Friday, December 02, 2005

Egad-am, it's Adam

We had Toby's state reevaluation conference/IEP meeting this morning in Alexandria, and we brought Adam home for a solo weekend. Toby and Adam both are progressing well in their classroom, and the teacher has some ambitious goals for the upcoming IEP year. It will be great if he masters all of his objectives like he did this past year.

We got here about 1.5 hours ago, and I've already got a nasty bite mark on my wrist. I wouldn't give him the bottle of water he wanted to pour on his Blue's Clues cards so they would soften enough to be torn into little bits and taken into the tub. So I got chomped on. Of course, I ultimately gave in. He also had me run the vacuum cleaner, which he both loves and fears. This should be an interesting weekend.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Randy and Adam, I feel your pain.
One of my sons IEP is on Tuesday.

They want him to repeat the first grade.
What will the psychological damage be if he is held back and his twin brother isn't?
(It was my 13 year old daughter who got the crap scratched out of her this time, instead of me for a change.)

Randy said...

Wow, that's a tough question. My younger son (Adam) is acutely aware of his perceived status vis a vis his older brother, and I'd think that would be even more of a challenge with twins. Now they're both in the same classroom, and it's helping Adam immensely. He watches Toby working on tasks and tries to imitate him. The classroom staff is clued in enough to help Adam succeed. That might be an argument for keeping your kids together, I don't know.

Are you working with an advocate in your IEPs? Even though I'm a lawyer, it helped to have a trained IEP advocate at the table at least when our kids were in the local public system. It's a bit different where they are now--a public school that's connected to a Catholic residential facility. Anyhow, the advocate knew the powers that be in the system and what arguments work and don't work with them.

Ann said...

Not having ever had a child who could so fixate on something, I don't know how I would respond to a persistant demand that s/he be allowed to do something I had originally said "no" to. With my daughter, a totally typical child back when she was one, giving in just reinforced that if she whined relentlessly, I would let her do what she wanted just so she would SHUT UP ALREADY. In Adam's case, the consequences of not relenting are significantly more painful. Have you ever not given in? If so, what has been the result?

Sorry about the arm. Ouch.

Randy said...

Oh yeah, many times. Once I had to drag him from McDonald's when he wanted to ride in the high-chairs that he was way too big for. He was biting my wrist all the way to the car. I put him in his seat, and he was transformed into a biting/scratching perpetual motion machine. I was pushing him back frantically as I tried to buckle his belt while he bit the crap out of me. "YOU FUCKING SAVAGE!" I shouted loudly, the got the seat belt secured. It was then that I turned, and remembered that we were 10 feet from the drive thru window, which had several cars lined up. Actually, that made me laugh.

Ms-Chievous said...

Oops Randy, that was me ^ up there.