Day 49: Back to School

6:05 AM: Wake up from crab-fishing dream. I was throwing the hook and doing really well on the Cornelia Marie. Side-effect of watching Deadliest Catch episodes on Netflix before bed.

6:06 AM: Put some clothes on. Renew my yearly resolution not to be that mom who puts her kids on the bus in her flannel monkey pajama pants. Resolution should be broken by October.

6:07 AM: Wash face, look at my Zyrtec and Symbicort on the counter, decide to take them after I get the kids on the bus.

6:10 AM: Go out to kitchen to find Noah has all his medicine ready (I didn't know he even knew how to measure the doses!) and is getting his breakfast ready. He reports he's been up since four.

6:14 AM: Prepare breakfast for Nick only, since Noah is some fancy grown-up junior high kid now and doesn't need mom to make his.

6:20 AM: Go in to wake up Nick. He's wet his bed. Clean child. Strip bed.

6:26 AM: Very tired Nick tries to go back to bed. Not happy that his bedding is gone. Lays down on towel.

6:29 AM: Try to dress limp noodle child.

6:35 AM: Finish dressing limp noodle child, except for shoes.

6:38 AM: Bring Nick his Risperidone. He takes it on the first try. Phew.

6:40 AM: Offer Nick his favorite breakfast. He screams.

6:45 AM: Nick gets angry and tries to pinch me. And pinches me more. He's starting to build up a tolerance to Risperidone. Boo.

6:50-7:05 AM: Try to get shoes on Nick. It doesn't go so well. Noah gets so fed up with Nick's screaming that he starts screaming. Send Noah to his room.

7:08 AM: Send Nick to his room because he's gotten too violent about the whole shoe thing.

7:11 AM: Go outside to meet Nick's bus. It's disgustingly Florida humid out there. Tell driver Nick's too upset to get on bus this morning.

7:20 AM: Retrieve Noah from his room. Try to comb out his cowlick.

7:29 AM: Try to comb out cowlick again. Give up and decide he can impersonate rooster at school.

7:32 AM: Noah and I go outside to wait for his bus. They tell you it's a 10-minute window on either side of the official time so we should be out there 10 minutes early, but I want to avoid the disgustingly Florida humidity and wait until five minutes before.

7:37 AM: Official pick-up time. No bus.

7:37-7:47 AM: Anxiously wait for the far-too-wide 10-minute window to close so that I can call and ask where the eff the bus is. Mosquitoes nibble at my feet an ankles, a side-effect to the disgustingly Florida humidity.

7:48-7:51 AM: Call transportation. Dispatcher dispatches wrong driver, the one who goes to the wrong junior high. Dispatcher then dispatches correct driver. Mosquito bastards bite more, prompting runny nose and watery eyes.

7:52 AM: Go back into house to find happy Nick jumping on his bed. Phew. Throw Nick's school stuff into my car.

7:54 AM: Throw children into car, too. Air conditioning sooo much better than disgustingly Florida humidity. Wait for Noah's bus.

8:07 AM: Noah's bus arrives 30 minutes late. Drive Nick to school.

8:10 AM: Asthma attack from stupid evil mosquito-bite allergy begins in car. Denise had decided to take her Zyrtec and Symbicort after getting the boys off to school. Oops.

8:23 AM: Pull into Nick's school. Before getting Nick out of car, watch Noah get off his bus up the hill at the junior high. Aide meets him and he bounces into the school to start new life as fancy grown-up junior high kid.

8:24 AM: Put shoes on Nick. Unbuckle his car seat.

8:24 AM: Nick takes off his shoes.

8:25 AM: Decide shoes aren't important. I mean, really, aren't they just part of a heteronormative patriarchal ideology of conformity anyway? Decide Nick should challenge hegemonic forces and stage a shoeless rebellion against the man.

8:30 AM: Deliver Nick and his footless shoes to his teacher.

8:45 AM: Return home to my beloved Symbicort and Zytec. Rejoice that school days are so much calmer than the chaos of summer.

Another Blog on Why Moving Is the Best Thing I've Ever Done

Today was the fifth grade awards assembly for the first quarter. Noah came home with an award for the most improved student of the quarter.

School has always been a nightmare for Noah. Imagine being a kid with autism and ADHD and trying to survive in a general-ed classroom of 35 students with little to no support. There were some fantastic people along the way who did their best for Noah, but with the administration limiting what supports they would give to Noah, there was little these fantastic people could do. Finally, in fourth grade, Noah got to have an aide with him for a little bit of the day (a battle I'd fought for three years), and the time she spent with Noah increased throughout the year. But it wasn't enough. Noah was falling more and more behind, getting more and more frustrated.

Then we moved and Noah found himself in a school with a different way of looking at difference: their strategy was to give students as much support as they needed from the start and help them become less dependent on those supports as they gained the skills to thrive in general education. Shocking, I know.

And so Noah started off his school year in a classroom with just five other students and staffed by a teacher and two aides. [I just heard a bunch of jaws drop. The stuff of fairy tales, right?]

