Hard work pays off....

Ok...so for the last 3 1/2 weeks my evenings have been stressful. We put Alex in a "elementry school" type program where he has to have his assignments and agenda signed off by both his teachers at school and me at home!  Given that he is a Junior in High School, we shouldn't have to do this. My two NT/ADHD son's are in 8th grade and they do their homework without my standing over their shoulder.

Alex and I argue every night. He goes upstairs for any reason possible. He delays. He uses the bathroom 8 times in 2 hours. He scatters papers all over the living room and dining room. He needs a snack. He needs new batteries. He can't think with the tv on. Excuses, Excuses about homework...so two hours worth of work takes 6 or 7. In the past, I would have given in and told him I didn't care....do what he wanted....but this time I am holding strong!

I won't let him up from the table until it is done and done correctly. I have made him sit there from 4 to 10 pm...when he is done he is still stuck in the living room with me.

But three weeks into this semester, he has 3 A's (Chemistry 98%, Challenge/Honors English, 96%, and American History 92%) one B (Child Growth and Development 84% and climbing), and one C (AP Psychology 77%...up from a 56% two weeks ago...and A+ on his last two quizes!). He is much less argumentative about getting his homework done. Now, most days it is done and ready for me to sign off on when I get home from work at 5 pm. He still tries to skip assignments, and I have caught him not writing things down or only doing half an assignment or procrastinating....but when I catch him now, he admits it and goes to sit down and get it done. He told me he has figured out that in order to do well in AP Psychology, it helps to read the textbook (duh!). His teacher and I have told him that all year long but I guess he had to figure it out himself over half way through the class!

I know better than to lighten up on him...and I can't tell him that I am proud of him and that he is doing a great job, because to him that is the signal to quit working....so I'll say it here, where he can't see it! I am proud that he is finally working up to potential and maybe learning some good study habits. Next quarter, I might even let him go to his room after he gets his agenda signed off!

Epic FAIL....the baby is broken

How can they give a broken baby to an AS kid? A normal teen would have trouble with the plastic baby crying uncontrollably...an AS kid who is easily anxious, and reacts to sensory (especially noise) overload a baby whose sensor is broken and won't respond to his care. He has fed and diapered and rocked and changed the baby for hours and it still screams....we resorted to wrapping it in a blanket and putting it in the closet. I am a pediatrican and I can't even get the dang thing to quit squalling. We went next door and consulted another doctor who specializes in hospitalized children (who's daughter did the assignment last year...) and neither of them had any suggestions. The girl next door said the baby's not "chiming" so it isn't coded to the sensor and therefore not registering any of his care. Now my son is saying he is a failure and will never be a good father because he is the worst person in the universe for shuting a plastic doll in the closet....and I can't say that I blame him. Who says AS kids are not empathetic?

I knew this was going to be a long night.....but had no idea how long! Grandma needs a cocktail....

Oh baby...tonight is going to be interesting...

My AS/ADHD 16 year old son is taking child growth and development this semester. Part of his duty is to take care of a "baby" for 24 hours. He is a super deep sleeper...so it is going to be interesting how this evening goes. I am a bit afraid that one of his brothers will decide to "mess" with the "baby" by shaking it or otherwise tease or convince him to do something bad to it...I am also afraid this thing is going to cry all night long and keep me up!

On the other hand....he may turn out to be a great "dad" and be very protective and do everything just right for a happy "baby"....we will see!

On a good note...his grades are higher than they ever have been, 3 A's a B and a C....he is turning in all his assignments and keeping his planner. His teachers are following through with signing it and being grounded to the living room is working. If this quarter keeps up well, we may lighten up a bit and let him go to his room and play on the computer AFTER we sign off on his agenda next quarter! : )

If he is the one in trouble....why am I the one being punished?

Ok....so Alex did get up promptly Sat AM and take his meds and started on his work. He divided it into some he could do Friday, some Sat and the rest Sunday. He was done about noon with his work...and per his grounding, spent the rest of the day on the couch with me. He helped me do some dishes..then his younger brothers and one of their friends agreed to play Dungeons and Dragons with him. We almost had a meltdown because they weren't playing it perfectly...but he self corrected and realized that he couldn't scream if he wanted them to keep playing with him. When they were done, they asked him to go outside and play kickball with them. He decided he would (I think as much to get away from being stuck in the living room than because of a sense of "trade").  I let him go upstairs finally about 8:00. He woke up Sunday am and was given the choice to help with some family chores or do his missing Psychology assignments.

(Remember....at the end of the semester we found out that he threw away all of his notes for Psychology from the first semester....because he didn't want to remember D's. That sounds great but he failed to realize it is a YEAR LONG class and AP with both an AP exam and an end of course exam in May!)

