Report Cards, IEPs and Disciplinary Reports, Oh My!

March is over, thank goodness! While many celebrated with pranks, and jokes, I celebrated April 1st with a big sigh. March was full of ups and downs. Thomas was given new letters for his alphabet soup, which has been very good for me facilitate getting services that are a better fit for him, but they also left us with some unanswered questions. We renewed his IEP, and agreed that he needed even more evaluations from the school. Thomas has had some great successes at school, and he's had some old "bad" habits show up and he's developed a couple of new ones. And finally he was given a place in the coveted social group at the Autism center that he was evaluated at in Feb.

So the new diagnosis of ADHD and anxiety has answered a ton of questions for us, but it has also left us with a few new ones. When handed something new, like a new diagnosis, my first coping mechanism is to turn to research so I have been reaching everything I can on children with ADHD. In  my reading I see so many things in Thomas that I was seeing as red flags for Autism, and I now understand why autism is often misdiagnosed as ADHD and visa versa. The overlaps in social behavior are amazing! So it potentially explains a huge number of Thomas's social integration problems. We are still on the waiting list for another set of testing to rule out another diagnosis (that I am intentionally being vague about,) and we will be resetting for ASD in February 2014 because it couldn't be eliminated as a diagnosis.

The other good that came out of the ADHD diagnosis is that the care team at Thomas' school seem to, all of a sudden, know what to do to help him. Instead of feeling like they were at a loss because his previous only diagnosis was SPD, it's like a lightbulb lit for them and they all of a sudden get it. "Oh, ADHD, I know what that is and we know what to do for that." As frustrating as that reality is, it is a reality. They know what to do now, or at least what to try and so there is this flurry of activity surrounding Thomas getting the new services in place at school.

This leads us to the IEP. Thomas' was up for review in the middle of March, and when I sent the
report from the Autsim Center's evaluations of Thomas the special Ed team had to rewrite the entire IEP. In doing this, and in reviewing the report (which was 30 pages long and extremely detailed) the
school psychologist has decided to re-evaluate Thomas in several areas. These areas include social, behavioral, academic, emotional, health and communication. These results will effect his IEP again. So I am 98% sure we'll have at least one more IEP meeting before school end. It will be very interesting to see how these changes affect Thomas' behavior at school. One of the changes that we've seen is that Thomas is hitting more in school, but instead of writing him up for it, his teacher has arranged classroom transitions around the behavior. This seems to be helping.

There was one incident that I found a bit upsetting. Thomas got angry in class and ran out of the room. His teacher found him within minutes and had him go to the office to cool down. He had a conference with the principal where she explained why he needed to stay in his classroom, mainly safety reasons. And then she wrote him up for it. Yep, a disciplinary report because Thomas needed to get away from other people so badly that he ran away from the classroom. He grabbed a chair and put himself into the corner in the hallway. The principal told me over the phone that it was several/many minutes before he was found (his teacher said it was 2-3 tops.) so she had to write him up. Sigh. Now I understand the safety issues, I understand having to go to the office. I do not understand a write up. I think that him walking away instead of hitting should have been commended, instead it was punished. That is a hard one to explain to him.

Thomas being in social groups at school four days a week is a very good thing. The more social interaction "training" he can get the better. There are two different groups, one for friendship and one for anger management. On too of that, Thomas was given a place in a social group at the Autism Center. He had his observation a couple weeks ago, in which he cried and sobbed for the first hour of the 1.5 hour session. He did pull it together at the end, and had been asking to go back ever since. He really loved the kids and the therapists once he let himself relax enough to get involved in their activities.

Yesterday was his first session in the social group that will meet once a week, for 1.5 hours. He had a blast, and the were no tears. He was so happy to see that many of the same kids were in this session, so he felt comfortable from the beginning. I really think this group will be good for him, and I'm guessing he will participate in several sessions.

This has been a whirlwind of a post, and that even goes with the last couple of weeks. A lot of it is a blur, I am definitely still trying to wrap my brain around all the changes. I can only imagine what it must be like for Thomas, who doesn't deal with transition well.