I have a whole blog entry in my brain about the holidays, but I’m not going to write that now because there’s going to be too much to talk about as we go forward, like Thanksgiving and Sam’s Christmas program and the Christmas party at Kyle’s office and Isaac’s autism evaluation (more on that in a second), and I just want to take a deep breath before plunging into things, SO.

We had Sam’s first ever parent-teacher conference about two weeks ago, not because of anything bad but because the teachers at his school like to make sure everyone is on the same page when it comes to kids’ progress. Sam had a half day that day, and he got to hang out at home while Kyle and I made ourselves look moderately presentable and headed to the elementary school for the conference.

It was weird, from my perspective, to be going in for it because, of course, I’ve never been on this side of things. I’ve never been a teacher, either, but usually, I’d be the student stuck at home or someone roped into doing check-ins or what-have-you while parents milled about. And, really, the only parent-teacher conferences I remember at all happened when I was in high school; and even then, I only remember the reports about two of my classes (pre-calculus, which I was failing miserably–my dad said of my teacher that he looked like was stoned out of his brains, and in retrospect, that makes me a lot more forgiving of said teacher; and art, where my art teacher got really excited because of the way I’d stored some of my work).

But it was still weird because, I suppose, I didn’t have anything to worry about. Sam’s a smart kid, and it’s kindergarten. We haven’t gotten any notes or calls from his teacher about his behavior or progress, so I knew going in that he probably didn’t have any red flags flying that would make me want to wear a cone of parenting shame. Instead, Kyle and I ambled through the empty corridors of the school, admiring the artwork on display for our benefit (including Sam’s book of writing exercises). I felt very grown-up doing so.

(shown: Sam’s self portrait and Halloween story from his writing exercise book; the Halloween story explains in the corner that rather than describing Darth Vader to the teacher, he just made Darth Vader noises)

And then we met with Sam’s teacher, who is pretty awesome. I think teachers nowadays often tend towards awesomeness, especially in higher-funded schools (we live in a tiny town with a pretty high average income, which leads to at least decent funding for the schools), but I still like to sing the praises of awesome teachers because honestly, they could get praised from morning to night and it still wouldn’t be enough. They take on our kids every day, twenty of them at a time, and somehow manage to keep them from burning the building down AND ensure that they learn something. Teachers are superhumans. 

And Sam’s teacher is a superhuman.

And thankfully, we were all on the same page about Sam. On the plus side, she gushed about his engineering mind, talking about how he’d built a billboard of the numbers 7, 8, and 9 out of Legos (Kyle and I were highly impressed but not surprised; this is the kid who saw a picture of a camera on the side of a Lego box and built it just from looking at the picture) and how he’s excellent at any sort of kinetic learning, which… again, no surprises here. If this kid is allowed to move and build and do things with his hands while he works, he’ll be at a college reading level by the time he’s seven, I’d bet anything. 

On the flipside, he’s not an overachiever in all areas because nobody is. His teacher seemed concerned about three particular things, one of which made us giggle and another of which made us nod in agreement. 

The uninteresting bit was that Sam is struggling with rhyming. That seems like a weird thing to struggle  with, I thought, but once I worked with him on it a little bit, I started to see the issue. Sammy is, as it turns out, a sight reader now–he knows words by sight, not necessarily by phonics, and he knows that certain combinations of letters make certain sounds but not necessarily how to replicate those sounds. He rhymes pretty well when he’s not looking at words written on a page–he comes up with rhymes to really weird words that I wouldn’t even think of–but when words are written down, he has a hard time because he’s trying to see which words look alike without thinking about which words sound alike. 

So he’s in an RTI (response to intervention? I think?) group, which is basically remedial rhyming, and son, that is nothing to be ashamed of. I’m here, your 36-year-old mother, having needed a year’s worth of remedial gym. Like who in the world needs remedial gym? 