He printed out all the back Psych study guides and proceeded to do half of them while focused...until about 2:30.  He sat at the table and played a solitaire game of D and D...how I don't know...and announced at 5:30 he was going to bed. I said nope...so he sat and pouted until 9:00 when I finally let him go upstairs. His room is trashed again....I don't know how since he isn't ever in it!

On the positive side...he did two loads of laundry Sunday! (New Years rule....if you want clean clothes you have to do them yourself!)

OK...so I am now ready to KILL my child! I spend all day dealing with kids...some sick, some crying, some behavior issues. While I am typing this...a kid is screaming in the background and another mom is letting her baby play with everything on the nurses station...the last thing I want to deal with when I get home is arguing over homework and meltdowns, being told what to do by my middle kid (yes we are in counseling and no I don't do what he says), trying to help the youngest if he needs something...and all the while arguing with SD over what is AS and what is laziness, what is disrespectful and what is me not demanding respect, what is whiney cry baby and what is sensitive and easy to upset...basically....what is our fault and what is just the way the kids are...

Some days I feel like it is all my fault because I screwed something up with all three of them...and some days I feel like it is because I am such a great mother that the AS kid, the bully, and the manipulative cry baby are all turning out to be decent human beings....I hope!

To believe or not to believe....or Spanish will be the death of me....

I wish I had known that my son had Aspergers at the beginning of the school year....I wish I had known that Aspies don't do well with studying foreign languages. I knew he had a C in Spanish 1 (not bad for not doing any homework for 1/2 the class)...so based on the requirement for college prep of 2-3 years of foreign language...we signed him up for Spanish 2. First quarter...he was excited. A new interesting teacher and completed assignments meant he had a B for the first quarter. Most of it must have been some review of Spanish 1 as well. He began to get bogged down by early second quarter so a tutor was arranged. This was a peer of his and come to find out they spent most of the sessions discussing overthrowing the government rather than reviewing Spanish. Alex, as you all know by now, missed a week mid-second quarter, and this was the only teacher not cooperating with parent communication. He failed the second quarter and wound up with a D for the semester.

As part of his 504 plan, he was given the opportunity this week to make up a missing test and several missing big assignments....enough to bring his final grade to a C level. He went as instructed to get the  list of assignments...but neither he or the teacher thought about the fact that HE TURNED IN HIS BOOK AT THE END OF THE SEMESTER. UGH! So, today he apparently went to the classroom twice to borrow a book to make up his work...and the teacher was there neither time. He is notorious for lying about these things in the past so I don't know whether to believe him about trying to find the book...or if he "just forgot"...or if he hates Spanish so much he did it as an avoidance measure to keep from having to do the make up work over the weekend.....

Looks like Monday, Tuesday and Wens night will be long ones doing all his regular assignments and all his Spanish make up...because it all has to be turned in by the 12th!

504 status....after 12 years of waiting.

Haven't had much time to blog since school started, but went to a school conference with the IEP coordinator and the guidance counselor and all his teachers on the first day of school.

Yeah! He is finally listed as a 504...which essentially means that the school accepts that he is different and has to make some exceptions to the rules because of it. First of all, even though he is in 11th grade all of his teachers have to verify at the end of class that he actually wrote down his assignment and initial it. At the end of the day, his last teacher has to verify that all the other teachers did what they were supposed to....when he comes home from school he does his homework and then I, or SD look at his agenda and verify that each item is completed and sign off on it. When he get back to school the next day, if an assignment isn't turned in or late or missing...we all know it was done and we can then try and figure out where he lost it. Second, his visits to the psychologist for his disorder will not count against his absences. Third, he gets to leave his text books at home....so he never "forgets" them. All he carries in his backpack are his notebooks. He has a textbook in each class for his use in class. Thankfully, by college all his books will be on a lightweight kindle probably anyway so that won't matter. Fourth, all of his teachers will break down big projects into smaller step by step assignments.
Fifth, Every Monday morning, I will email his teachers and remind them to email back with a weekly progress report on how things went for the past week.

At this time there are no plans for a reduced work load....every subject but psychology seems like a reasonable amount to me...and that is an AP class so he just needs to accept the work load (especially since that is his planned college major...and if he can cut it in HS he isn't going to make it in college).

They did discuss with the Spanish 2 teacher from last semester, and have given him a list of about 6 missing assignments to do over this weekend, and a test to take next Thursday...if he accomplishes that....he will bring his grade up to a C for the semester, rather than a D....and we will talk to college about perhaps waiving the foreign language requirement or substituting another class for it since it is hard enough for him to learn to speak English and Expression without have to learn it all in a different language.

