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Dec 14, 2012

What’s In A Name?

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Yesterday as I was driving the kids home from school, somehow the topic in the car shifted to names.

Mira: “Mommy, my teacher’s last name is the same as her husband’s last name.”

Me: “OK.”

Mira (suddenly sounding upset): “A friend in my class said that a family is everyone with the same name.”

Me: “Well, that’s not quite true…”

Mira (now more upset): “She said that if you don’t have the same last name as us, you must not be our real mom, and you must be a stepmom.”

Me: “WHAT?”

Mira: “That’s what she said. And it made me mad! But you’re our real mommy, right?”

Years ago when Aaron and I got married, there was a small discussion about changing names. I was in grad school at the time, expecting to make a name for myself in academia (hahaha), and I wasn’t all that keen about changing my name. Aaron was completely indifferent to the idea. He was OK if I took his last name, and he was OK with me keeping my name.

I wasn’t really trying to make a feminist statement with my last name. After all, it’s a paternal surname. But it’s the name I’ve had since birth, the name I graduated from high school and college with, and the name I had for the start of my career. I’ve had to spell it countless times, sound it out slowly when people mangled the pronunciation, and agree with hundreds of people that yes, it is an unusual last name. I’m acclimated to handling anything involving this difficult name now.

Aaron’s last name, while not as hard to spell as mine, is equally as unusual and often mispronounced. I didn’t feel like trading away one difficult name for another. I didn’t want to go through the hassle of giving up my public identity and changing every legal document to become a different identity that was still the same person underneath.

Besides, both of us felt strongly that a name wasn’t what tied a family together. A name is deep on a personal level but superficial when it comes to connecting with others. Your family are the people you love, including some who may share the same surname, but certainly not limited to that group. And names can easily be changed, while the person who carries that name remains the same.

We’ve had a few moments since having children where eyebrows were raised that I had a different last name. Most times a quick “we’re married, I didn’t change my name,” is enough to clear up any confusion. If needed, we have miniature, laminated copies of our marriage license. It’s not a big deal to most people.

I still answer socially to Mrs. hislastname and I don’t mind if I’m called that by others or receive letters addressed to that name. I’ve even said that if the name thing ever became an issue, I’d change my name if the situation required it. But for now my legal name is the same name I was born with, and there are no serious objections (from those who matter) to make any changes to that.

I never expected that a kindergartener would suddenly bring the issue to the forefront of our kids’ minds, especially in a school where there are so many families made up of different names, some married, some remarried, some not at all. Of all of the situations I imagined in my head, I never thought it would be the youngest generation making sweeping statements about what defines a family.

Mira was shaken by the declaration from her friend. She knows I have a different last name – which also happens to be her second middle name – and she’s never questioned it until now. I reassured her that we were just as much a family as any other family, and that having a different last name didn’t make me any less her mommy. My name may be different, but she still grew inside my belly.

She’s going back to school today certain that we are a family, and ready to tell her friend that whether you change your name or not doesn’t define how strong of a family you are. A woman changing her name or not is a personal decision that in no way reflects on the love she has for her family or her dedication to that family. Love bonds families together, not names.

Filed Under: being a mom, big issues, love, other people's kids, school ·


Oct 31, 2012

Shaking Up The IEP With A Frankenschedule

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Two weeks ago we had our annual IEP meeting for Cordelia with her teachers and support staff. After the problems we’ve been having with her at school recently, this meeting couldn’t have come soon enough. We were already talking with her special needs teacher before the meeting and all in agreement that something had to change to get Cordy back on track.

At the start of the meeting we went over Cordy’s testing results. She’s reading at a beginning fourth grade level now. (She’s in second grade.) It’s possible she’s reading at a higher level than that, but she got annoyed with the testing and wouldn’t go any further. Her math scores are equally impressive, scoring off the charts on many of her timed math tests.

Her greatest challenges are linked to her anxiety. She tries to avoid anything new, she’s very sensitive to noise in the classroom, and she’s prone to overreaction when her behavior is corrected. This leads to many of the problem behaviors she’s been having recently, landing her in more and more trouble. She’s unable to self-soothe when she gets anxious and instead self-destructs. She also is bothered more by sensory stimuli when she’s bored and not focused on the task at hand.

We set up new goals for her to accomplish during the next year and then we discussed how to make school a better environment for her. We agreed that her current classroom was not working for her – it’s too loud and Cordy is bored with the level of work. It’s not the teacher’s fault, as she’s doing her best to deal with a class of kids who are just particularly rowdy. But there was also a disconnect between Cordy and the teacher, and it seemed like the best response was to switch classrooms to send her to the other second grade class.

