After getting his school situation straightened out, I was able to focus on other issues that we could look into. So many people had raised the gluten-free, casein-free diet issue, I felt it bore some looking into. A client of mine had their child tested to discover a ton of food issues. While I couldn't afford to do that, I thought I'd see how far I could take my insurance.
I lucked out when I mentioned the issue to his play therapist. I hadn't been able to find anyone that could do anything about food allergies in the way I needed. She had found an ENT that did a ton of allergy things, and was able to diagnose her milk allergy. He was actually covered by insurance, so I gave it a whirl!
Covered by insurance - I should qualify that. While he was a covered provider, come to find out that our primary care doctor would not refer to him, so it ended up not being covered. The next PCP we tried didn't even believe in food allergies and wouldn't refer. Still working on this issue....
He had us take Em off milk from the get-go and recommended stool testing for a gluten allergy. That was a relief. Everyone else had counseled us to just try it and see if it helped. How can you "just try" something that's a major lifestyle change, expensive, and traumatic?? all this kid ate was bread or breaded!
So to be able to refer to test results that showed Yes, he has a gluten allergy, was just such a relief to me! I was able to use those to get the school to give him a gluten free diet there as well!
Within about 8 weeks on the diet, we noticed some big changes.
For the first time ever, he wrote a backwards letter and did NOT have a major meltdown over having done it wrong. He simply said "oops" and erased it and tried again. Minor though it seems, this was HUGE to us!
Oh, and his brother hit him (he's 3!) and Emerson did not immediately whack him back and start screaming and crying! Instead he ran to us and told us that Jamie had hit him. Wow!!
School reported that he was writing his name on papers! He wasn't having to trace a hi-liter in order to write anymore. His focus was sooo much better! Yay!!
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Kindergarten Autism Style
Here it is! Fall of 2008, time to start School!
I will say that the school team did a great job of helping us cherry-pick his teacher to get one that we all felt would do well with him. Mrs. Davis with USD 259 was the perfect pick!
She cared about him strongly, and worked her heart out for him, implementing anything we could think of to help him. Shortly into the year, we all realized (through tears on all sides - even the teachers!) that mainstreaming him had been a horrible call on Rainbows part. Unfortunately, restarting the IEP process takes months. It took 9 months that first time, and I was terrified it'd be the same this time.
The school was phenomenal though and got his testing starting fairly fast, got their autism consultant in there to observe him, and as they got closer to an IEP, they even went ahead and pulled in para-educator support for him even though he hadn't been approved yet.
That marked the day of change for little Emerson (and Mrs. Davis!). The para was able to give him that one-on-one he absolutely needed to stay on task, alleviate stress and anxiety, and prevent meltdowns - but also to control them when they happened.
Instead of destroying the classroom and sending the class into panic mode, he was able to start calming down and earn rewards, able to do some school work, looked forward to school. It was a huge change!
Everything wasn't perfect - he at that point was so terrified of the art class that he never went back to the class again, he still would run out of the class room for latchkey, and he still had extreme issues with eating in the lunch room. But I no longer had meetings with the principal daily to discuss what he did that day!
I will say that the school team did a great job of helping us cherry-pick his teacher to get one that we all felt would do well with him. Mrs. Davis with USD 259 was the perfect pick!
She cared about him strongly, and worked her heart out for him, implementing anything we could think of to help him. Shortly into the year, we all realized (through tears on all sides - even the teachers!) that mainstreaming him had been a horrible call on Rainbows part. Unfortunately, restarting the IEP process takes months. It took 9 months that first time, and I was terrified it'd be the same this time.
The school was phenomenal though and got his testing starting fairly fast, got their autism consultant in there to observe him, and as they got closer to an IEP, they even went ahead and pulled in para-educator support for him even though he hadn't been approved yet.
That marked the day of change for little Emerson (and Mrs. Davis!). The para was able to give him that one-on-one he absolutely needed to stay on task, alleviate stress and anxiety, and prevent meltdowns - but also to control them when they happened.
Instead of destroying the classroom and sending the class into panic mode, he was able to start calming down and earn rewards, able to do some school work, looked forward to school. It was a huge change!
Everything wasn't perfect - he at that point was so terrified of the art class that he never went back to the class again, he still would run out of the class room for latchkey, and he still had extreme issues with eating in the lunch room. But I no longer had meetings with the principal daily to discuss what he did that day!
From Pre-school to Kindergarten!
That first year was hard hard hard. We had no idea, read way too many scary things, and people seemed so intolerant and harsh to us.
He went from Rainbows to special ed preschool, still wasn't potty trained at 4 years old. Then back to Rainbows for the summer, and stayed there for the pre-school year. He finally potty-trained at 4 1/2 though he still has accidents today.
At the end of the year, they made the brilliant decision to main-stream him and remove his IEP. He tested wonderfully they said and there was no reason to keep him on.
It was a wonderful and yet terrifying decision that turned out to be yet another horrible battle in his life as he started his Kindergarten year.
He went from Rainbows to special ed preschool, still wasn't potty trained at 4 years old. Then back to Rainbows for the summer, and stayed there for the pre-school year. He finally potty-trained at 4 1/2 though he still has accidents today.
At the end of the year, they made the brilliant decision to main-stream him and remove his IEP. He tested wonderfully they said and there was no reason to keep him on.
It was a wonderful and yet terrifying decision that turned out to be yet another horrible battle in his life as he started his Kindergarten year.
Testing Testing, 123
The testing.... was a nightmare.
I had no idea what to expect, but I did at least figure they had experience with special children and would take that into account. Alas.
The first day of testing took forever - he wouldn't focus on any of the questions long enough to answer them, kept going off on tangents, then throwing fits when he couldn't stop the testing.
At the end of the day, they concluded that they couldn't make a decision because they couldn't get him to finish the tests.
Uh. DUH, isn't that why I brought him here??
Which of course meant another month long wait while they setup another testing time for him. That time, they did it with one person in the room, with bribes like M&M's, and were able to get most of the way done.
After all this they sat us down and finally concluded that he needed some help. I can't remember today what that first IEP entailed - I had no idea what they were talking about at the time and was absolutely lost!
Thus started Emerson's journey at Rainbows!
I had no idea what to expect, but I did at least figure they had experience with special children and would take that into account. Alas.
The first day of testing took forever - he wouldn't focus on any of the questions long enough to answer them, kept going off on tangents, then throwing fits when he couldn't stop the testing.
At the end of the day, they concluded that they couldn't make a decision because they couldn't get him to finish the tests.
Uh. DUH, isn't that why I brought him here??
Which of course meant another month long wait while they setup another testing time for him. That time, they did it with one person in the room, with bribes like M&M's, and were able to get most of the way done.
After all this they sat us down and finally concluded that he needed some help. I can't remember today what that first IEP entailed - I had no idea what they were talking about at the time and was absolutely lost!
Thus started Emerson's journey at Rainbows!
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