I like all his teachers...a lot. His Psychology teacher has seen through his bullshit, and says he is very gifted in that area and there is no reason he can't have an A and get a 4 or 5 on the AP exam...he just has to do his study guides. His English teacher this year is focused on Literature and is more than willing to think outside the box. He suggested that Alex use audio CD's if he doesn't like "reading" the books (so we went and bought a $20 portable cd player and went to two different libraries to find The Great Gatsby...and it is working!) (I found it interesting that two different librarians both spelled Gatsby wrong...I guess classics just aren't what they used to be!). His Chemistry teacher is a young cute lady who loves her subject...and the fact that Alex is excited to be learning all about how to balance equations. His US history teacher is good at making history exciting and understandable and interesting....so hopefully that will be a good thing. Alex's final class is Child Growth and Development...which is broken down into two parts...one half text book and the other half as a preschool teacher/observer of child development and psychology (again...his special interest).

So far, I am optimistic about the upcoming semester.....we will see how it goes!

12 years later.....and we FINALLY have a 504!

Met with the High School for the second time today. I pointed out how frustrated I was that since the "accomodations" that my sons grades are worse than ever. T

Cleaning time!

Ok...so Step-dad might not have been as impressed with what my boys accomplished yesterday...but I saw how hard all three worked. His kiddo required just as much help as my two biologically did. All three worked for 5 solid hours...then loaded the truck with the goodwill stuff for me while I was in the shower without even being asked to! They reorganized their closets....donated 8 huge plastic bags full of clothes to goodwill and otherwise straightened up.

My AS son did just as well as his NT brothers. Now, granted they are three years younger....most people would have expected better...but since his was the room I was dreading the most, it was a blessed relief. He did it all by himself. He requested several mini-inspections, where I would give him guidance about what needed to be worked on next (in a big list form so he could pick the task he wanted to do first), but in the end he got them all done. We ran out of time and energy to vacuum....so of course SD pointed that out and apparently I didn't remind him about under the bed...so he got critiqued for that...

Ok....so my husband is not quite the "taskmaster" that it sounds like...I was using him being gone to work and the kids surprising him to motivate them. He didn't yell at them about their rooms...just pointed out one kid neglected all his drawers and the other under the bed....

It would have been nice if he would have given them a positive...good job son...but he is old school former Army Ranger...and when a superior does a bunk inspection...nothing bad is praise enough. I don't hold to that way of thinking so they got plenty of praise from me! (Along with a list of things to finish up today!)

So, here is what we accomplished today,

-with much less assistance than ever before my AS kid cleaned and organized his own room. (boy how I wish he had gotten the organization freak type of AS...but oh well)

-he learned a valuable communication lesson about how normal people do not live like hoarders...and that he has a "hoarding gene" that he must fight like an "addiction gene"

-he was rewarded by an evening alone with his computer

-he is ready to tackle the rest of the "easier tasks" today like vacuuming and cleaning the bathroom (which is surprisingly not so bad)

The great thing about his college of choice is that he can get a single occupancy room with his own bathroom in one of the dorm quads...at the same price as a double occupancy (due to his diagnosis) so that he can learn to live with strangers and share the common area (kitchen and living room) while still having his own private area to retreat to and study in! Now we just have to make the grades to get into college!

More background....

I realized that I sort of left the past hanging....I stopped the story at 4th grade and he is in 11th now. For the sake of completeness (if that is a word), I'll finish the story.

Third grade was the year his father and I got divorced. Over the summer before 4th, we moved to a new house and he went to a new school...with Mrs. Wonderful, the worlds best teacher. I started dating again, a guy who's son I was convinced had AS. Strange how I could see all the signs in him but not my own son. This kid was a great kid...but definately had AS. He loved to turn in circles, hated to be touched or hugged...even by his parents. He couldn't make eye contact and would look down and away when asked a question. He would answer questions with brief sentences. He had a NT younger sister, who was the same age as my AS kiddo. Those 4 made quite the group. Nobody thought any behaviors were strange....everyone understood weird or odd behaviors.

At this point, Alex, my son was deeply involved in community theatre. I have read recently that it is a great activity for AS kids. They seem to have no stage fright, their loud speech and over exaggerated facial expressions are prized. They memorize scripts of conversations, with specific directed emotions...so they learn to put that face, with those words to convey that expression, like anger or fear. He did very well with the tech side of things as well (no suprise there!).  I remember that grades were a struggle, and he still never did homework. He failed spelling that year....but was busy learning Latin at the gifted program. I was assured that spelling issues were a frequent problem with gifted children because they learn to read before they learn to spell rather than at the same time. I don't know...I think that AS gifted kids have trouble spelling. Anyway...he auditioned and was accepted to a magnet school for drama focus. We were very excited because he knew a bunch of the kids that were already in the program from the community theatre. 