So far, it’s going well. She likes the other teacher and says he has a “quiet, calm voice” that makes her feel less anxious. We haven’t had any calls home since the switch, and the end of the day reports are generally positive. She did get upset one day because she was caught reading in class (when she should have been focused on the teacher), but we used the Flummox & Friends video to remind her when she needs to be “in the group” and when it’s ok to not be in the group.

(Side note to parents of kids with autism, ADHD, or even neuro-typical kids: go watch Flummox & Friends. They only have a pilot so far, but they need to get this show produced. The episode has already given us new ways to cue Cordy on social behavior. No, I’m not an affiliate or anything – I actually gave them money through Kickstarter to help produce their pilot and I think they have a great idea.)

Back to our story –

We also met with the principal to discuss higher level reading and math for Cordy. After talking it through, we all agreed that skipping Cordy ahead an entire grade level might not be the best idea, as she’s already behind socially, but we clearly have to address her academic needs, too. I give the principal credit, she’s doing a lot of string-pulling to get the best possible education for our daughter.

This week we started our new Frankenschedule for Cordy, just in time for Halloween. They’ve cobbled together a work-in-progress new schedule for her that involves remaining in her new second grade classroom for most of the day, but attending third grade reading and spelling each day, and getting supplemental math homework supplied by the third grade math teacher while still attending second grade math.

Of course, reading times between grades don’t line up, so she’s missing reading one day to make sure she attends her required gym class each week, and going to music each week with the other second grade teacher’s class so she won’t miss music. She’ll have an “independent study” time on Mondays, too.

It sounds messy, and at the moment it is. Cordelia has had some anxiety over the changes, but I’m told she’s handling it fairly well. She told me she’s nervous about being with third graders, but lucky for us she was in a split level class last year (first and second graders taught together) so she knows a few of the kids in her third grade reading class. An aide is also going with her for now to provide reassurance and stabilize her emotionally.

It’s also still just a test as we see if this Frankenschedule will work out – five different teachers and the principal are working together to coordinate their efforts for my kid. If Cordy continues to excel at math, she may be moved up to third grade math, too, meaning another re-write of the schedule.

Aaron and I are also just as involved with this change. The new schedule requires a lot more effort from us at home, too. Her third grade spelling class has required assignments every night, all requiring parent participation, so we’re required to be more involved with her homework. And the supplemental math homework coming home is a form of self-study to keep her challenged and assess her abilities for a higher level of math, which means we’re the ones teaching it to her at the moment. (Thank goodness I was a math scholar in high school!)

The principal also agreed with the special needs teacher that Cordy should be re-tested in math as soon as possible. She missed the “gifted” in math assessment by a single point on the standardized test last year and they’d like to see that corrected. They’ll also be bringing in an evaluator to assess her for “superior cognitive ability” with an IQ test. They strongly suspect she’ll test in the gifted range, which will then make her almost guaranteed to have a spot in the fourth/fifth grade gifted & talented class when the time comes. That class is very non-traditional and everyone I’ve spoken with about it believes Cordy would thrive in that setting.

I can’t tell you how relieved I am that the school was willing to take action after the problems Cordy was experiencing a few weeks ago. She’s still anxious over all of the changes (she hates change) but she’s already showing signs of being more relaxed and there haven’t been any new incidents. We’ve agreed that she’ll no longer be sent to PEAK and lose recess for any outbursts, but will instead be sent to the special needs classroom for appropriate redirection and consequence if needed.

I’m crossing my fingers that the new schedule will work for Cordy and she’ll rise to the challenge. She’s getting a semi-custom education now, and it’ll be a tough adjustment for all of us but I think it’s worth it. We’re making active progress at controlling her anxiety so she won’t get in the way of herself. I have high hopes this kid will do great things.

There aren’t a lot of public role models for girls with autism out there. I look at Temple Grandin, and I’ve read her mother’s book about raising her and fighting to make sure she succeeded, and I can only hope that Cordy will be just as successful because of her autism and not in spite of it. She has unique gifts that will hopefully guide her purpose in life, and we’re here to nurture them and help clear any roadblocks for her.

There’s no chance we’re giving up on this kid.
Filed Under: Autism, Cordy, people who don't suck, school ·


Oct 29, 2012

Busywork Backlash

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How do you know when your super-smart second grader has reached her limit of doing worksheets at school?

