The Cousins turned ten this week, so we went up to have a little birthday party with them. Cake, ice cream, playing around Uncle Lou and Aunt Nancy's yard, some presents, that sort of thing. It went very well- chalk another one into the "good day" column. Life is good.
One of the good things was not having to shadow Joey the whole day. He didn't always engage with the other boys, but Joey did manage to keep them in line-of-sight most of the time (and those other times, were mostly when he came inside and sat with me.) When he got tired, he sat under a tree with a notepad writing letters.
Dear Unclewy, Please hogable us. Love, the Couzzins and Joey and Andy.
We think the translation of that is "Dear Uncle Louie, Please hug all of us. Love the Cousins and Joey and Andy." Well, something to do with hugging, according to what we could figure out from Joey's answer to "what does this say?"
Dear Andy, I love you. I am so proud of you. I will see you lader. Love, Joey and the Couzzins.
Just a sampling. He also did some drawings, mostly of Blue and lions (not sure what the lions were all about).
Andy spent the day following his cousins around with a T-Rex puppet, roaring. They thought it was hilarious.
As expected, about 4 o'clock this morning, Joey crept into our bed. He does this most nights, and then I end up in the recliner for the remainder of the night, because we only have a queen-size bed. We've tried a couple of times to break this nightly habit, but all such campaigns have only resulted in less sleep and still waking up with a boy in the bed.
Last night, I felt that familiar depression of a boy climbed up onto the bed, crawling across, and settling between me and JoeyAndyDad. He snuggled in, then draped his arm over me, and gave me a little squeeze.
I met with Ms. A, but really didn't get much farther. The upshot is Joey is bored and needs to be challenged, so she is meeting with his case manager to figure out what to do.
See, special education is not set up to deal with gifted kids who have special needs. They are set up for physical disability and mental retardation. They are set up to slow down, take a slower pace to get to academic material, rather than set up new ways of communicating information and with children. The idea of a special ed gifted child is considered a contradiction in terms, a real paradox by people who have no idea what special ed- and by some folks who teach there. They are not trained to deal with a child whose challenges don't include the academics.
Joey's last teacher was a creative, dynamic lady who could deal with this sort of thing. She was a whiz at making lessons and activities fit a whole range of needs and expectations.
This lady is worried about Joey feeling "different" if she gives him different work. I can understand that problem, but the fat is, Joey is different. Maybe instead of hiding it from him, we should embrace it, and help him to embrace it. Give him the challenge. Make his school work relevant to him. Is it a different worksheet from the person next to you? Sure it is. Can you accept the challenge, Joey? How about this extra work? Or better yet, extra fun?
Right now, Ms. A is handling it by having Joey hep other students. He is therefore forced to interact with other kids (she doesn't allow him to just do their work). No wonder he's been saying he wants to be a teacher when he grows up. It's an OK idea, it gives Joey the challenge of social skills that he does need, but Joey isn't progressing in the academics. I remember being bored in school. Boredom leads to all sorts of problems- including social ones.
So we are working on it. I did make sure certain things got noted, such as the cafeteria situation being dangerous- you can't just leave my kid to flounder with a change in schedule. I don't really care that you went over the change with your other students that morning- you have to be sure Joey not only gets told what is coming, but if it is a major change, you have to guide him through it- actively. She just comes across as an OK teacher, doing an OK job, and so Joey is just doing OK with her. What can anyone expect?
Yes, I was an idiot and watched the segment. No, I'm not linking to it. I think it is enough to quote:
"Without a doubt in my mind, I believe vaccinations triggered Evan's autism." "When you really think about it, the reason why [the AAP, the CDC, and vaccination companies are reluctant to link autism and vaccines] is because there is such a huge business in pharmaceuticals." "People are also dying from vaccinations. Evan, my son, died in front of me for two minutes. So you ask any mother in the autism community if we'll take the flu, the measles, over autism any frickin' day of the week. So I think they need to wake up and stop hurting our kids."
I think I'll just take this last challenge. I'm a mother in the autism community. Hi, Ms. McCarthy. Guess what?
