Good Therapy

Today Zac had his weekly therapy. Usually, he goes in by himself (giving me a blessed 45 minutes of uninterrupted reading time in waiting room) but today she asked me to come in to update, since she had gotten email from the emergency counselor about yesterday.

I updated her on the happenings and the meeting, and she decided that we should add safety planning in his treatment plan for sure, like who to call/ tell if he felt suicidal. She asked 'Did you make plans about how to kill yourself?' He said 'No, but I could easily kill myself any time I wanted to, I could jump out of this window right now.'

He got distracted making dirty sentences out of some fridge poetry magnets she had. Do you know you can cover 'tail' of 'cocktail' with the magnet 'in' and then you can make sentences like 'lick my big cock in paradise' Geez. She dryly commented that if he applied this creativity and work ethic to English, his grades would most likely improve tremendously :p

I shared some issues about his language use at home, which she will work on, and we had quite a good therapy session. Even better when she showed me the new contents of his treatment plan, which includes self injurous behaviour, and I suddenly remembered that he has huge scratches on his back, which look like he scratched very badly with his nails. They have been there for months at least, maybe longer? Hard to say, I don't see him with naked back very often.

He claims that he has no idea when he does it 'maybe when I am asleep' and I haven't seen him do it either. Will keep an eye on it and see whether i can figure out. She took some pictures to show the psychiatrist and talk about it. I am glad I remembered, I have only seen them once this summer, so it wasn't high up in my mind. No idea why/how he gets those scratches, it is weird. But I am glad it came up in therapy, so she can work on that with him. It sure feels like something isn't right if he hurts his back like that, even if it's in his sleep.

Anyway, felt like good therapy and lots of stuff to work on for her and him ^^

Meeting

The meeting went well. Zac was there too, which helped so he he could explain how 'the homework is just mindnumbingly boring', it is just 'copy down stuff and then change a few words'. And yes, sleep could be some kind of issue. Zac just wanted to drop math, since that is his first hour, even although he is doing well at math (but it's boring too ^^)

We decided to drop math for now, and have him do math at a community college this winter. This has the advantage that the classes are in the afternoon, which is easier with his sleep issues.

We also decided to drop American history. This is his 4th period class, right before English, both of which he is failing.

Issue in English is that he doesn't follow the assignments, but kind of makes his own humorous stories, going off on many tangents. The educational advocate (yay me! I got him there on realy short notice!) mentioned that maybe this was his way of dealing with assignments he didn't understand because of theory of mind issues. Especially could be a problem in analysing poems. So much easier to just make silly stories instead. Very classical and typical coping strategy. I was happy that the educational advocate pointed that out to the participants.

So instead of American history, his aide now will work on helping him prepare for English class, explaining all the metaphors and such which will come up in that class. I think this will be very helpful for his English classes.

In summary: drop two classes, start later (bus will be 8:30am instead of 7am) and get extra help in English.

Good Violet Update

Her case manager sent me email:

"I have spoken to Violet and we are going to drop my services down to once weekly on Wednesday morning and Violet's classroom teacher feels it will be ok to miss writing class (not ideal, but Violet's writing isn't lacking as of yet); We will have a couple of girls fill Violet in on what she has missed so far in French (Violet vocalized she may feel a little awkward starting now since they have been there for a few weeks now); and I have talked with Violet about reading group expectations and the importance of not reading on and we will provide her with a list of books that she can use as her "read on" books...all book written by the same author so she can start exploring style, intent, etc....

She asked me why she couldn't read just to read...I tried to explain to her about teaching reading is more than just learning / decoding words...that there are elements to literature that make us good writers, etc. Hopefully she understood the purpose of the instruction and can see why a teacher wouldn't want her knowing the ending if the lesson of the day was foreshadowing...

Also, talked with her today about using Japanese when things get though for her (used it in math when she wasn't clear); she is strongly arguing that there isn't a rule against it or a banner flying stating you can't use Japanese ;) So, we'll have to work on this a bit!

I'll change the IEP draft to read once a week for my services...

See you on Thursday!!"

Update on Zac

I let him sleep and talked to school and counseling center. We have meeting at school tomorrow, to see what we can do to adjust his schedule, since this is clearly not working. And I am going to let him sleep today, monitoring his mood when he wakes up, ready to call emergency services if I taste any suicidal ideation

School Makes Me Want to Kill Myself

Guess it's time to call the emergency counselor for Zack, this is not good :( I spent 45 minutes trying to get him out of bed.

Zack Will Get a Laptop!

Zack has been totally resisting the idea of using a computer for his note taking and other work at school, which I think leads to his current feeling of overwhelmedness, since his note taking by hand is very very slow. Gopher decided that having a computer seems inevitable now that he needs to write more in class.

This morning, I talked on the phone to his case manager, and updated him on the morning issues, we both agreed that he seems to be very overwhelmed and anxious right now, but we didn't go into solution mode yet. I did get to hear about the laptop though, which I hope will help him.

Will keep you updated, all this school stuff is annoying on top of normal life issues (like the divorce) but then I think back to last year, and I see how much progress we have made and feel happy and content again.

Resistance to Going to School

Zack has gotten more and more resistant to go to school. Yesterday morning, he actually threw up, so I let him stay home because of being sick, although he felt better later that day which makes me wonder yet again.

Today, he didn't claim sickness, but just plainly said 'I am not going' 'School is scary, too crowded' When I told him 'Zack, you HAVE to go to school, you need it to get into college', he changed to 'You are too scary, you are talking like papa!' and later, when I told him to talk about all these issues to his case manager Gopher 'Gopher is too scary too! You haven't seen him when he gets mad!'

Um...

Not sure what to think of all this, I guess the adjustment to full day school might be harder than we expected it would be.

Violet and French

Violet started school about two weeks ago, and things seem to be going ok, although today she claimed that she was sick (not sure whether she really was, though, or just tired, sleep still is an issue, just like it was with Zack)

One thing which bothers me more than I thought is the fact that they decided to do her speech / social training during French lessons. The reasoning being 'She speaks one foreign language already and she is learning Korean, so she doesn't really need French' Um... She learned to read Korean letters, but she didn't really study it beyond that, and I think learning more languages is never bad, and will challenge her in a fun way, hopefully more than the English lessons are doing right now.

Today i got email asking for parental expectations to put in IEP so this would be good time to bring it up if I am going to.

I also wonder about the 'reading books in class'. They were doing a 'class read' of a book, and Violet finished it in one night, and said that in class she would just close her eyes and doze off. I brought it up with her case manager, and she said that for now she thought Violet should read with the class. I am wondering whether we are setting her up for being very bored in school, or maybe she just needs the 'closing her eyes' as a kind of break. No idea, but I wonder.

Any input welcomed, I am still pondering.

Small Zack update: getting him out of bed to get to school in the morning has been very hard, including me being called a bitch by him. Oh joy.