Autism Therapy: socialization

            Something happened to the apostrophe key on my keyboard.  One of my darling little children seems to have pried the plastic apostrophe key off the board so now I have to press this green rubber nodule when I want an apostrophe or quotation marks.  Such fun!

            It’s been a busy week for us.  I went to that kindergarten orientation that I was urged again and again to attend.  We ended up leaving halfway through.  It was basically a reiteration of what Jonathan and I heard at the special needs kindergarten orientation a few weeks ago, only this was in the middle of the afternoon and without complimentary childcare.  I asked the principal if they were going to have an MLP classroom at our home elementary school and she replied that yes, they were going to have a bi-lingual MLP there.  So most likely, Thomas will not be attending that school.  She urged me to stay for the remainder of the “registration” - they handed us a flyer saying that registration would be in August.  I was so ticked off!  Like I’m going to hand over all the registration papers and monies so that the district geniuses can lose them when they transfer them to whatever school in Timbuktu Thomas will be attending.  They lost all of his stuff last August and he wasn’t even changing schools!  So I stormed off (the kids weren’t being great, which didn’t help) in a huff and the principal asked about Thomas before we left – like she’s going to do something about the injustice of it all.  The thing that angered me the most was that the special needs kindergarten people who gave the presentation a few weeks ago insisted that it was of utmost importance that we all attend our home school’s orientation.  It was completely unnecessary and I’m going to mention it at Thomas’ IEP meeting on May 6th.

            So after walking to this school and playing at the playground and explaining to Thomas that he might go to school there next year, he’s not going there.  The silver lining to this cloud is that the district starts school at 8:30 a.m. so Thomas will be on the bus and off to school in plenty of time for me to get Hayley to pre-school at 9 a.m.  I have to register her on Saturday morning and then get her over to her make-up dance class at 10 a.m.  Finally, Hayley will be able to start school and then, dare I even write it, I will have a couple of hours every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to myself to do “stuff.”

            Thomas is still doing well at school.  Yesterday, a police officer came to visit Thomas’ class.  The kids got to try on handcuffs (Thomas refrained from that particular activity), sit in the police cruiser and listen to the sirens.  Thomas loved sitting in the car and he was able to actually tell me the officer’s name when I asked!  I said, “Thomas, what was the policeman’s name?”  He said, “It was just ‘policeman’!”  I explained that the officer had a name.  “What was his name, Thomas?  It was Officer…”  And then he told me!  I couldn’t believe that he could remember, but he did give me a plausible last name of the police officer.  I thought that was great!

            I’ve had it with the bed-sharing again.  I finally had to mention “sleep study” again to try and whip things back into shape.  Those kids come in every night now and I wake up sweating with someone’s (not Jonathan’s) elbow in my face and knee in my rear.  I mentioned sleep studies in the bathtub tonight and Hayley said she’d like to do one.  Thomas looked at her and said, “Hayley, you don’t know what you’re talking about!”  Too true.  We’ll see who comes in tonight.

            So I’m waiting for that IEP meeting to hopefully find out where Thomas will be going to school next year so I can go to THAT orientation instead.  Or maybe I’ll just show up the day before school starts with a greasy birth certificate, coffee-stained immunization records and a dubious-looking check to hand to whatever poor sap is behind the desk that morning.  That may be what happens just because I bet they won’t know where the MLP class is going to be in early May.  I just hope that Thomas doesn’t have to be bussed too far.  Our school district is fairly large and sprawling, so he could have to ride the bus for quite a while every day, depending.  I’m a little concerned about that.

            I’m excited for Hayley to start pre-school and get some socialization at long last.  I’m hoping they’ll teach her a little about how everyone is different and it’s not polite to stare, point, or loudly say, “Mommy!  Why is that old lady’s hair blue?”  (Luckily, that old lady’s hearing was apparently not what it used to be and I escaped that situation.)  She’s just like every other kid when it comes to pointing at someone who looks different, walks differently or has any characteristic that doesn’t jive with Hayley’s definition of “normal” which is probably a bit skewed, to say the least.  I’ve been trying to tell her, after we’re home or in the car, that it’s not polite to point or talk about how people are different when they can hear us.  How do I do this?  Does anyone have any words I can use that an almost four year-old will understand?  If you read my blogs regularly, you already know that I have a tendency to get a bit wordy and use some goofy vocabulary.  Unfortunately, I find myself doing that with the kids and I don’t notice so much when their eyes glaze over.  Sometimes, Hayley will say, “Mommy?  I don’t understand your words!”  At least she can tell me when nothing is getting through.