I'll take autism any day of the week, and twice on Tuesday, over measles, mumps, rubella, pertussis, chicken pox, meningitis, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, diptheria, tetanus, typhoid, influenza, pneumonia, tuberculosis, or polio. A lot more people have died from these diseases- any one of them- than from vaccination (all of them). The number of deaths reliably traced to a reaction from a vaccine is so low, giving an honest stat is considered impossible (and folks, they think a stat of "severe adverse reaction" is 1/100,000 doses- and have no problem providing that stat.) Is it one in a million? So in the US, about 300 people a year? (Between 1990 and 1992, there was only one reported death plausibly linked to a vaccine.) Did you know that influenza alone kills about 2000 people is the US each year?
I'll take autism over the flu any frickin' day of the week, Ms. McCarthy. Know why? Because autism doesn't kill people. And my autistic child is a beautiful, wonderful, loving child. Every autistic person I have met has been a beautiful, wonderful human being- even those severely effected, who cannot talk, who have trouble responding and coping with the world around them. I'll take that living human being over a dead one any day of the week. Proper vaccination prevents death and disability. It does notcause autism.
Vaccinate your kids. Do it properly. Or keep your kid away from mine until you get them properly vaccinated. (For information about who should NOT be vaccinated, click here.)
You wanted to know how the Boy Rewards Sticker Program campaign was going, right? To be honest, it's going OK. They didn't earn enough stickers to go to Chuck E. Cheese last month, so this month it was a bit of a relief that they were able to go. They have a lot of new rides at our Chuck E. Cheese, so it was very exciting. They ordered the pizza themselves, sausage with extra cheese, please! Then they came to get their tokens from me, one at a time, and would run off in eager glee to find some new adventure until the pizza came.
Then they would come, take a bite of pizza, get a token, and run off in eager glee... They played a few rounds of air hockey. They liked scoring- on themselves. They would deliberately knock the puck into their own goal and laugh hysterically. Some of the other patrons were quite amused. I grew up with an air hockey table in my basement. I can't play pool, but I play some mean air hockey. Looks like we need to get the old table dusted off, waxed up, and blowing some air!
When they ran out of tokens, they went up into the tubes for while. We only had one sketchy moment when a small child started screaming in the tubes, and the noise was too much for Andy with all the echo. HE came down for a few minutes and ate a few extra bites of pizza. I knew it was time to go home when I caught them doing this (remember, they were out of tokens!) This is a game that has cool graphics that make you feel like you're moving around tight corners and stuff, kind of a fake roller-coaster. They were watching the previews for the game, over and over and over and over...
So we picked out our prizes (Joey got a Chuck E. Cheese toy, Andy got a piece of candy) and went home, two happy boys, ready to start another sticker-winning month!
The way current special education law is written and interpreted, parents are supposed to be "equal members" in a child's IEP team. That means that a parent is expected to participate in developing a child's IEP, and their opinions are supposed to be counted as much as any other member of the team.
And the more I get into developing IEPs, and dealing with schools, and looking at regulations- especially the new regulations being written in Virginia- the more I think this is wrong.
By making a parent "just another committee member", the parent is outnumbered in every committee they walk into. When I walk into an IEP meeting, I am, at best, outnumbered 3:1 in favor of the school. Often it is more like 6:1. I've had it be as high as 8:1 (administrator, student services director, special education teacher, regular education teacher, autism coordinator/specialist, psychologist, occupational therapist, and speech therapist to me), and I haven't had any monster IEP meetings I've heard legends of. No matter how hard a parent advocates for the child, they are under the weight of school personnel consensus.
The fact is, as a parent, I am the one legally responsible for my child's education, rearing, safety, and health. At the end of the day, the year, the childhood, it is me, the parent, who must bear responsibility for the decisions of this ever-changing and often-hostile committee; and my child who bears the consequences of every failure along the way. In every meeting, my child is guaranteed only one voice in his defense and favor. Everyone else has a very basic conflict of interest- they are employed by the school, with a budget and a whole school population to consider. Only I (right now- until Joey can self-advocate) have only Joey to think about.
So why am I only just another member? Shouldn't I at the very least have 50% say? In all the complaints from schools about parents who want basically the ability to veto, I must say, damn straight I want veto power. This is my child we're talking about.
We have been fortunate this year and last year. Joey's current case manager is a person who really does care about Joey as a person, and is interested in getting him the support he needs to be successful. She considers what he needs individually, and not based on what other children in the program might or might not need. Unfortunately, we know from experience that it doesn't always work that way. What will his case manager be like when we move to the upper elementary? Will we revert to the attitude of the preschool, "we need to consider the kids with more needs- your child is too high-functioning to get support"?
