Tigger to start PHP next week...

JJJ

Active Member
Tigger was accepted to start at the school refusal and anxiety program next week. It is a 3-week PHP program (although they said some kids take a little longer). It sounds like such an awesome program. All kids 6-12 are together but the hospital has 6 or 7 adolescent specialty units and the tdocs from there 'push in' to the child unit.

They get 15 therapist sessions per week (I think all small group). Tentatively Tigger will get:

1. Five from the 'school refusal/school anxiety' tdocs
2. Two from the 'general anxiety/Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)' tdocs
3. Some from the 'autism' tdocs
and I don't know about the rest, they might be general therapist stuff (teach relaxation skills, listening to parents/teachers, etc).

Only problem is it will take over an hour to drive there each day. I'm clearing my schedule so I can just hang out in the area up there rather than drive back and forth. Luckily, it is 5 minutes from a major mall :) I haven't gotten to window shop in years. And my mom is giving me money to pick up some presents she needs - but I get the fun of picking them out :) :) :)

Tigger and husband has another conflict today while I was out and it took me over an hour to get Tigger to get 'unstuck' and move on. What finally did it was we were in the backyard and saw some boys throwing rocks -- they were throwing them at a very injured frog. I don't know if they did all the damage (two legs torn off, skin ripped off the top of its head, but they were clearly enjoying torturing it). I was livid. Tigger told them that they were 'donkey butts' for thinking it was fun to kill things. We 'rescued' it and it is in a tank on our table right now but it is so severely damaged that I doubt it will last much longer -- but at least it won't spend its last few hours being tortured.
 

Marguerite

Active Member
I hope this works well for Tigger. I know a few weeks would not have been enough for difficult child 3. We're in a program permanently, with the correspondence school difficult child 3 is now enrolled in. But therapy is our responsibility.

Good for Tigger speaking up about the frog! Those other kids need a smack over the head for what they were doing. Here, the RSPCA could get called in, even for torturing 'just' a frog.
If you want to put that frog out of its misery, put it in the freezer. It's the painless way to euthanase an amphibian. But if you're planning on looking after it as long as you can, then you need to get some meal worms for it to eat. It might also eat some raw (or cooked) minced meat.

Marg
 

JJJ

Active Member
Thanks Marg -- the program is suppose to be an intensive intervention. Ideally, it is two weeks every day at the hospital and then one week split between the hospital and the school (since we live so far, he'll alternate days maybe doing partial days at school and then going to the local therapist for an afternoon check-in...). If he is ready to go back to school but still needs significant support, he can go after school up to 4 days per week for 3 hours but with it being so far away, I'm hoping he can just go to his new local therapist. The school is so excited that I found this program. The hospital sends someone to meet with the IEP team to go over ways tp help Tigger stay in school and be successful. That person also remains a resource for the school as long as they want. New therapist is not allowed to go to the hospital or the school (stupid county clinic rules!!) but she is also excited to be getting him straight from the PHP program cause she'll have a great starting place (she hasn't met Tigger yet).

Tigger wanted me to be sure to tell them he doesn't hate school every day, that he sometimes likes it but sometimes he "has to" hate it. He wants so badly to be able to go to school.

As far as the frog, that was my thought, we put it in cold water. It finally died after about an hour :(
 
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