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Jun 1, 2012

End of School Emotional Boogaloo

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Yesterday was the last day of school for our district, and OH what a day it was. I was a flood of mixed emotions: happy that my kids were moving up in grades, distressed at what to do with them until summer camp begins, sad that we’d be leaving behind some fantastic teachers, proud of how well both girls have done this year, and seriously wishing for it all to be over because the last week of school awards and assemblies and lunches and teacher gifts to buy has me giving up a lot of sleep to fit everything in.

As I mentioned earlier in the week, Cordy tried out for the talent show. I received an email from her teacher last week asking if it was OK for Cordy to participate in the talent show by reciting a poem, and I immediately responded to ask her if she maybe had the wrong child? My daughter? Up in front of people to perform, knowing there was applause at the end? No way she’d go for a sensory experience like that. But she reassured me that it was Cordy’s idea and that they’d send her up with a group so that if she backed out it wouldn’t be embarrassing for her.

So yesterday I spent two hours in a hot gym, watching all of the talents of her elementary school. Let’s just say Adele was a very popular choice for singing this year. Finally, Cordy stepped up to the microphone. I held my breath, worried she wouldn’t go through with it. But she did. And she took a bow at the end and didn’t freak out when people clapped.

(Sorry for the tiny video. Figures I’d pick the wrong side to stand on.)

I was so proud of her. Cordy has come a long way from the preschooler who wasn’t allowed in school assemblies because she would have violent meltdowns from the noise. She now sits through them with her class, claps (and covers her ears when it’s too loud), and marches up to the stage to recite poems. I have no words except…wow.

To further cap off the year, we received her first grade standardized test scores, and the results were outstanding. They fully expect her to be a part of the gifted & talented program in fourth and fifth grades.

Smarty pants

And I also couldn’t walk through her school’s hallway without staff members stopping me to tell me some funny encounter they’ve had with Cordy. A teacher saw her in the hallway one day and told her, “You’re very Cordylicious today!” to which Cordy quickly grinned and responded, “And you look fashiontastic!”

After a lunch on the lawn, we then had to leave Cordy’s school to pick up Mira from preschool. Mira has attended a special-needs preschool for the past two years to get speech therapy for her speech apraxia. (Mira really has no issues other than her speech and some clumsiness.)

Her teacher and aide are the same ones that were with Cordy for her two years of preschool – we made sure to request them when Mira qualified for services. They’ve known Mira since she was four months old, when I started bringing Cordy to preschool each day and would occasionally volunteer with Mira in tow.

Picking up Mira was terribly bittersweet. Her teacher and aide have been a part of our lives for nearly five years, and were absolutely a large part of helping both of our daughters become the girls they are now. When Cordy first came to them, we were uncertain about her future, but after two years she was a different child who demonstrated a fantastic ability to learn and a lot more patience and tolerance of things around her. They were so awesome with her, and in teaching us how to better help her.

Mira didn’t need as much support, obviously. Her teacher considers Mira to be a “typical peer” since other than speech her development has been fairly standard. Still, Mira’s speech now compared to at the beginning is, well, intelligible. She’s understood most of the time now. The greatest hurdle was getting Mira to participate in practicing words, something her teacher figured out how to do. She saw through the crocodile tears and forced Mira to put in effort to improve.

Knowing we weren’t going to see them after yesterday was sad. Mira will likely be attending Cordy’s school next year so yesterday was it. (Oh, did I forget to mention the principal was helping us with Mira getting placed at Cordy’s school and it looks likely now? Also? YAY!) We gave the teacher and aide cards and some photos of the girls to remember them. They asked if we had plans to have any more kids soon, haha. I said we had no plans at the moment, but if we did we’ll be sure to send them to her, even if just as typical peer students.

I then had to get out of there before I broke down in tears. So we took one last photo of Cordy, Mira, and the two women who had such an influence on both of them.

Mira, aide Ms. S, Cordy, and teacher Ms. W.

It’s all over now. Cordy will be going to second grade, and Mira will be entering kindergarten in the fall.

