference was not nearly as rosy, but that was not unexpected. He is admittedly sharp as a tack and his teachers say that he belongs in this GATE class because he is so good at grasping higher level concepts. It's just his listening skills in class and his processing speed that is really suffering this year. He reads slower. He computes slower. A big part of that may be the medications. And some of it is just him, which we know from his neuropsychologist testing. So I'm going to insist that we remove anything that involves a timed test in his grading in his IEP. Both teachers said he's not performing at his full potential (uh, ya think?) and they're not recommending he start at Algebra next year because of how slow things are coming along with him. And I'm o.k. with that. It won't really hurt anything. Who knows how things will look by then anyway. He could be more stable. He could be less. I'm learning to let go and take things day by day.
I took advantage of the teachers' undivided attention to stress the importance of him getting his medications on time. In fact, today he forgot them again (just like Thursday and Friday)! I explained it in terms of something like pain medications. If you don't keep things at a therapeutic level, you lose a lot of ground and it takes longer to get back to the level of stability. And I can TELL the minute I pick him up from school whether or not he got his Seroquel XR dose. Even when he gets it at home, which ends up being three hours late, it messes him up for the rest of the day and sometimes into the next. I told the teachers that it's really, really important that he get the medications on time. Every day. So they're both going to try harder to see to it he gets to the office at lunch. And the nurse said she'll make sure she tracks him down on the days she's there (M-W) if he doesn't show up by the end of lunch.
Okay so that's my long little update. Fingers crossed this quarter goes a little better for the boys in my life!
After all the turmoil in our family the last three years (difficult child 1's chronic illness, husband's surgery and difficult child 2's mental illness) I finally feel like easy child has reached a point where most of life around her is stable and she is a genuinely happy kid for a change. She enjoys school, she doesn't come home saying she hates it (like last year), and she's getting recognized for her talent and smarts. She tells jokes, she whistles, she sings, she's doing her art more and more. All good signs.difficult child 2's conference was not nearly as rosy, but that was not unexpected. He is admittedly sharp as a tack and his teachers say that he belongs in this GATE class because he is so good at grasping higher level concepts. It's just his listening skills in class and his processing speed that is really suffering this year. He reads slower. He computes slower. A big part of that may be the medications. And some of it is just him, which we know from his neuropsychologist testing. So I'm going to insist that we remove anything that involves a timed test in his grading in his IEP. Both teachers said he's not performing at his full potential (uh, ya think?) and they're not recommending he start at Algebra next year because of how slow things are coming along with him. And I'm o.k. with that. It won't really hurt anything. Who knows how things will look by then anyway. He could be more stable. He could be less. I'm learning to let go and take things day by day.
I took advantage of the teachers' undivided attention to stress the importance of him getting his medications on time. In fact, today he forgot them again (just like Thursday and Friday)! I explained it in terms of something like pain medications. If you don't keep things at a therapeutic level, you lose a lot of ground and it takes longer to get back to the level of stability. And I can TELL the minute I pick him up from school whether or not he got his Seroquel XR dose. Even when he gets it at home, which ends up being three hours late, it messes him up for the rest of the day and sometimes into the next. I told the teachers that it's really, really important that he get the medications on time. Every day. So they're both going to try harder to see to it he gets to the office at lunch. And the nurse said she'll make sure she tracks him down on the days she's there (M-W) if he doesn't show up by the end of lunch.
Okay so that's my long little update. Fingers crossed this quarter goes a little better for the boys in my life!
