Thursday, April 29, 2010
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Educational Solution?
We had Elise's reconvened IEP with the school district last Thursday. We are returning the signed paperwork tomorrow morning. We are signing in disagreement to the instructional setting & the services. Our reason for disagreeing with the instructional setting is that we want her in the least restrictive environment. Our reason for disagreeing with the services is that Elise needs 1:1 BII/BID services with a non-public agency (her ABA provider) in order to support this placement. We are consenting to the implementation of speech and occupational therapy services. The best news we have is that the lawyer contact we had has agreed to take Elise's case. She works on a contingency basis, so she only takes cases that she feels she can win. I take that as a good sign. She feels we have a very strong case and we seriously hope that she is right. We really want Elise to benefit from being around typically developing peers. I strongly feel that the options presented for her education to this point are really just warehousing her and are not the best thing for her future.
This week has been ok with Elise. The weeks are just really difficult because the only time I spend with her is in the evenings when she's tired. When Elise is tired, her autism symptoms are exacerbated. It's just hard. I wish that I was able to spend more time with her when she's on so that I can feel that hope more often. It's just such an endless tunnel right now and we don't know when we'll see the light at the end, or if they'll ever be an end.
I read Elise's IEP report and I think that's what has turned my positive outlook a bit more negative lately. It's so tough to read assessments of where she is developmentally and see right there in front of me statements like "Deficits in cognitive ability will impact her ability to access the general preschool curriculum" and this doozy of a paragraph: "Elise's social development is estimated in the well below average range. Elise's academic skills are estimated within the well below average range. Overall adaptive skills appear within the well below average range." I really fail to see her "deficits" as so poor. She has so many strengths that are just overlooked. Yes, she's very autistic, but I really don't believe she has cognitive deficits. Her autism and lack of compliance often keep her from being able to demonstrate her vast abilities. This has improved dramatically with therapy. No one who has worked with her for an extended period of time seems to think that she is suffering from any mental retardation. On the other hand, no one will commit to saying that she isn't mentally retarded because she's so young, but we regularly hear that she shows lots of good signs. I know I'm her mother, but I think that she's actually really smart. Given how isolated she has been in her own world and the vast amount of time she spent with little to no receptive language skills, I am astounded by how many skills she has essentially self-taught. That takes a lot of intelligence. She is coming along, we just need to keep unlocking the chambers in her mind to open her up to the rest of the world and let us all in to take a look.
One huge positive is that she prefers to be with people rather than alone. She is actually quite social, she just needs to be taught how to interact because that learning is not innate for her. God, I love her so much. It kills me to read these kind of things about my baby.
On Sunday, Elise became really upset when hubby was leaving to take the dog out while the rest of the family was putting on shoes and getting ready to go to the car for a trip to the store. Those moments are always chaotic and stressful for all of us and she didn't understand what was happening. She left the house with me (she was screaming) and got into her car seat. As I was buckling her in to her seat, she began to calm. I looked at her and told her that I think it must be really hard for her not to understand what's happening. I asked her if it would help her if I always first showed her pictures of what we are planning to do next. To my surprise, she looked me in the eyes, nodded her head and attempted to say yes. I acted nonchalant about her response and just told her that I would start to do that. However, I was really stunned because I think she knew exactly what we were discussing. I'm also pretty sure that no one believes me when I tell this story, but I was there and I know there was a very clear moment of connection between us. These odd moments are what keep me fighting and striving for any possible way to help her.
I went out this week and bought lots of staples for our new gluten-free, casein-free (GFCF) pantry. Surprisingly, it has only so far amounted to $100 to stock up on all the various flours, starches, baking powder, bread mixes, etc... Now the real test begins this weekend when I actually attempt to test bake some recipes. We have GFCF Chicken Nuggets on the menu for Friday night and GFCF chocolate cake with GFCF chocolate frosting for Friday afternoon to celebrate the nanny's birthday. It should be interesting. Thank goodness I actually enjoy baking. A part of me is excited to get to make everything from scratch. It'll be an adventure. We have found good substitutes to a lot of the foods with gluten and casein that she currently eats, but we still have to find more. For instance, pizza & macaroni and cheese will be a challenge. She'll manage, it's her brothers that will have the more difficult time. However, I can't serve it to them because if it's in the house, Elise will definitely want it. We're also very dependent on bread for things like sandwiches. Hopefully some of the bread mixes I have and the recipe for GFCF bread made from scratch will be tasty. I've not been at all impressed with the store bought GFCF breads, but I've heard tales that the homemade are much better. Let's hope that's true.
