Mind Rush

It's Saturday night. The insanity has settled down. Three deliciously sweet children are curled up in tight corners of their beds. One especially stubborn baby is swatting at the cheerful frog on her new play mat while simultaneously rubbing sleep from her eyes.

I am sitting crisscross applesauce on my bed while gathering children's church materials and planning curriculum for the next several weeks. I am having trouble focusing on the tasks at hand as my mind busily runs through the past week's activities. Around here weeks fly by so fast that sometimes it's hard to be aware of what exactly went down.

I got my hair cut this week in an a-line cut. It's easy and chic and gasp! age-appropriate, AND I still like it several days after the cut, so that's saying something.

Little Sprout startled me one day by rolling over and getting quite a distance across the room in this fashion. I don't remember my other littles doing that before three months old. The Beast keeps asking me now to "make Baby Bean do her special trick."

A dear friend moved all the way back east this past week. We had one last girls' night while our kiddos played together and ate spaghetti. I miss her already but am so excited for her and this new directions in her family's life.

Miss Suzie, the Beast's speech therapist, and an autism specialist came over to our house on Friday morning to conduct an observation and evaluation of our Beast. The results of that evaluation will determine whether or not we will be eligible for more special services. I was a bundle of nerves before they came but thankfully the ladies were able to put me at ease. The whole thing went rather well, considering I had to stop and feed the baby in the middle of it all.

Time to take a deep breath and put the swirling thoughts in my head to rest for another day. I'm thankful for a baby that finally gave up the fight against sleep. I'm thinking I should take my cue from her and get some shut-eye too. good night world.

Of Changes and Autism

A few weeks ago the Nerd and I met up with all of the Beast's teachers to discuss his IFSP (Individualized Family Service Plan) for the upcoming year. I came prepared with a whole list of questions and things I felt our Beast needed to work on. Overall, the meeting went very well, especially since his teacher was new and really didn't know a whole lot about our son yet.

One thing that was especially concerning to me as a teacher is the fact that Davey does not have the hand control to make a simple line or circle on a piece of paper. When instructed to do so, he makes barely legible dots randomly on the paper and then gives up. At four years old, he needs to have this very basic skill in order to start learning how to write the various letters of the alphabet. I am hoping that the ideas the teachers came up with will help him gain the control he needs to master these simple skills.

However, near the end of the meeting, I was feeling pretty good about the direction David and his special education would be taking this year. I just had one more question for his teachers. I knew that this special class he currently attends is only for children age five and under, and I wondered what was going to be next for our Davey. Should we be preparing him to try to attend a "normal" kindergarten class, or would there be a special needs kindergarten class available for him if he needed it? When I presented this question, all the teachers looked at me blankly. Well of course he would be headed to a regular kindergarten class, I was told. Why would I think David needed to go to a different class? I was surprised but said simply that I was not sure based on his autism diagnosis of the previous year. At this bit of news, the teachers just stared at me. Get this - not one of his teachers was aware that David had been diagnosed with high-functioning autism! Granted, they had all noticed that he was a little "off" and thought perhaps he had an attention deficit disorder, but none of them had ever been informed that David is indeed autistic. I was shocked - somehow the information had been lost from point A to point B, and while his teachers have accomplished some amazing things with him this year, I wondered what more could have been done had they known the proper diagnosis??

So now we are facing yet another set of evaluations and tests for David within the next few months. I am so glad I asked that question, and yet I am concerned about what is next for us. Lately our sweet Davey has been having a lot of "sad days" - days in which he has meltdown after meltdown and sits and mopes in a corner for hours. These days are usually triggered by some sort of change - new teacher, new Sunday School class, baby coming, etc. Two of his good friends from his class will be moving up to the integrated class this fall, and I wonder how David will handle it.

Still, despite the worry and anxiety for my little guy, I know that a God much more powerful and greater than all of this is "handling it." He gives us so many promises in the book of Psalms:

"Wait on the LORD; be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD." (Psalm 27:14) And what about "I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go; I will guide thee with mine eye." (Psalm 32:8) We are beyond thankful that our almighty God is traveling this way with us!