Sigh…it’s all too fast for me.

Filed Under: Cordy, growing up, memories, Mira, school ·


May 8, 2012

Happy IEP Surprises

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Yesterday we got to spend an hour in an IEP transition meeting. While any type of meeting tied to an IEP would cause me an incredible amount of stress, this was Mira’s transition meeting for kindergarten and we already had the heads up from her teacher that they were planning to discharge her from any additional support.

We knew this was going to happen and we were in total agreement. Mira entered special needs preschool two years ago because of a speech delay known as speech apraxia. She had great verbal comprehension, but her annunciation was extremely poor, to the point that no one could understand a word she said. Even as her parents, we could only interpret about 25% of what she said. When she was first evaluated, they also noticed some weakness in gross motor skills, but otherwise she was a typically developing toddler. (Read: no autism.)

Years of speech therapy made a huge difference for Mira, and now she’s understood most of the time. So we weren’t going to argue that she was ready for kindergarten without any need for support. But we still had to sit through the meeting to review the final assessment from her team.

Most of it was what we expected. She still has some sound substitutions when she speaks, but there’s no consistency to when she does it and she didn’t come close to the threshold for still needing services. Her verbal comprehension score was the highest the speech therapist had ever seen, so we know that’s still going well.

Her occupational therapist said she had great fine motor control, better than many kids her age, as long as you exclude her weird pencil grip. Continuing a long family tradition, she doesn’t hold her pencil properly, and her odd grip is different from any other odd grip in our family. (And all four of us hold a pencil differently, with all four ways being wrong. Ah well, thank goodness for typing!)

The physical therapist told us that Mira has improved in her balance and coordination, but still has issues. She seems to have weak ankles and continues to be plagued by invisible gremlins tripping her all the time. The kid can fall down walking across a smooth, even floor. It’s possible she just has poor motor planning – or her brain is acting faster than her muscles can keep up with. Either way, she recommended Mira get more involved in physical activities to help with her balance and coordination, but that she scored high enough to no longer need their help.

The big shock came from the school psychologist. A standard part of the evaluation is a test of cognitive ability – in other words, an IQ test. She told us that Mira took a long time to complete the test, not due to any problems, but because they have to keep going in each section until she missed too many to continue.

Although apparently she took the test while wandering the room, putting her head down, resting her feet on the table, and generally wiggling all over the place. She had to bribe Mira with candy to get her to sit still, but admitted that Mira answered the questions just fine while moving all around.

I expected Mira’s results to be on the high end of average, or maybe even slightly outside of average. Her teachers have praised how well she does in preschool, and we know she’s a bright kid.

The psychologist covered up Mira’s scores with a piece of paper and uncovered them slowly, one at a time. This confused me – why the big reveal as if we’re on a game show? And let’s reveal the number in the next column…

Mira’s scores were amazing. She scored in the 99th percentile in all areas, or as interpreted by the psychologist: highly gifted. She was answering questions rated for kids over 8 years old. As she went through the data, it didn’t feel real to me. A day later, it’s finally sinking in.

I’m not trying to brag, although I’m super proud of her. The results caught me by surprise; I think I laughed out loud when she explained the scores to us. I’ve always thought of Mira as a smart little girl, but gifted? Apparently I was underestimating her. And like her sister, she doesn’t like to show what she knows to us until she feels she’s mastered it.

So the team recommended she no longer receive services for special needs, but did recommend that once she starts kindergarten we meet early with her teacher to discuss how to deal with her. She’s high energy and can’t sit still, needing a lot of extra work to keep her mind engaged. She’s a motor mouth and bossy, even to adults. (She thinks she knows it all.) If she is corrected or told she made a mistake – even the slightest correction – she breaks into tears and doesn’t want to continue what she’s doing.

But she’s also helpful, cheery, and loves to learn. She makes friends easily and is a master of social interaction. Her teachers adore her and love her enthusiasm in class.