When you get answers like this:

In case you can’t read it, her answer is “My teacher said so.”
 Well…she’s not wrong.
Filed Under: Cordy, school ·


Oct 11, 2012

"Worst Child" and Continuing School Problems

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We have been so lucky thus far in Cordy’s education. When she was diagnosed with autism, we were lucky to have her placed with a special needs preschool teacher who completely understood Cordy, what she needed, and how to bring this child out of her own mind to be with the rest of us. I’d argue that she possibly knew what Cordy needed more than we did.

When it was time to move on, that teacher knew where to send her and called in favors to have Cordy placed at a school on the other side of town where she knew the special needs pre-K teacher there would be the right fit. That teacher also continued nurturing Cordy, and prepared her for the road ahead. She then went to the special needs teacher for the elementary age kids, who quickly realized Cordy’s potential and got her on track for mainstreaming.

Our daughter has been surrounded by school professionals who have clicked with her and recognized her talents, and we’ve continued to be lucky. Last year was her first year of being fully mainstreamed, and first grade was an absolute success for her. I’ve witnessed other parents online fretting and stressed over IEP meetings and school issues, but we generally had no issues and sailed through each IEP meeting, all of us in agreement on what was needed and how well she was progressing.

Second grade, however, seems to be the wrench thrown into the well-oiled machinery.

Cordy had her first ever PEAK experience last week. For a reminder, PEAK is the school’s bad behavior process. It stands for Positive Efforts for Adjustment and Knowledge. Getting sent to PEAK involves missing at least a recess for isolated behavior issues, where the child sits in the PEAK room with a teacher overseeing them, and has to fill out a form addressing what they did wrong and how they will correct it for next time.

Last week she grabbed a boy around the neck while they were playing zombies at recess. She was protecting the other kids from the zombie, and the playing got a little too rough. Fair enough, I thought, she needs to know there are limits and even though she completely freaked out about it, I considered it an OK consequence. I was more excited that she was actually playing with other kids, and not spending her recess wandering around by herself.

Then last week she had another incident. This time she was laying on the ground when it was time to line up at the end of recess. When the principal came over and told her to stand up, she stuck her tongue out at her and ended up in PEAK again for it. Cordy couldn’t really explain why she did it, other than saying she wasn’t herself at that moment and an alien must have taken control of her. I was upset, but considered it a fairly minor offense and wondered if she was just having a hard day and couldn’t express it.

This Tuesday came word of another incident. This time, while standing in line for the pencil sharpener, she poked the girl in front of her in the elbow with her pencil. Well, stabbed really, since it broke the skin. Her second grade teacher was standing right there and couldn’t say if it was an accident or not. Cordy didn’t really know how it happened, either – she admitted she wished the other kids would hurry up so she could sharpen her pencil, but also said she didn’t mean to hurt the other girl. Cordy received PEAK again, only this time she lost her long recess.

I don’t believe she was trying to hurt the other girl. From what I can tell, she was next in line behind this girl, was very focused on sharpening her pencil and possibly distracted by other noise in the class, and then decided it was her turn to sharpen her pencil, missing that there was still an arm belonging to another person in her way. Not seeing the other people around her is very believable to me. Yes, she was careless and deserved a consequence for hurting someone else, but I genuinely don’t believe there was malicious intent in what she did.

That afternoon when I picked the kids up from school, Cordy’s special needs teacher talked with me about the incident and we discussed what could possibly be causing all of these problems to happen all at once. Cordy has never been in trouble at school before now. Her special needs teacher said that she thought Cordy wasn’t getting along well with her second grade teacher and the class style.

(This is going to get long, so can we all agree that special needs teacher will now be SNT moving forward, and second grade teacher will be referred to as T2 to save me some typing?)

Cordy doesn’t like that T2 has a loud voice and says that voice scares her sometimes when she thinks that T2 is yelling. SNT also says that class of kids is more rowdy and loud than the average class. I suggested that maybe we should have Cordy speak with the guidance counselor about ways to help her deal with her anxiety.

As we were leaving Tuesday, we saw T2 further down the hall getting ready to leave. I’m sure T2 saw us as well, but quickly turned and went out the door. “Mommy, can I go say goodbye to T2 and give her a hug?” Cordy asked. I agreed and she ran ahead of me and out the door.

This is my own opinion of what happened, but I’d swear T2 walked faster when she heard Cordy calling out to her. But Cordy did catch up and give her a hug. I was getting closer up the sidewalk, but T2 gently disengaged from Cordy, said something about needing to get home to her own kid, and walked off before I got there. Wouldn’t you want to say something to a parent of a child who is struggling in your class?