No one knows Joey like I know Joey. I should think that even if this "committee of equals" must be, my voice would be the likes of Athens: a first among equals.
Since school started, every Friday, I have put a little note in Joey's lunchbox. I write a new one every week, but the basics are, "Dear Joey, I love you. I hope you like your lunch. Love, Mommy." Nothing has been said about these notes, and Joey isn't saying much about school these days (hence our current string of meetings with teachers). I just put them in because it gives him something to read, I miss him, and I want him to know I am thinking about him even when he is in school. But really, I haven't given them too much thought from Joey's point of view.
I'm working today. When I work, I am shut upstairs with my computer, the laundry, and some snacks, and emerge around five o'clock. On my breaks i change the beds, flip laundry, and eat. It isn't very exciting.
I forgot to bring up my lunch and take my meds this morning, so during my break I hot-footed it down the stairs to find boys preparing for lunch. Joey has been in the habit of carrying notebooks and crayons around with him, so I didn't think much of it when he seized my grocery list pad and a pen and started writing, taking little note of me rummaging through the freezer for a bowl of something-that-needs-to-get-eaten. I was already headed up the stairs, having stolen a kiss atop his busy head, when he came running to hand me the pad, "Mom! Mom! Look what I wrote!"
I took the pad from him, and he beamed as I read it:
"Dear Mommy, I love you. I love you, too. Love, Joey."
One of the things Joey finds comforting is color. When he first started talking and we were teaching him to answer questions, when in doubt, he named a color. It was safe, and he could show he knew something. Blue's Clues has an episode on color where they mix colors together to make other colors. It is Joey's favorite episode, bar none.
Joey has been a little depressed lately. Not his energetic, giggly self; a little more languid, a little tired, a little sad. The beginning of school is something he looks forward to, but it entails a lot of changes and new challenges. We also have a teacher than is less than stellar (or has been so far), and some separation anxiety from last year's teacher, who was way beyond stellar.
Consequently, color has been a huge theme of motor-mouthing here.
I set the boys up to paint today after school. I thought with the renewed comfort of color, it was just a good idea. (And I couldn't find my iron to do fuse beads. How does one lose an iron?) This is actually the first step of making stick puppets. We're making turkeys and ghosts this round. I set them up, and we were off to the races!
I crept out of the room, partly to get the camera, partly to give them some moments to just do their thing. I came back to Joey proudly displaying hands covered in paint and his puppets, as well as a paper he had gotten from the art supply shelf.
"Purple and red make magenta!" he said proudly, grinning from ear to ear. Sure enough, he had made magenta.
"Green and yellow make chartreuse!" he pointed proudly to his patch of chartreuse. We also did marigold, violet (blue-purple), and aquamarine. (He had his hands washed before I recovered, so sorry, no pic).
Happiest boy on earth. Score: Mom, one. Depression, zero.
On another grand development, Joey wanted a soda while we waited for the paint to dry. To do this, he had to:
1. Go to the kitchen. 2. Open the fridge. 3. Open the bottom drawer of the fridge. 4. Get his soda. 5. Close the drawer. 6. Close the fridge.
I told him these steps very carefully. It took two tries, but he managed to do it- all by himself. I guess grape soda is more motivating than I imagined.
Since we're non-plussed with Joey's self-contained class, we met with Joey's inclusion teacher today. We had a really nice short chat with Joey's autism resource teacher, then headed over to the inclusion room for another lovely chat.
In case you are keeping count, Joey has three classrooms, plus "specials." He starts off in the autism resource room with Mrs. Huff and Ms. Macy. Mrs. Huff is his "official" teacher (case manager). Then he spends time in the self-contained room with Mrs. A, doing things like math and Fast Forward and computer skills and some language arts and other standards-of-learning kinds of stuff. Then he spends time in an inclusion setting with Mrs. R for social studies and science. It was Mrs. R we met today. He also has library, art, music, and PE.