We'll just continue plodding through the next few weeks and hope for the best. The bottom line is that Elise is steadily improving and, even though there's been no huge breakthrough like I dream about, the progress is continuous. Who cares if she gets there in one huge burst or slow and steady like a turtle? As long as she gets there.
This week has been ok with Elise. The weeks are just really difficult because the only time I spend with her is in the evenings when she's tired. When Elise is tired, her autism symptoms are exacerbated. It's just hard. I wish that I was able to spend more time with her when she's on so that I can feel that hope more often. It's just such an endless tunnel right now and we don't know when we'll see the light at the end, or if they'll ever be an end.
I read Elise's IEP report and I think that's what has turned my positive outlook a bit more negative lately. It's so tough to read assessments of where she is developmentally and see right there in front of me statements like "Deficits in cognitive ability will impact her ability to access the general preschool curriculum" and this doozy of a paragraph: "Elise's social development is estimated in the well below average range. Elise's academic skills are estimated within the well below average range. Overall adaptive skills appear within the well below average range." I really fail to see her "deficits" as so poor. She has so many strengths that are just overlooked. Yes, she's very autistic, but I really don't believe she has cognitive deficits. Her autism and lack of compliance often keep her from being able to demonstrate her vast abilities. This has improved dramatically with therapy. No one who has worked with her for an extended period of time seems to think that she is suffering from any mental retardation. On the other hand, no one will commit to saying that she isn't mentally retarded because she's so young, but we regularly hear that she shows lots of good signs. I know I'm her mother, but I think that she's actually really smart. Given how isolated she has been in her own world and the vast amount of time she spent with little to no receptive language skills, I am astounded by how many skills she has essentially self-taught. That takes a lot of intelligence. She is coming along, we just need to keep unlocking the chambers in her mind to open her up to the rest of the world and let us all in to take a look.
One huge positive is that she prefers to be with people rather than alone. She is actually quite social, she just needs to be taught how to interact because that learning is not innate for her. God, I love her so much. It kills me to read these kind of things about my baby.
On Sunday, Elise became really upset when hubby was leaving to take the dog out while the rest of the family was putting on shoes and getting ready to go to the car for a trip to the store. Those moments are always chaotic and stressful for all of us and she didn't understand what was happening. She left the house with me (she was screaming) and got into her car seat. As I was buckling her in to her seat, she began to calm. I looked at her and told her that I think it must be really hard for her not to understand what's happening. I asked her if it would help her if I always first showed her pictures of what we are planning to do next. To my surprise, she looked me in the eyes, nodded her head and attempted to say yes. I acted nonchalant about her response and just told her that I would start to do that. However, I was really stunned because I think she knew exactly what we were discussing. I'm also pretty sure that no one believes me when I tell this story, but I was there and I know there was a very clear moment of connection between us. These odd moments are what keep me fighting and striving for any possible way to help her.
I went out this week and bought lots of staples for our new gluten-free, casein-free (GFCF) pantry. Surprisingly, it has only so far amounted to $100 to stock up on all the various flours, starches, baking powder, bread mixes, etc... Now the real test begins this weekend when I actually attempt to test bake some recipes. We have GFCF Chicken Nuggets on the menu for Friday night and GFCF chocolate cake with GFCF chocolate frosting for Friday afternoon to celebrate the nanny's birthday. It should be interesting. Thank goodness I actually enjoy baking. A part of me is excited to get to make everything from scratch. It'll be an adventure. We have found good substitutes to a lot of the foods with gluten and casein that she currently eats, but we still have to find more. For instance, pizza & macaroni and cheese will be a challenge. She'll manage, it's her brothers that will have the more difficult time. However, I can't serve it to them because if it's in the house, Elise will definitely want it. We're also very dependent on bread for things like sandwiches. Hopefully some of the bread mixes I have and the recipe for GFCF bread made from scratch will be tasty. I've not been at all impressed with the store bought GFCF breads, but I've heard tales that the homemade are much better. Let's hope that's true.