When I picked the kids up from school yesterday, SNT asked me to come inside the building. Oh, no. She told me Cordy had PEAK again. This time she called T2 a witch. I don’t want to make excuses for my child, but in this case I think T2 misunderstood. Cordy told me she thought T2 laughed like a witch she heard on TV. In our house, witches are totally cool – especially near Halloween – so I don’t think she was trying to be insulting. I can admit she may not have said it in a way that made that clear, though.

However, Cordy later told me that she was never told why she was sent to PEAK, nor did T2 say anything to her when she called her a witch. No form was filled out like previous times so that we could have a report of what happened, and no one talked to Cordy about what she did wrong or how she should behave in the future. Her teacher just dropped her off in the PEAK classroom on the way out to recess with no explanation. She sat out her recess confused as to what she had done.

My frustration level boiled over at that point, and I started crying in front of the SNT. The ugly cry. I turned away to make sure my two daughters who were playing on the other side of the room didn’t see, but I could no longer hold back the emotion of the last week. For the first time in a long, long time, I am scared for my daughter.

I’m starting to worry this is affecting Cordy’s self-esteem. She likes to please, is very hard on herself when she makes mistakes and may be internalizing that she’s a bad kid. She’s required to sign her PEAK forms, and on the second one she wrote “worst child” under her name. On a class worksheet, she wrote “I am horid.” (misspelled, but points for creative word choice) at the bottom.

“worst child”

But after talking with SNT yesterday, I think I’m starting to see the issue. SNT describes the class as loud and T2 has a loud voice and sometimes yells over the kids talking. Cordy also has her desk right next to the door, the coat rack and the pencil sharpener: a recipe for sensory disaster. She’s assaulted all day with noise from kids talking, a loud teacher who makes her anxious, and lots of background noise from the hallway, the pencil sharpener and the coat rack. It’s no wonder she’s having trouble keeping it all together. Hell, I’d have trouble dealing with all of that, too.

Cordy is also extremely bored in class, meaning the background sensory input is even more distracting to her because her mind isn’t focused on learning. She needs more challenging instruction and a more peaceful learning experience. A smart kid who is stuck in a boring situation most of the day is being set up for trouble. (Again, shades of my own childhood.)

And while I’m sure T2 is a great teacher and I would never judge her total abilities on her interactions with one child, I think she’s a bad match for Cordy. My gut feeling is that she doesn’t make an effort to accommodate Cordy’s needs, and at this point has written her off. Sent to PEAK for calling her a witch without even asking what she meant or trying to tell Cordy why some might think that’s not a nice thing to call someone? That isn’t helping the child at all.

Also, despite all of these things happening in the last week, there’s been no effort made from T2 to reach out to Aaron and I about it. We’re left learning about it through the SNT, who isn’t present in the room when it happens and is then stuck in the middle. Send a note home, give us a call, send an email…something to let us know you’re concerned about our daughter and want our input on how to make it a better experience.

Add in the devastating news that Cordy’s SNT, who has been a strong advocate for her for over two years now and the one person in the school she feels the safest with, has just been given a promotion and will be leaving the school at the end of this month, and I’m now in full on panic mode over what will happen to our sensitive older child. Who will be there to help her through this, and will the next person understand her as well?

I’ve cried for two days now at the fear that this entire year may be a complete loss for Cordy, even more worried that this could change how she views school permanently and affect her entire future. There’s no explanation for this behavior other than something is happening in the classroom. Her diet is the same, her home life hasn’t changed, and the only change we’ve witnessed at home is more anxiety that seems to be related to school.

But we are lucky again, at least for the moment. Her SNT is still with us through the end of the month, and we’re getting her IEP meeting in place immediately. I’m also asking for Cordy to be transferred to the other second grade teacher’s classroom and the SNT thinks this could be a good idea. She sees him only for reading and science at the moment, but Cordy tells me he has a “quiet, steady voice” and she thinks he teaches more “interesting” things. She would then have him as her primary teacher and only see T2 for limited subjects. (They team-teach.)

When I first asked Cordy what she thought about moving to his class, she gave her standard answer of not wanting anything to change. Even if she’s in a situation she doesn’t like, any change is viewed as worse than the status quo. (So common with autism.) But this morning, she came downstairs and immediately announced that she would be OK with changing classes and that she thinks she would have a better experience in his class. We were stunned that she would be so open to such a big change that quickly.

I’m still not sure what the final resolution of this will be, but I have a new-found admiration for those parents who have to navigate these murky waters on a more regular basis. It’s time for me to read up more on the IEP process and start writing out detailed lists of what Cordy needs in case they no longer continue to match what others think she needs. It’s been so easy until now, and I have a feeling it’ll continue to get harder as she gets older. I’ve failed at keeping myself prepared on how to handle these things, and plan to remedy that so we can be strong advocates for our daughter’s education.