We left the meeting happily surprised and confident that she’s ready to tackle kindergarten as a typical student. She may be gifted, but there are no supports for that at her age, so we’ll rely on working with her teacher next year to make sure she’s properly challenged at school and at home. 

And yeah, we’re probably doomed.
Filed Under: Mira, school ·


May 2, 2012

School Lottery: You Have To Play To Win

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Or, like the real lottery, you play and still don’t win.

I’m learning that my kids certainly didn’t get the luck of the Irish when it comes to school lotteries. When Cordy was entering kindergarten, we applied for the school lottery to keep her at the school where she attended pre-K, knowing it wasn’t her home school but was a good fit for her. We were allowed to lottery for up to three schools, and so I picked two others that had a curriculum that might work for her.

That year, she didn’t get any of her three choices. It was only through an IEP loophole that the school principal made it possible for Cordy to stay at her current school, which has overall been a good place for her.

As much as I try to deny it, Mira will be starting kindergarten next year. (WHERE DID THE YEARS GO?) We had the lottery option again, and chose to select three schools for her. One of the choices – and really our top pick – was Cordy’s school. It only made sense to have them both at the same school, so I would no longer have to coordinate two different school arrivals and then wait an entire hour between bus drop offs in the afternoon. One pickup, one drop off = simple.

Just to be safe, we also listed two other schools in the district with excellent reputations. Our assigned home school is OK, but doesn’t have the academic report card and word-of-mouth recommendations that the other schools do. One of the other choices was a school close to Cordy’s, so at least they’d be close to each other if not at the same school.

I convinced myself that this was just a formality and Mira would likely be accepted to Cordy’s school. After all, the district does state that they have sibling preference as some part of the lottery algorithm.

Proving that my daughters should avoid any games of chance in their lives, the letter arrived last month stating that Mira did not get a spot in any of the schools we tried for. She was so far down on the wait list for each school that they’d have to accept two new classes of kindergarteners before she might even be considered. In other words: no chance at all.

I’m disappointed. Having both girls attend the same school was my ideal option. Not only because it’s an excellent school with teachers and administrators I like and respect, but also because it would have been amazingly convenient for me. If I needed to pick them up, they’d be in one location. There would be only one bus schedule to follow.

If Mira attends our assigned school, it means my kids are on opposite ends of Columbus for the school day, making picking both of them up at the end of the school day impossible without cloning myself or developing transporter technology.

But unlike Cordy’s loophole, there really isn’t a loophole for Mira. She’s not already attending Cordy’s school, and she won’t have an IEP. I’ll keep exploring all options, but everything at the moment points to me accepting disappointment. I can’t take Cordy out of her school – the disruption would be very hard on her – but there’s no way to get Mira closer to her short of moving to a house closer to Cordy’s school. (Which we’ve considered, if it wasn’t for that whole housing market crash.)

I’ll attempt to plead with the principal to see if she knows of any way to make it happen. With Cordy it was easy – the principal and all of the staff were enchanted with her, so they wanted her there. Maybe I’ll take Mira with me to talk to her. Then again, considering Mira and her bossy nature, maybe leaving her at home would be best.

Filed Under: daily life, Mira, school ·


Feb 9, 2012

Adventures in Social Skills

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Yesterday at school, as reported to me by Cordy’s teacher:

Teacher: Cordy, what snacks do they have in Room 14?

(Note: Room 14 is the special needs class Cordy visits at the end of the day.)

Cordy: It’s a secret. If you want a snack, then you need to go home and cook.

Thank goodness her teacher has a sense of humor and found it funny. Although I’m not entirely certain Cordy meant it to be funny. If that’s the case, then I’m REALLY glad her teacher has a sense of humor.
Every social interaction is a learning opportunity, right?

Filed Under: Autism, Cordy, school ·


Nov 16, 2011

Pizza As A Vegetable For School Lunches

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On Monday, Mira came home from school and immediately pulled a bag of potato chips from her backpack. When I asked her where the chips had come from, she told me her teachers gave them to her at lunch because they had extras in her class. Her preschool class has lunch brought up to their room from the school cafeteria, so they often have leftovers that Mira happily takes advantage of, even though she has a packed lunch each day.