We'll just continue plodding through the next few weeks and hope for the best. The bottom line is that Elise is steadily improving and, even though there's been no huge breakthrough like I dream about, the progress is continuous. Who cares if she gets there in one huge burst or slow and steady like a turtle? As long as she gets there.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Hope
It's continued to be really busy weeks. My work just becomes more and more crazy. It's a daily battle not to get sucked into really long hours. I wouldn't mind that ocassionally, but at this place, if a give too much, that much more will be expected. I have to stay focused that, yes, I need to work, but that my reason for working at this point in life is solely to provide for all the kids, particularly for Elise's extensive current needs. At least I'm becoming more comfortable with the environment in the office.
We continued to have another rough week after my last post. We became so suspicious of the GABA that she had started taking, that we pulled her off of it. Her behavior and temper tantrums improved immediately. As a bonus, her sleep has continued to be great, even without the GABA. It's weird that she didn't start sleeping well until we gave her GABA, but now that it's been withdrawn for two weeks, she's still sleeping well. Let's hope that continues. I've chalked up the GABA experience as a colossial failure. Another item to place on our checklist of treatments that do not benefit Elise. Fortunately, we have another, longer, checklist of things that really do seem to be benefitting her. I do need to contact her doctor to tell her about our experience with the GABA and make sure that we made the correct decision by removing it. I mean, there are treatments where the child worsens before they improve and I should verify that GABA wasn't supposed to be like that.
For treatments that do seem to benefit her, I am singing the praises of Vitamin B12. We started her on 500mcg last Saturday evening. She seems to be more engaged, attentive and communicating more effectively. She in general seems more aware of things. For example, she has this week started to indicate discomfort to us when she needs her diaper changed. Hooray because I REALLY want her out of diapers. She's also attempting more new words. It's too early to tell for sure, but I think this one may really be helping her. Time will tell, but I'm optimistic. The B12 has been shown to help some children with their expressive language. On the flip side, some children will become very hyper and stimmy when taking B12. We haven't seen any sign of this with Elise yet.
Next week, we plan to begin eliminating casein from Elise's diet. I've been reading a book recommended by her doctor about how to implement the diet. The book provides lots of recipes for gluten free casein free (GFCF) cooking. I've also switched Elise from Whole Grain Rice Milk to Almond Milk. She absolutely loves the almond milk. I'm going to practice some GFCF recipes this weekend, particularly baking recipes. I first need to buy some flours that meet the diet's specifications. It'll be an experience. My first goal is to find recipes that taste relatively close to the gluten filled things she already loves. My concern with the casein free is finding snack items for her to eat. She loves to have apples and peas for snack, which of course are acceptable. However, she is a kid and she also likes to eat chips and goldfish. Since these things are still around the house - I'm not sure yet if I want to committ to eliminating this for the boys also - we need to find suitable alternatives. It promises to be yet another experience.
This morning we had Elise's reconvened IEP. It was uneventful. We told them why we didn't want to accept the offer and what we instead wanted. They told us that they were standing by their offer. End of story. We sat there for about 30 minutes while they typed in the information to their forms. Since it was taking so long and we had to get back to work, we arranged to return tomorrow and pick up the forms. They think we're coming to sign in disagreement, but our lawyer has told us to let her read through them before we sign. We'll just pick up a copy so that we can share it with the lawyer. Fun stuff. We said that we wanted to proceed to mediation, skipping the informal dispute resolution step. We're so divergent on what we want versus the offer right now that I think the informal dispute resolution would be a waste of everyone's time. We have decided to push for a preschool setting with typically developing peers for approximately 10 hours per week. The entire time in school should be spent with a 1:1 BII (Behavioral Aide) from Elise's ABA agency. This BII service will include 6 hours per month of BID services. This is the director / supervisor of the behavioral interventions for Elise at school. We also want 2 hours of speech per week and 2 hours of occupational therapy per week. I don't know if we can get all of that, but we're sure going to try our hardest to receive this.