Mrs. R is also his reading teacher, and they started reading groups this week. She's a bit concerned that he is basically the top reader in the class. She doesn't have a lot of experience with autistic kids, and the special needs kids she had before were not her top-tier readers, but she was really ready to listen to us and discuss Joey's strengths and weaknesses and strategies to support him. She's going to some training in December with Mrs. Huff about inclusion and methods for supporting special needs kids in inclusion settings, and she seems very excited about it. Her concern with Joey being the top reader is that she is afraid he won't progress more in reading, that he needs more challenge than she can offer because there is only one other kid who is reading at his level, and she can separate them into their own little reading group. The next set of kids are substantially lower on the reading scale. No, this didn't bother us that much because we are basically using his strength (reading) to get him familiar and comfortable and help him work on weakness (social interaction in a small group). But she's a reading teacher, so she worries about the reading piece. I think there is going to be some discussion between her and Mrs. Huff about "what to do." I'll keep you posted.
We really couldn't ask for anyone with a better attitude. She's perfectly willing to dive in and rise to the challenge of being an inclusion room, and supporting her students. She noticed Joey liked to draw, so she sent home a book about drawing with us, partly to help us get him to focus on books better- maybe catch his interest.
So this lady seems like a solid link in the chain.
I have a meeting with the weak link on Wednesday. Stay tuned.
I’ve been getting a lot of emails asking me to review and endorse products here at Life With Joey. Is it so common for folks to endorse products on their blogs? I generally ignore these emails. If I want to talk about a product or service, I talk about it: TV shows we like, toys we think are helpful or fun, services that have helped Joey and Andy grow and develop. I share these with you.
Why do we love Signing Time? Because it is a well-made series focused not really on signing, but on communicating. Signs are introduced to a multi-sensory approach: there is a picture of the word, the word spelled out, the sign (explained by Rachel so that the sign actually makes sense and connects to the word it represents), and then age-appropriate models using the signs with music. Not only is this a great way to teach hearing kids to sign, but it gives multiple avenues of access for different learning styles to learn words. Signing Time selects vocabulary that is also age-appropriate and pragmatic: words that kids will know and use. The episodes then group these signs so that they connect together and help kids remember them. The episodes provide plenty of signs, so even a single episode can get you moving on your way to communication.
The screening DVD included Episode 3 (A New Day) and Episode 4 (Let’s Be Friends.) It also included an interview about a child who learned to read as a baby, emphasizing the multi-faceted approach to the signs mentioned above. I wasn't much into the interview, it was kind of preaching to the choir, and though it mentioned not all babies will learn to read with Signing Time, just having the interview included implied this. It needed to be presented differently so it looked less like an ad, and more like a "wow, isn't this a really awesome child!" Maybe label it something about "Meet the kids of Signing Time!" or "Welcome to our community!" or something like that.
Although I know and love the regular Signing Time series, this was my first experience with Baby Signing Time.
Baby Signing Time is geared to infants and young toddlers, through about age two. If you have a three-year-old, then you might want to just jump right into the first episodes of the first Signing Time Series. If you have a child in elementary school, add Series Two as well. For middle schoolers, I’d start right in on Series Two, which is a little more connected and progressive than Series One.
Episode 3 (A New Day) was mostly introducing signs connected with the outdoors: weather, things you would see outside, bugs, useful signs for outside like stop, go, wait, and again, and night sky words.
The songs were simple, age-appropriate, and most importantly, not irritating to me as an adult. This is also part of the charm of the series- it includes music you can use to practice signs and play in your car without going nuts, because the songs don’t talk down to the children. The songs and modeling of the signs made the signs relevant to young children, which will hold their interest. Seeing Rachel in bug headgear is worth the price of admission. At the end, parents get a treat with the song Little Hands.
Episode 4 (Let’s Be Friends) provides a wide range of general-communication signs, relevant to young children at play: signs about friends, opposites, feelings, toys, and foods.
The episode is upbeat and stresses positives, even when introducing signs such as “sad” and “cry” (the song talks about the fact that feelings aren’t good or bad; they are just how you feel!) Again, the episode is a string of simple, listenable songs geared to very young children. The parent treat song at the end is Show Me A Sign.