(actually, now that I’m thinking back on it, it was probably more than a year of remedial gym, since I remember doing it in second grade, too)

(shown: why I had to do remedial gym)

On the giggly side of things, Sam apparently makes sound effects whenever he does anything. I think we’ve managed to tune this out at home, but it’s to a point where he’ll make spaceship noises as he’s bringing a marker over to color something or be like, “Here comes the T! T-t-t-t-t-t-t…”which… yeah, when his teacher gave us that example, Kyle and I basically fell out of our seats laughing because oh my god. That is the most hilarious and adorable thing  ever, ever. I am storing this up in my brain archive and on this blog so that it can become a story that we tell about him when he’s much older, as our parents tell stories about us (like the time I asked my dad to kill a piece of dust that looked like a spider or the time Kyle tearfully spewed the Where’s Waldo beefaroni he’d long begged for all over the house). It’s a treasure. I love it.

And on the “we knew that” side of things, Sam’s teacher let us know that he struggles with what she calls “flexible thinking,” which means that he’s very, very stubborn. And… yeah. He really, really is. This kid hates change, and has hated change since he was big enough to know that things were different from how they’d previously been. We always brace ourselves at the beginning and end of school years because change always prompts restless nights and stress in him, often ending in tears. We talk him through it, we give him social stories to help him cope, we help him with countdowns, but in the end, he always ends up struggling. 

It’s one thing I don’t know how to help him with. I’m stubborn myself (cue Kyle looking over my shoulder as I write this saying, “YA THINK?”) and it’s not something I’ve either managed to stomp out in myself… nor really tried to stomp out, because when applied correctly, stubbornness is a really powerful thing. Digging your heels in, saying, “no, you move,” all that… it’s good stuff. But you need to find a balance and recognize that some change is good, that sometimes, different is positive. 

BUT that’s also something that you can tell and model for kids until you’re blue in the face and they’ll still not get it because that’s what being stubborn is. This way of thinking and behaving is safe, so I’ll stick with it, because I don’t know what will happen if I don’t. 

Yeah, I get it, son. And I’ll always be here to tell you that it’ll be okay if you try something new or do something different. It’s hard right now; you’ve had a wild past two years (which is nearly half your life so far) that’s been full of changes, and every one seems scarier than the last. And soon enough, you’ll have the life experience to realize that change isn’t always bad and that you’ll almost always be okay on the other end… and those times when you’re not okay, you’ve got people who love you supporting you and taking care of you. 

But for now, your dad and your teachers and I will all be very, very patient with you as you learn flexible thinking. 

And then on Isaac’s side of things, we’ve got an appointment for his autism evaluation!

This is a pretty exciting thing–waiting lists for autism evaluation can be upwards of a year and a half long, but because we worked with Early Intervention and they administered a series of tests beforehand to narrow down his issues, they were able to get in touch with the local medical group that does screenings, and that group contacted us almost immediately to set up an appointment. What’s more, the appointment is before the end of the year–December 23, to be exact. 

I’m really relieved about it on so many levels, and at the same time terrified, more of what comes after diagnosis than of the diagnosis itself. I want him to get a diagnosis because that means that we can target his therapy so that he’ll be able to understand us and express himself, and hopefully also be able to cope with a very crazy, very noisy world around him. I’m not looking to tone down any symptoms he’s expressing–rocking, spinning, stimming in other ways–because I literally don’t care about that at all. It’s what you need to deal with life in the noisy 21st century. What I care about is making sure that he’s not getting frustrated because he doesn’t understand and can’t be understood. I’ve been there. It sucks. 

But that’s what scares me about therapy. I’ve heard a lot of horror stories about various autism therapies, and don’t get me started on my absolute loathing for Autism Speaks. Isaac’s services coordinator didn’t help with that when she was leaving the other day after helping me make a new services plan for Carrie (who, the little imp, was demonstrating all of the skills she refused to demonstrate during her most recent evaluation, sigh). She mentioned that Isaac would be screeching a lot once he started autism therapy, and while I get that on a lot of levels (because it’s hard to go from “mommy just get me what I want, you know what I want, even if I’m not saying it” to “oh, I have to use words”), I’m still afraid. 

I don’t want anything that’s going to try and “cure” him or try and suppress things about him. He is who he is, and he’s perfect. And I don’t want to suppress his symptoms or hide who he is, either. I just want him to be able to communicate. 

Sigh. I know I’ll be able to talk about this with his therapists, but it still just nags at me. And I should probably find a therapist myself to help me work through everything about… well, everything.

After the holidays. I’ll look into getting a new therapist after the holidays. Right now, I’m just going to swan dive into the crazy and paddle like hell until I get to the other side. Until next time…