Not much else to report. I'm really hoping that Elise continues the progress that she has been on for the last week. Here I go again, fantasizing about the magic solution that will heal her. Could B12 really be a key for her? I know it won't cure her on its own, but it may be a real key in propelling her forward. I just want her speech to progress!
We continued to have another rough week after my last post. We became so suspicious of the GABA that she had started taking, that we pulled her off of it. Her behavior and temper tantrums improved immediately. As a bonus, her sleep has continued to be great, even without the GABA. It's weird that she didn't start sleeping well until we gave her GABA, but now that it's been withdrawn for two weeks, she's still sleeping well. Let's hope that continues. I've chalked up the GABA experience as a colossial failure. Another item to place on our checklist of treatments that do not benefit Elise. Fortunately, we have another, longer, checklist of things that really do seem to be benefitting her. I do need to contact her doctor to tell her about our experience with the GABA and make sure that we made the correct decision by removing it. I mean, there are treatments where the child worsens before they improve and I should verify that GABA wasn't supposed to be like that.
For treatments that do seem to benefit her, I am singing the praises of Vitamin B12. We started her on 500mcg last Saturday evening. She seems to be more engaged, attentive and communicating more effectively. She in general seems more aware of things. For example, she has this week started to indicate discomfort to us when she needs her diaper changed. Hooray because I REALLY want her out of diapers. She's also attempting more new words. It's too early to tell for sure, but I think this one may really be helping her. Time will tell, but I'm optimistic. The B12 has been shown to help some children with their expressive language. On the flip side, some children will become very hyper and stimmy when taking B12. We haven't seen any sign of this with Elise yet.
Next week, we plan to begin eliminating casein from Elise's diet. I've been reading a book recommended by her doctor about how to implement the diet. The book provides lots of recipes for gluten free casein free (GFCF) cooking. I've also switched Elise from Whole Grain Rice Milk to Almond Milk. She absolutely loves the almond milk. I'm going to practice some GFCF recipes this weekend, particularly baking recipes. I first need to buy some flours that meet the diet's specifications. It'll be an experience. My first goal is to find recipes that taste relatively close to the gluten filled things she already loves. My concern with the casein free is finding snack items for her to eat. She loves to have apples and peas for snack, which of course are acceptable. However, she is a kid and she also likes to eat chips and goldfish. Since these things are still around the house - I'm not sure yet if I want to committ to eliminating this for the boys also - we need to find suitable alternatives. It promises to be yet another experience.
This morning we had Elise's reconvened IEP. It was uneventful. We told them why we didn't want to accept the offer and what we instead wanted. They told us that they were standing by their offer. End of story. We sat there for about 30 minutes while they typed in the information to their forms. Since it was taking so long and we had to get back to work, we arranged to return tomorrow and pick up the forms. They think we're coming to sign in disagreement, but our lawyer has told us to let her read through them before we sign. We'll just pick up a copy so that we can share it with the lawyer. Fun stuff. We said that we wanted to proceed to mediation, skipping the informal dispute resolution step. We're so divergent on what we want versus the offer right now that I think the informal dispute resolution would be a waste of everyone's time. We have decided to push for a preschool setting with typically developing peers for approximately 10 hours per week. The entire time in school should be spent with a 1:1 BII (Behavioral Aide) from Elise's ABA agency. This BII service will include 6 hours per month of BID services. This is the director / supervisor of the behavioral interventions for Elise at school. We also want 2 hours of speech per week and 2 hours of occupational therapy per week. I don't know if we can get all of that, but we're sure going to try our hardest to receive this.
Not much else to report. I'm really hoping that Elise continues the progress that she has been on for the last week. Here I go again, fantasizing about the magic solution that will heal her. Could B12 really be a key for her? I know it won't cure her on its own, but it may be a real key in propelling her forward. I just want her speech to progress!
Thursday, April 8, 2010
April already...
Time is going by so quickly. It's shocking to me that we've only been dealing with Elise's diagnosis for a little more than 7 months. It seems like a lifetime, even though time is flying. It's hard to remember life before autism invaded every aspect of everything.
