No school for a while

So, Kid Jedi went back to school yesterday and I got a call at 10:30 from the head of the Child Study Team. Their new recommendation is that we keep Kid Jedi home until he has his evaluation from CHOP on Wednesday. She said that he's learning bad habits and it can be detrimental to him to keep being punished for his doing things he has no real control over. So we'll be homeschooling for the next few days. His teacher sent home some worksheets, and said she'd work with me to get some more work to him, but they aren't doing a whole lot in class right now. Oh, and I can see why he doesn't want to do the work they give him. It's worksheets where you write the letters and then circle them in the picture below, and on the back it's coloring. Exactly the thing that Child Study Team said was torture for him last year!

He was supposed to stay until 12, but I picked him up at 10:45 at the Guidance Counsellor's office, she was great with him. He actually drew a flower on the chalkboard, my son who can't stand to write or draw drew the most beautiful flower! Again, I heard how much he wants to please and how smart he is, but he just can't control himself.

Child Study Team thinks he may have ADHD, but he definitely has some sensory issues. We'll see on Wednesday. In the meantime, I'll work with him here which will probably put him even further ahead of where they are teaching. When I worked with him Thursday, I went over 25 sight words that he should know by the end of Kindergarten, well he knew 19 of them, and of the 6 he said he didn't know, I've seen him read 4 of them. We're now working on writing them.

The school is hiring an one-on-one aid for him, they are looking for someone who has experience working with kids like Kid Jedi. Hopefully this will all work out. He's too smart to let fall through the cracks!

Looong first week of school

Well, to say that it's been a bad week would have to be an understatement. We got a call from the principal the first day of school to discuss Kid Jedi's behavior in the classroom. He called in the Child Study Team, you know, the people who said there was nothing wrong with Kid Jedi, he was just bored. Well, they went to see him on Day 2 of school, which was apparently worse than Day 1 since I got a call at 11 asking to come meet with the principal to discuss Kid Jedi's behavior and our options. He advised that a Behavior Therapist would be coming in to set up a Behavior Plan for the teacher and said that if we wanted, we could keep Kid Jedi home until the therapist could come in. Yeah, not happening, he needs to get adjusted and keeping him out until next Friday does him and his teacher an injustice because they lose that time to build an understanding of each other.

I did mention to the principal that I didn't want Kid Jedi to fall behind, I almost heard laughter at that, he said that that would not be a problem, he was very impressed with his vocabulary, and apparently Kid Jedi is the only Kindergartner or First Grader who can say his (the principal) name correctly.

After the first day, we called the ADHD Management Team at CHOP to see if we could move Kid Jedi's 9/22 evaluation appointment up, he's now going 9/16 and if anyone cancels in the meantime, we'll go in even earlier, though at this point I don't think that will happen.

And to top all this off one of our cats died after Kid Jedi went to bed on the first day of school, so I got to pick him up early from the principals office and then tell him what happened. We decided to keep him home yesterday because he was having such a difficult time with dealing with the cat's death (and yesterday was a full day, not 1/2 like the first 2 days), we knew that he would be even more unbearable in school.

So as of right now, his interventions are a weighted vest (I hope this works, I put something on his lap yesterday while we were doing some work and it helped), and he will have a shortened school day until we see what CHOP recommends. Next Friday the Behavior Therapist comes in and a behavior plan will be in place. The Child Study Team will be providing me with a report to take to CHOP on Wednesday so they can see what his school behavior has been and what they decided to try.

Here's hoping today will be better.

Met Kid Jedi's Teacher

Today was the Kindergarten Meet and Greet at our preschool I'd love to post pics of Kid Jedi with his teacher, but I forgot to take them. This is him getting ready to go.

This is him in his seat, which will probably be moved.

The reason it will probably be moved, is that in the 1 hour that he was in his classroom for his Meet and Greet, he decided at one point to try to go back to the playground. And, since his Kindergarten class has 20 students, one teacher, no aides, she's moving him so he doesn't have a beeline to the door.

He got the teacher that came to our Child Study Team conference, which is good. She talked with me a bit after the Meet & Greet, told me about him trying to leave and expressed some concern over his immature grip, she verified with me that they thought he didn't need OT for that, and yes, of course, when he was with the OT he held his marker the correct way, well, once he was verbally corrected. I advised his teacher that we were getting him evaluated by CHOP and she is more than willing to work with us. She is a wonderful teacher and very open to our input on what she can do to make it easier for Len, which is great. I'm going to be keeping in touch with her a lot this year, and try to figure out what helps Len so we can get a plan in place for him that will follow him and make his school life easier.

We will be going back to school on Tuesday, so hopefully he will get into the swing of things and the routine will help him. He tends to be a little better when he knows what to expect, but, well you never know with him.

Tackle it Tuesday - Ending summer

Well, Kid Jedi starts Kindergarten one week from today. I'm happy for him, but sad for me, I'll miss him being here. Next week I'll do my back-to-school post about what we did to get him prepared, but this week, I'm just cleaning up summer.

We have this one last week of summer, though I don't think we'll be heading to the pool since it's in the 70s this week. This week is the week that I make sure Kid Jedi goes to bed on time and gets up by 7 so he can be ready to be at school by 8:20. We are also reorganizing our home with a lunch station in the kitchen (Kid Jedi has full-day Kindergarten so we get to pack lunches for the first time), cleaning the launch pad and setting it up for backpacks instead of beach bags, getting an area in the kitchen or dining room set up so we have anything he'll need for homework together, and, well taking advantage of these last free days before schedules become our life.

I don't have any pictures yet since I'm still in the cleaning up stage, but, they will come (probably next week). I'm also looking for good, healthy, ideas for school lunches for a kid who doesn't eat a whole lot of fruits and veggies.

This is what I'm, sadly, tackling this week, head on over to 5MFM to see what other Moms are tackling and let us know what you are doing.