Potato chips are one of the few things she brings home as leftovers, but I hear about the other things she occasionally eats when her class has extra food. French fries, pizzas, flavored applesauce, nachos – these are all regular school lunches served to little kids?

The answer is yes, they are, and if Congress gets its way, they will remain the staples of the American school kid’s diet for some time to come. Despite the USDA pushing for healthier school lunches, Congress has released a spending bill that rolls back the new standards to cater to special interest lobbyists in the food industry who insist that kids don’t need less salt and processed foods in their diets, and that two tablespoons of tomato paste on a pizza would be perfectly acceptable as a serving of vegetables.

(We’ll forget for a moment that tomatoes are actually a fruit.)

It’s horrifying to read that article and realize what our elected officials consider acceptable for a school lunch. Whole grains are considered unnecessary. Processed foods and cheap, artificial food-like products reign supreme in the lunchrooms.

Beyond the lobbying, some claim that the government shouldn’t tell children what to eat, which is ridiculous when food standards have been around for decades. But by not providing proper guidelines on what constitutes a nutritious school lunch, Congress is still telling children what to eat, and the message they are sending is that your kids aren’t worth better food.

For many underprivileged children, a public school lunch is their best chance at one complete, nutritious meal all day long. One chance each day to have proper nutrition. Some possibly get a school breakfast as well. And our elected officials offer them nothing but processed junk high in fat, sodium and sugar. Pizza as a serving of vegetables. (Don’t forget the *breakfast* pizza served each morning, too!) We should be ashamed that this is the best we can offer to our most vulnerable in the United States.

I’m thankful that Aaron and I have the time and resources to prepare lunches for Cordy and Mira each day. Our daughters aren’t limited by the choices available to them in the cafeteria, and have parents who are actively involved in finding better foods for them. As a result they benefit from better nutrition, especially Cordy, who can’t tolerate artificial food additives. I can’t imagine how much worse her behavior would be if she had to eat school food each day.

Before anyone tries to knock me down from my pedestal, I should take a moment to pause here and point out that my family is far from being a model for perfect nutrition. After all, we ordered pizza last night for dinner and we love McDonald’s now and then, too. And we always need more vegetables.

However, we try to keep a balance of healthy foods in their diets. Both girls have packed lunches that consist of whole grains, real fruit and cheese, peanut butter (that is only made from peanuts & nothing more), and water, 100% juice or plain milk to drink. 

But they’re the lucky ones – what about the kids who are at the mercy of the school cafeteria line each day? The ones who regularly depend on those potato chips for their nutrition? Who’s there to advocate for whole grains and fresh produce for them? Who’s speaking up to insist that we raise the bar on the necessary requirements for a nutritious lunch? It’s not the American Frozen Food Institute, that’s for certain. And it’s not their friends in Congress, either.

I genuinely had high hopes that the USDA would be able to create some real change in the way we feed our school-aged children in this country, even if that change was small. Any change for the better is at least a start. Now I’m left more disappointed than ever at the corruption in our political system and the politicians who claim they care about our children, but really only care about their corporate donors and dollars.Why strive for quality when there’s big bucks to be made serving up the cheapest food materials possible?

It’s no wonder so many conservative politicians are against national health care – they don’t want to pay for the obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure they are actively helping to create by profiting at the expense of our children’s future. If I was actively working to create a generation of fat, disease-stricken citizens like they are I’d try to avoid the issue, too. Hell, they’re probably investing all of their money in the pharmaceutical industry right now, knowing what’s ahead for these kids and anxiously awaiting the profits they’ll make from all the medications these kids will need.

It’s no secret why this country is facing a health crisis. Part of the answer can be found right in our schools, where we’re creating our national health crisis one substandard school lunch at a time. 

Our kids are worth more than this. They deserve better than two tablespoons of tomato paste and salty, high-fat, processed lunches each day.

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Filed Under: big issues, healthy living, politics, school ·