The fun of family holidays

So yesterday last week ( I started this on Monday, but...well, you know) we celebrated the Resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ.  And in good American fashion, we went to church (we do that every week though) then had a family dinner.  This year was a little different first off, Kid Jedi wanted to do cascarones, we do these every-other year when we have Easter at our house, but he really wanted to do them this year, so we made some cascarones.

Kid Jedi and Aunt A dying eggs

Cascarones before filling with confetti and sealing
(in other words, dyed egg shells)

Ok, so I totally forgot to take a picture of the cascarones finished, but before being smashed over everyone's heads.  But just picture the above egg shells with tissue paper glued over the shells.  Got it...that's what they looked like!

We went to my wonderful husband's Aunt & Uncle's house for dinner.  Kid Jedi is the youngest in our family, on both sides.  On my husband's side, the next oldest is Kid Jedi's cousin Z who is 3-1/2 years older than him, which at 7 and 10 going on 11 is a HUGE difference, but he's still really good with Kid Jedi, which is saying a lot.  My husband's cousin P who is only a year older than Z, well not so good with Kid Jedi.  Now I know, believe me I know that my son is not always easy to get along with.  Any Special Needs kid needs tolerance and a whole lot of patience.  P doesn't have either, and he thinks that because Kid Jedi still has meltdowns (he had 2 on Sunday, one was because P didn't want Kid Jedi playing with him & Z) he's annoying, and it seems he thinks he's unintelligent too.

Well, the unintelligent we may have changed his mind on because the boys played a board game that involved putting together a skeleton by spinning a spinner, and P was sure that Kid Jedi would have a hard time because he did at his age...nope, Kid Jedi did great!

Anyway, we wound up having a great Easter, Kid Jedi could care less what P thinks about him as long as he gets to play with the boys, and hopefully by the birthdays this summer we'll have a better diagnosis and some answers to help out Kid Jedi & get some understanding.

Here are some pictures of cascarones fun!  Then check out some other great blogs on No Ordinary Blog Hop!

Z and my husband cracking cascarones over each other's heads

Kid Jedi going after P

Kid Jedi getting his Dad

Z & my husband finally got P

How to work out stress...or why he has wet shirts

This time of year seems to be the most difficult for all students, they've been cooped up inside, they haven't had outdoor recess in months and though it's finally, usually, warming up, the rain has started.  Add to that the fact that March has few, if any, days off from school (and Easter isn't until the END of April this year) and the kids are going CRAZY!

For a child with special needs, it's even worse.  They react to how the other students are acting and that makes their stress level (and behaviors) go up...a lot.

At our house, Kid Jedi is acting up more.  He's not listening, he's having a difficult time following directions and he's chewing on the sleeves and necks of his shirts.  Now the chewing on shirts is a common thing in our home, he says it's to exercise his jaw (or teeth depending upon the day), but this time of year it gets a lot worse, and this year is worse than last year.  One day a couple of weeks ago, he came home with a different shirt on than the one we sent him in to school.  And yet another one was in his backpack, so he went through 2 shirts, and the one he came home in was really wet too.

In some cases, you could send your child to school with a chewy, or even have the provision for chewing gum added to your child's 504 or IEP.  But a chewy is too conspicuous in a mainstream classroom, and our concern with one that goes on the end of a pencil is that Kid Jedi would then chew on erasers.  Gum is something that Kid Jedi has absolutely no interest in chewing (I guess his shirts taste better).

It would be easy to just have him wear short-sleeved shirts if, like last year, it was just the sleeves that he chewed on, but with him chewing on the neckline or buttons on his shirt too, it isn't as easily remedied.  We do a lot of redirection, but as soon as he stops, he starts all over again.  We do understand that this is really a sensory and stress issue and that First Grade is a lot more difficult than Kindergarten, but I can't afford him ruining all his shirts.

Well, we'll either find a solution, or Kid Jedi will be wearing the same few shirts to school every day until he stops chewing on them.  Oh, and his aide has already banned one shirt because of how much he chewed on it!

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It's The Little Things

As a parent of a special needs child, it's not the big things that make my son special, it's the little ones.  It's not that he's Legos, Pokemon & Star Wars like his friends, it's that he can tell you every detail about them.  He's home sick today and playing Pokemon White on his DSi, we are spending the time looking up all the different types of Pokemon to see what their strengths are and their weaknesses.  Not just the ones that he has, but all of them.

It's not that he gets upset when he doesn't get to share his idea on communication during the Children's message at church because he's in the bathroom, it's that he announces this to the whole congregation!

A special needs child is just like a regular child just more.  He's more lovable, more loving, more honest, more playful, more excitable, more excited, more interested...just more.

I can say one thing, I wouldn't have Kid Jedi any other way!!

New symptoms, new doctors, possibly new diagnosis

We've been going through some issues here...well, at least we're facing the issues.  I'm not really even sure they should be called issues, more like ways of life.  As we all know, Kid Jedi was diagnosed last September with ADHD.  Well, at the time, our wonderful doctor went over the lay of the land as far as ADHD and ASD go... basically ADHD is one step, maybe not even a step, off of the Autism Spectrum.  And as far as Kid Jedi is concerned, he kind of teetered on that step, she felt he fell just to the ADHD side because he made friends...doesn't that just give you the warm fuzzies.  Well, 1 year and 5, almost 6, months later and the hyperactivity has slowed (not gone away, but slowed) and we're seeing more of Kid Jedi's true personality come through, and it's a great personality.

The problem is, and there always is a problem with a Special Needs child, that as the ADHD symptoms are coming under control, we are seeing how he really doesn't get social cues from anyone, he's overly obsessed with certain subjects, he can't look you in the eye (and he really tries), he has routines he has to follow, and most significantly, he doesn't understand when other kids aren't being nice to him yet he still wants to play with them.

That all being said, I have been asked recently by many friends and family members if I was sure that Kid Jedi didn't have Asperger's.  I had friends who said that there was a high chance that he would eventually wind up with an Asperger's diagnosis from the beginning, but I think the one that really got me was my cousin who has a not so little boy (he's in college) with Asperger's and as I was telling her about the issues Kid Jedi has, she repeatedly asked if I was sure he wasn't an Aspie...then came the friend from HS that I "met" on Facebook, and she was telling me about her son who was diagnosed with ADHD, then it got changed to Asperger's.  

All this time, we had been concerned about Kid Jedi's OCD-ish tendencies.  Then came the slap in the face.  I was reading The Best Kind of Different by Shonda Schilling (I picked it up because it was about Asperger's and we were starting to suspect this a lot).  As I read the Foreward by the doctor that diagnosed their son, Grant, I kept saying to myself, that's Kid Jedi, that's my son.  Needless to say I called the pediatrician on Monday to get a recommendation and we now have an appointment with a Neurologist on May 3.

Going into this figuring that he will wind up this diagnosis helps, but I know it's going to mean a lot of work with us, but it will be good knowing what we are dealing with no matter what comes back.  So now we get to go through the almost 2 month waiting period (which is much better than the standard 3-4 months that most people in this area are facing).

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