But right now? I’m scared out of my mind.

Filed Under: Autism, Cordy, school ·


Oct 4, 2012

Fighting Inner Demons and Zombies

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We’re several weeks into the new school year now, and for the most part it’s gone well. We had bus issues at the beginning, but since they readjusted the pick-up time in the morning, we haven’t had any problems with the kids arriving late to school. We’re still choosing to pick them up from school each day because no solution could be found to shorten the afternoon bus ride to under an hour and a half.

I had originally worried Mira might be challenging for her kindergarten teacher. She’s not only smart, but she’s clever and knows how to manipulate a situation to her favor. But so far everything has been great. She’s already gathered her own gang of friends, she’s progressing quickly with learning to read, and she claims she’s never had to move her name once on the behavior board. (If they get in trouble, they have to move their name to a different spot – the lower you go, the more privileges you lose.)

Cordy’s year has been a little more of a struggle. When the bus was running late and they were helping her deal with the anxiety related to that, she quickly picked up on the concept that if she had anxiety in class, she was taken to the special needs room where she got to swing and relax. So, like most kids would do with this knowledge, she’d fake anxiety to get out of boring class time and go relax.

I realized what she was doing very quickly and collaborated with her teachers to remove this as a reward. Now if she has to go to the special needs class, she loses computer time. With that change, her behavior immediately improved and she remained in class all day for the past few weeks. Other than her complaints that they’re only learning “kindergarten-level” math (can you tell she’s bored?), she’s enjoying school.

This week has been harder, though. I don’t know if it’s the weather change or the full moon earlier in the week, but she took a full step backwards in behavior. Unfocused, hyper, irritable – it’s been a challenging few days for her.

Then yesterday I received a call from the special needs teacher. A group of kids were playing “zombies” at school, and the play got a little rough. Cordy, trying to protect other kids from the zombies, grabbed a boy around the neck and left small scratches on his neck. There’s no way she meant to hurt him – the teacher said all of the kids were playing rough and that’s when they were told to stop.

But because Cordy had hurt another kid, school policy required her to lose her second recess and spend it in their behavior correction class. It’s a classroom with a behavior specialist in the room at all times, who helps kids work through better choices for their actions. Some kids spend most of their day in that room, others (like Cordy) only are there for a recess and hopefully never return.

For a perfectionist like Cordy, the world came to an end. That is where the Bad Kids go, which means she must be a bad kid. Unable to separate out the difference between a bad action and a bad person, she immediately became upset. Her teacher said she was crying in class and couldn’t focus on her schoolwork, so she was taken to the special needs room to calm down.

She told her special needs teacher that she should be “thrown away” or that we should “kill” her because she’s such a bad person. They were shocked at her reaction and didn’t know what to do. My heart ached to hear it, but I wasn’t shocked. Cordy often overreacts like this when she makes a mistake, and we have to walk a very thin line in discussing the problem with her while also protecting her ultra-fragile self-esteem.

No matter how often we tell her that everyone makes mistakes, and we learn from our mistakes so we don’t make them again, she still believes that a mistake means she’s a failure as a human being. Her inner voice – or inner demons, really – convince her that each mistake is THE biggest mistake she could possibly make, and she will never be able to right the wrongs or redeem herself.

Cordy did eventually calm down after her teacher repeated much of the script we use when she overreacts, and she served her sentence of missing second recess. But she was still upset when she came home.

I was fighting back tears the rest of the day. Cordy is our gentle soul who doesn’t understand why anyone would hurt someone on purpose. She internalizes every mistake as a personal failure, with even the smallest error on her part worthy of the most extreme punishment in her mind. It hurts to see her struggle and tear herself down so much. She is a smart, happy, and kind child who likes to please others, but no matter how much I try to show her that and praise her, she only sees her flaws.

Also, at the moment she’s still mostly unaware of what her classmates think of her, but I’m sure that she’ll find out eventually. How long will it be until someone calls her “weird” or a “freak” and it sinks in? How will we handle that? I love this kid with all of my heart, but I know I can’t protect her from the rest of the world forever.

No one prepares you for this part of parenting. What To Expect When Your Kid Navigates The Social World of Elementary School and The Happiest Elementary School Kid On The Block aren’t handed out at baby showers when we’re anxiously preparing to become parents. Add in special needs and autism, and it’s three times as difficult. My heart aches.

(And yes, I’m already starting to worry what’s ahead when puberty sets in and kids get really mean.)

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Filed Under: Autism, being a mom, big issues, Cordy, kid logic, school ·