Noah had a rather difficult start to the year as he tested boundaries and learned that they weren't as flexible as the boundaries he was accustomed to. After all, with thirty-something children in his previous classes, he was able to get away with not doing much at all. But here he was expected to actually work and follow the rules and be responsible.

Once he figured out the structure, he thrived. He started attending P.E., music, and art with a mainstream fifth-grade class. He won a Distinguished Dolphin award and got to eat lunch with the principal. And, now, the Star Student award . . . he's thriving.

Noah's teacher is thrilled about his progress and has arranged for Noah to start Junior Achievement with his general education peers. "I love to reward good behavior," she said, "and it is always my goal that my students rejoin their general education peers when they are ready. I think Noah is ready!"

He is ready. He's already made friends in the class he'll be mainstreaming into so there will be friendly faces to greet him when he begins Junior Achievement on Thursday. And then, as Noah is successful in general education, he'll spend more and more time with his fifth-grade class.

Five years of struggling and fighting and trying to get Noah the education he needed. Five long years of Noah living in misery. In just nine weeks, though, Noah has become a child who jumps in excitement, beaming the brightest of smiles when he gets off the bus because he had a fantastic day and feels proud of what he accomplished. Most days when I see that smile of pride I have to fight back tears--it's a smile I've always know was there and have been waiting so, so long for.

And that's another reason why moving is the best thing I've ever done.

Sleeveless

Today Nick got to have two speech therapists instead of one. The guest therapist, who owns the clinic, came out of the room first. "He had a just phenomena session. He is so adorable--such a calm and peaceful spirit."

Laura, our regular SP, followed with Nick a moment later. "I can see why you say people fall in love with him. He's such a joy."

They were seeing the Nick I see, the Nick so many people have, unfortunately, missed out on.

*********

Last year, in the aftermath of the teacher-abuse incident, the school started sending home daily reports on Nick's day. The forms listed out what he ate, how he focused, when he went to the bathroom . . . and how he behaved. The school tracked every scream, every bite, every scratch, and every time he hurt himself with tick marks on the page. Every day the tick marks were sent home, with comments like "He threw himself to the floor and screamed for no reason" (grr, there is *always* a reason) or "Nick got very upset when we tried to bring him into the classroom and scratched an aide." Perhaps I would've scratched people when they tried to take me back into places where I'd been hurt, too.

But here are some of the notes from Nick's teacher this year:

8/12: "He was very happy and smiling."

8/16: "Good day today. He transitioned well."

8/17: "Good day! Nicholas transitioned very well."

8/18: "Nicholas had a great day today! He is really starting to understand the routine of the day. He is participating in calendar and has done well during math and reading."

8/22: "Nicholas had a great day today. He is doing great during transitions, is smiling more, and participating more as well."

8/23: "Nicholas had a good day today. Did well with transitions today :)"

8/24: "Nicholas had a really good day again today! Nicholas has been doing so well transitioning. He is participating every day at calendar and is doing work at math and writing time. He is still really enjoying tinker toys and playing in the sand."

8/25: "Nicholas had another great day today! He is talking more and seems very happy at school."

He seems very happy at school. That's a sentence I'd never seen, never thought was imaginable.

*********

The proof, though, is in the pudding . . . otherwise known as the squishy part of my arm. It's where Nick takes out all of his frustrations, all of his confusions, all of his fears. When the world has him freaking out, he needs an immediate outlet for all the tension inside, and that outlet is often in the form of an ungodly sharp pinch. My arms were a watercolor of purple, green, magenta, blue.

On the first day of the semester I prepped for it, as always. I pulled together an outfit that would've made Stacey and Clinton proud--fantastic black heels, stylish grey trousers with red and light grey pinstripes, a delightful ruffled red blouse, and of course, a jacket--a grey Anne Klein blazer that I got for under $20! As I drove to campus, I wondered about how often I'd have to take the blazer on and off to get through the day. I mean, my classrooms were in different buildings on campus, and I didn't think I'd want to wear a jacket outside in the 113-degree heat, and some of the classrooms have crappy AC . . .

I looked down to check the damage to see if it was mild enough that a little concealer could mask it if I had to go jacketless during a class, and I was shocked.

There wasn't a bruise. Anywhere.

Sometimes as parents our guts tell us exactly what we need to do for our children, and although something inside us knows, absolutely knows it's the best thing, our minds tend to come in with their sneaking suspicions--what if uprooting the boys is the wrong thing to do? what if this new city won't be as wonderful as I think it will be? But always, it seems, we find in the end that our gut was right all along.

Moving the boys to Phoenix is the best thing I've ever done for them. They are happy, successful, content in ways they never have been before. That's not to say that they don't have bad days--believe me, there have been a couple--but the good is so much better that it has ever been and the bad is dramatically less frequent.

Finally, the world gets to know the happy, sweet Nick I know . . . and I get to go sleeveless to work ;)