We had an incident just before school got out for the summer. He had one of those giant sized pencils. Well, he was forever forgetting to bring his supplies to school...so he decided to try and use that pencil in class, but it needed to be sharpened. Now, in hindsight a NT kid would have brought a different pencil, or asked the teacher for help, or brought it home to sharpen. My son took his pocket knife to school and proceeded to get it out at the start of class to sharpen his pencil. By the time I got to the school, the police were already involved. He was suspended immediately pending an investigation. Looking back, it was very odd that the school requested that he come in for standardized testing for 5 of the 10 days of his suspension....but I took him figuring that if they tried to say he was such a danger...it wouldn't hold up in court if they asked him to come back. We meet with the school district head lady....and she unsuspended him, but that was the last day of 5th grade. It didn't affect his entrance to the drama program though.

6th, 7th and 8th were a blur.....all three of us were involved in the theatre...Alex had great teachers...he got to go on school field trips to Atlanta, DC, and NYC. He seemed to have friends...the kids he hung out with at school were the kids he hung out with at home, because they all did the same after school activities, or were my friends kids. He still hadn't outgrown his Pokemon craze and his best friend was actually a senior in HS (who probably had AS).  His grades were ok...several times he was on the honor roll. He was a junior scholar. He told me he didn't understand the middle school dating rules, that "revenge dating" didn't make sense to him. Where a girl goes out with one boy just to make another jealous. I was assured he was very "mature" socially and would bloom in high school and college.

The summer between 8th grade and high school....I had a whirlwind romance and was married within 3 months to Step-dad. Soon after, I adopted his son...who was the same age as my youngest. Alex seemed to get much worse after that....or else I just became sensitized. Having another NT kid in the house provided a stark contrast to what was going on with Alex. Then he started high school (with all the same kids in the same drama focus program), and decided he was having so much fun with theatre...that he didn't do any homework. For the first time, he began to fall behind due to lack of homework. Algebra 2 was a struggle when he never did any assignments. I felt like I was being judged (I wasn't but I felt like it) by Step-dad because I hadn't taught him better work ethics. The younger 2 started middle school....and both had straight A's and were doing homework without prompts. Alex also had his own room for the first time ever, and began to spend more and more time alone.

To make matters worse, for him....the family made the decision to move half way across the country. He had to change houses, change schools and leave the kids that he had gone to school with for 4+ years. Where he came from the drama kids are more popular than the football players.....it was a very special school. The school he moved to was a massive super school. Still, his teachers assured us he was bright, social, polite....he just had an aversion to classwork. Don't worry, they would say...he'll do fine in college. After much yelling, grounding, harassing, counseling sessions, med adjustments....he managed to finish up the 10th grade year with nothing less than a C and a couple of Bs.

By the end of the school year, the psychologist and psychiatrist he was seeing suggested that we have him tested for Aspergers....and by September of 2011 at the age of 16 1/2....he was finally diagnosed. So far, things have gotten worse not better!

Home again....here we go....

So my sons flew home last night from their Christmas vacation. Aparently, my son was having a rather loud (because he is always loud) conversation at the airport about, "How do they really know I don't have a bomb in  my pocket?" His younger brothers hushed him up before security could get involved and they made the flight and flew home safely.

He walked in the door...instantly walked up and hugged me and said how much he missed me...the walked upstairs to his bedroom and I didn't see him again until this morning at 11:30. My youngest son, took note of the fact that I didn't pick them up and was looking a bit pale and asked if I was sick (which I was). Near midnight, we got a call from a neighbor inviting us to come and toast in the new year with us. The two younger boys jumped at the chance to go...but of course the oldest prefered to spend the New Year in his room. His phone wasn't on so I couldn't even text him happy New Year. I guess he spent it the way he wanted.

I hope he is enjoying his last day of computer time. Tomorrow the grounding starts and the new "grade plan".  The idea is that he comes home from school, showers, shaves (after school seems to be his preferred time because he says it washed the school stress away), and then sits down at the table for supervised homework time with his step-dad until I get home from work. I feel like we are back in second grade instead of 11th. I found his 8th grade final report...all A and Bs...honor roll even! What have I done wrong since then? (except get married, add a new step-brother, move to a new state and new school, have him lose one of his friend to an accident....ok so maybe it has been a stressful 2 years for the kid).

Next, week Step-dad and I have an appointment with the AS specialist, who also does his weekly group social skills therapy sessions. I am hoping for hints on how to help my son improve his grades....and to hopefully straighten out in S.D's mind how much of my son's issues are laziness and how much is do to anxiety and overwhelm from his AS.  I think there may be a bit of both!

Tomorrow is going to be a fun day. I have given all three boys warning and a day to get their rooms straightened out before I come through and start throwing things away. Should have a fun post tomorrow....