The episodes use a few strategies that worked with my kids when they were very young to hold interest and keep the boys focused. First, Rachel exaggerates her facial expressions more than in the regular Signing Time videos. For young children learning to read other people’s emotions, this is really helpful. Another good technical point as the use of bright, bold backgrounds behind the models before switching to natural settings. These bright backgrounds attracted my kids when they were very little, and I think it makes the models and signs easier for young children to see. Another really great thing al the Signing Time videos do is to use age-appropriate models, but also some models slightly older than the target audience. Baby Signing Time uses infants, toddlers, and preschoolers of diverse backgrounds and abilities to show the signs in action. Disabled children are included. Perfect signing isn’t the point; showing a variety of children signing gives young children confidence in using their hands to communicate (even when their motor skills might be sketchy).
Do I think Signing Time and Baby Signing Time are good investments? Let’s just say, I’m saving up my money to get Series Two for my guys for Christmas, and I'll be getting Baby Signing Time for several families with new additions.
Getting children access to communication early, especially if there appears to be communications issues, is something I think vital to early intervention programs, and Baby Signing Time is an excellent tool for teaching communication skills to young children. Allowing a child to communicate can make a huge difference in their ability to function without frustration. Do we believe in using sign? Yes, we do. For Joey, it has made all the difference in the world.
So we were sitting around the kitchen table, having dinner, and taking advantage of a sudden increase in words from both little guys. They wanted to chatter, so we set to modeling dinner-table conversation with questions and answers. What did you do in school today? Did you start your reading group? What did you make today?
We rounded out to more abstract questions, like, "what would you like to do tomorrow?" and "why do you like the color blue?" We finally came to that ever-popular, "what do you want to be when you grow up?"
We explained that Mommy is a teacher, and Daddy is a businessman, and then put it to the boys: what do you want to do when you get older? When you are grown-up like Mommy and Daddy?
Joey wanted to be a teacher. We then asked about some other jobs- did he want to be a chef? Cook for people? No. Perhaps a doctor and help sick people? Or a veterinarian and work with animals? No. A teacher.
We had a lovely day at the fair. Last year this week, we had been sick as the proverbial dogs after our beach vacation*; but this year, despite my own headcold, we were determined. Joey went to his swimming lesson (he just loves them!) and then we were off to St. Mary’s.
The main attraction for the guys this year was the pigs, followed closely by the sheep. They could have looked at pigs and sheep all afternoon. We also looked at the chickens, the turkeys (the boys still don’t like turkeys), the rabbits (fuzzy!), the goats, the Clydesdales, and the alpacas. We zipped through the 4-H building looking at the veggies, but the boys weren’t really into that this year. I think if we had taken them through the ag building with the pumpkins, we would have had better luck. Anyway, we had some lunch, then off to the rides (light lunch- didn’t know what was ahead of us.)
They had some pretty new rides this year, which was nice. One of them was a dragon roller-coaster that the boys hopped on and were very, very happy “driving the dragon.” Then it was time for Joey to pick a big-boy ride.
He picked the Hurricane.
Note to self: before putting your six-year-old on a big ride, watch the ride in its entirety.
It started fine, going around in a circle. Then it sped up and the cars started to lift, and Joey wasn’t happy about that.
Then it did its thing. Oh. My. God. The arms went up and down while you were in the car sideways, and spinning around. He actually liked that part, but then it slowed down to ta spin and down again, and I think his tummy was a bit off. Talking later to other folks with kids on the ride, apparently a lot of crummies in tummies from that ride. Yikers.
We went on a few more, slower rides, and the dragon again, and then did some moon bouncing. By the time they got out of the moonbounce, they were both ready to fall over. That’s a good day.
So we ran through one of the commercial buildings looking for pens from our presidential candidates- and they weren’t giving out pens. In fact, only one place in the whole building had pens. That sucks. But we got our one pen and let the tummies calm down, got some ice cream, and headed home.
I won’t say there were no rocky moments in our trip, but what trip with kids has no rocky moments? They were few, brief, and the boys had a fabulous time. It’s nice to have an A+ trip now and again.
Happy Autumn Equinox!
*There was a LOT going on this week last year. But the reason we skipped the fair was we all had colds.
"Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible." H. H. Dalai Lama
"Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does." William James
"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." Albert Einstein
This feature shows the letters of the font Galludet, which is awesome. Learning to fingerspell is fun, and give you an excellent way to communicate without having to make a lot of noise. I recommend learning some basic sign to use as visual prompts for your child, too, even if they are not deaf or have hearing loss.