Elise has had a rough week. It started going downhill last Sunday. She ate a lot of Easter candy, especially jelly beans. She became really irritable and, well, just addicted to the candy. She would point at the counter asking for the candy. When I'd tell her no more, she would drop to the floor and throw a tantrum. I guess this isn't all that unusual for a child her age, except that this continued for literally hours, endless hours. She would do nothing else but obsess about the candy. It was seriously disturbing. I have since confiscated all the kids candy and hidden it. I've told the boys that if they ask for it in front of Elise, the answer is no. I let them have some of it when she's not around. I've suspected for a long time that her behavior worsens when she has sugary things. After Easter, hubby has now bought into my theory on sugar also. She also spent some time when she was on her sugar high laughing inappropriately. We've been there before and sugar was big on those days also. A common link is finally discovered. Maybe diet will make a difference for her. We'll just have to try and see.
Since Sunday, Elise has been battling a cold. Therefore, she's returned to being very clingy with me and throwing big fits when I'm out of her sight. It's quite stifling and controlling. Augh! We've also discovered that she's becoming lazy about working. She tries hard to get away with doing the minimum required of her. Smart, but not helpful in continuing to push her development.
Elise is doing well in speech. She has a speech book where we've added pictures. She loves to look through it and practice the words. She seems to be trying really hard, but she's incredibly difficult to understand. For some reason, she has a super difficult time completing a word. For example, Ball is Ba, Cheese is Chi, Adam is Am, Me is Mm, Juice is Ju, you get the idea. She has a really hard time putting together two syllables. For example, Bubble is B unless you remind her to make two sounds. Then, she'll say B-B, but it's very disjointed. Same with Choo-choo (train is too hard for her to say). She'll say it, but the two syllables don't flow easily. I'm so proud of how hard she's trying but at the same time I'm so disappointed to see how difficult this is for her. It tears me apart to deal with the two strong emotions simultaneously without letting on to Elise that I feel any sort of disappointment. The disappointment is not in her, it's in the reality of seeing so plainly how impaired she truly is. Seeing her struggle in speech like that slams home the reality of how truly severe her situation can be.
Today was a really rough day for Elise. Her poor nanny. I think she was really upset by all the difficulties Elise had today. Her reaction to Elise's rough days is not much different than mine. It brings us both to tears. I know that she loves Elise because why else would she stay in such a difficult situation. When she told me about her upcoming surgery, her chief concern seemed to be how we would find someone who would be patient and supportive enough for Elise. She is an extraordinary person.
So today was rough primarily because Elise has such a hard time with changes in routine. I went into work late because I was taking Elise to visit a potential new preschool for her and Brendan. That broke her precious morning routine. On top of that, she shows up with her nanny, me & later her dad to sit in this strange school where everyone is talking about her. Then, she gets to go to a classroom where she meets lots of other grown ups and sees other kids and lots of fun toys. She sat down to have a snack with the other children and attempted to join in circle time (kind of, sort of). She was pretty much in her own world while we were there which drove the point home to me that she can only attend school with a 1:1 teacher student ratio. That includes the special education classroom settings. She threw a semi-tantrum about leaving a toy she was holding when we left and then threw a tantrum when we wouldn't let her play in the playground there. At least she showed her true self so the school knows how she really is.
We liked the school. The teachers seemed willing to work with her and include her in their classroom. We explained that she'll only attend if we have her behaviorist aide with her at all times. They appeared fine with that situation. The director seems willing to work with the situation also, although I don't think they're very experienced in handling a child like Elise. That makes sense though since that's not their job and we don't expect it to be. As long as it's a safe, nurturing environment that works to include her, we'll be very happy. I think Brendan would really like it there, but then Brendan likes it everywhere.
We're actually attempting to buy a house soon. We've finally gotten together all of our paperwork for the mortgage guy. We have a definite weakness in that we don't have enough savings right now, so probably we won't be able to buy for a few months. We were hoping to be under contract by 4/30 so that we wouldn't have to pay the exhorbitant taxes we owe on the 15th, but that's most likely not going to happen. We'll miss the federal first time homebuyers credit, but we should be able to get the state's credit and that'll help us a lot in the future. Either way, it's been a stressful week. Now, we have to figure out how we'll manage to pay our taxes next week with no money. I refuse to pay penalty and interest, so we'll scrounge around to make it happen somehow. I have to remind myself to stop throwing a pity party for myself and just be happy that we probably will be able to make this happen if we scrounge hard enough. It would be worse if we truly had no options. However, we're getting dangerously closer to that prospect. It cracks me up that we can't afford a home, but we can't afford not to have a home. I guess we're just the people who don't fit the mold and slip through the cracks of the tax code. Anyway, with taking care of all this home buying thing this week, we have managed to be extra stressed and less attentive to the kids. Not good for them, but a person can only do so much. This too shall pass. I seem to say that far too often.
Elise began taking GABA last Sunday night. It seems to be doing wonders for her insomnia. She's regularly sleeping the night now as far as we know. On the flip side, she's much more spacey and stimy during the day. My theory for this is that she used to take 2-3 hours each night to unwind and have her alone, down-time. Now that she's sleeping, she never has this opportunity, so she spaces more during the day. Still, it's more important to have her sleeping well. Hopefully as she adapts, she'll learn how to need less time to unwind and have alone, down-time.
Tomorrow I'm going to pick up B12 vitamin for her. We're hoping this will help with her expressive language skills. At this point, our number 1 concern is to help her develop expressive language. There's a lot more to tackle, but this is at the top of my list. Let's hope we're one of the lucky ones who see good results with B12. Some children apparently get very hyper and stimy on it and therefore can't use it.
After we spend a week on the B12, we'll start eliminating casein from her diet. Then, it'll be gluten. She'll spend at least 3 months on a gluten-free, casein-free diet. We'll then evaluate whether the diet helps her or not. If it does, it'll become a way of life. If it doesn't, well, we'll know that we tried it and we'll never have doubts that we missed something obvious like diet as a way to recover her.
Enough of this, I suppose that I should get some sleep now. Tomorrow I contact our new realtor & the advocate we plan to use. Elise has her IEP rescheduled for the Thursday after next. We need to have a game plan in place by that time so that we ensure we're on the right path to getting Elise the option we want of private preschool with a 1:1 aide.
Good night.
Elise has had a rough week. It started going downhill last Sunday. She ate a lot of Easter candy, especially jelly beans. She became really irritable and, well, just addicted to the candy. She would point at the counter asking for the candy. When I'd tell her no more, she would drop to the floor and throw a tantrum. I guess this isn't all that unusual for a child her age, except that this continued for literally hours, endless hours. She would do nothing else but obsess about the candy. It was seriously disturbing. I have since confiscated all the kids candy and hidden it. I've told the boys that if they ask for it in front of Elise, the answer is no. I let them have some of it when she's not around. I've suspected for a long time that her behavior worsens when she has sugary things. After Easter, hubby has now bought into my theory on sugar also. She also spent some time when she was on her sugar high laughing inappropriately. We've been there before and sugar was big on those days also. A common link is finally discovered. Maybe diet will make a difference for her. We'll just have to try and see.
Since Sunday, Elise has been battling a cold. Therefore, she's returned to being very clingy with me and throwing big fits when I'm out of her sight. It's quite stifling and controlling. Augh! We've also discovered that she's becoming lazy about working. She tries hard to get away with doing the minimum required of her. Smart, but not helpful in continuing to push her development.
Elise is doing well in speech. She has a speech book where we've added pictures. She loves to look through it and practice the words. She seems to be trying really hard, but she's incredibly difficult to understand. For some reason, she has a super difficult time completing a word. For example, Ball is Ba, Cheese is Chi, Adam is Am, Me is Mm, Juice is Ju, you get the idea. She has a really hard time putting together two syllables. For example, Bubble is B unless you remind her to make two sounds. Then, she'll say B-B, but it's very disjointed. Same with Choo-choo (train is too hard for her to say). She'll say it, but the two syllables don't flow easily. I'm so proud of how hard she's trying but at the same time I'm so disappointed to see how difficult this is for her. It tears me apart to deal with the two strong emotions simultaneously without letting on to Elise that I feel any sort of disappointment. The disappointment is not in her, it's in the reality of seeing so plainly how impaired she truly is. Seeing her struggle in speech like that slams home the reality of how truly severe her situation can be.
Today was a really rough day for Elise. Her poor nanny. I think she was really upset by all the difficulties Elise had today. Her reaction to Elise's rough days is not much different than mine. It brings us both to tears. I know that she loves Elise because why else would she stay in such a difficult situation. When she told me about her upcoming surgery, her chief concern seemed to be how we would find someone who would be patient and supportive enough for Elise. She is an extraordinary person.
So today was rough primarily because Elise has such a hard time with changes in routine. I went into work late because I was taking Elise to visit a potential new preschool for her and Brendan. That broke her precious morning routine. On top of that, she shows up with her nanny, me & later her dad to sit in this strange school where everyone is talking about her. Then, she gets to go to a classroom where she meets lots of other grown ups and sees other kids and lots of fun toys. She sat down to have a snack with the other children and attempted to join in circle time (kind of, sort of). She was pretty much in her own world while we were there which drove the point home to me that she can only attend school with a 1:1 teacher student ratio. That includes the special education classroom settings. She threw a semi-tantrum about leaving a toy she was holding when we left and then threw a tantrum when we wouldn't let her play in the playground there. At least she showed her true self so the school knows how she really is.
We liked the school. The teachers seemed willing to work with her and include her in their classroom. We explained that she'll only attend if we have her behaviorist aide with her at all times. They appeared fine with that situation. The director seems willing to work with the situation also, although I don't think they're very experienced in handling a child like Elise. That makes sense though since that's not their job and we don't expect it to be. As long as it's a safe, nurturing environment that works to include her, we'll be very happy. I think Brendan would really like it there, but then Brendan likes it everywhere.
We're actually attempting to buy a house soon. We've finally gotten together all of our paperwork for the mortgage guy. We have a definite weakness in that we don't have enough savings right now, so probably we won't be able to buy for a few months. We were hoping to be under contract by 4/30 so that we wouldn't have to pay the exhorbitant taxes we owe on the 15th, but that's most likely not going to happen. We'll miss the federal first time homebuyers credit, but we should be able to get the state's credit and that'll help us a lot in the future. Either way, it's been a stressful week. Now, we have to figure out how we'll manage to pay our taxes next week with no money. I refuse to pay penalty and interest, so we'll scrounge around to make it happen somehow. I have to remind myself to stop throwing a pity party for myself and just be happy that we probably will be able to make this happen if we scrounge hard enough. It would be worse if we truly had no options. However, we're getting dangerously closer to that prospect. It cracks me up that we can't afford a home, but we can't afford not to have a home. I guess we're just the people who don't fit the mold and slip through the cracks of the tax code. Anyway, with taking care of all this home buying thing this week, we have managed to be extra stressed and less attentive to the kids. Not good for them, but a person can only do so much. This too shall pass. I seem to say that far too often.
Elise began taking GABA last Sunday night. It seems to be doing wonders for her insomnia. She's regularly sleeping the night now as far as we know. On the flip side, she's much more spacey and stimy during the day. My theory for this is that she used to take 2-3 hours each night to unwind and have her alone, down-time. Now that she's sleeping, she never has this opportunity, so she spaces more during the day. Still, it's more important to have her sleeping well. Hopefully as she adapts, she'll learn how to need less time to unwind and have alone, down-time.
Tomorrow I'm going to pick up B12 vitamin for her. We're hoping this will help with her expressive language skills. At this point, our number 1 concern is to help her develop expressive language. There's a lot more to tackle, but this is at the top of my list. Let's hope we're one of the lucky ones who see good results with B12. Some children apparently get very hyper and stimy on it and therefore can't use it.
After we spend a week on the B12, we'll start eliminating casein from her diet. Then, it'll be gluten. She'll spend at least 3 months on a gluten-free, casein-free diet. We'll then evaluate whether the diet helps her or not. If it does, it'll become a way of life. If it doesn't, well, we'll know that we tried it and we'll never have doubts that we missed something obvious like diet as a way to recover her.
Enough of this, I suppose that I should get some sleep now. Tomorrow I contact our new realtor & the advocate we plan to use. Elise has her IEP rescheduled for the Thursday after next. We need to have a game plan in place by that time so that we ensure we're on the right path to getting Elise the option we want of private preschool with a 1:1 aide.
Good night.
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