Targeting our next goal

This afternoon we had our follow-up SST meeting at school.  We all agree that we have the behavior aspect of Tommy’s school issues under control.  The next goal, as we all agreed upon, is to work on his focus.

The Social Worker has been working one-on-one with him in the afternoons to help him get ready to leave.  This isn’t exactly going well, and I’m not surprised to hear this.  He told us today that he is finding Tommy to be very distracted during these times.  He has a visual schedule that he is supposed to be following for this process and it is not helping.  It brought me great satisfaction to hear the social worker saying this.  No, I’m not happy that Tommy is distractable.  After describing Tommy to him in October and getting the response I did, it was incredibly gratifying to hear that he has also come to this conclusion.

Focus is also a problem during classroom tasks these days.  His teacher has described him as unfocused and spacey.   Apparently he’s not bothering or even engaging other students.  But he does seem to be severely lacking in his ability to just hunker down and do the assignment at hand.  (Should be interesting to see how his first spelling test goes tomorrow.)

Moving forward, we’re in a bit of a goofy limbo.  I signed a release form today that will allow for communication between the school and his private OT.  Why they didn’t give this to me at the last meeting, I have NO idea!  This should help a ton.  Also, the school OT that we started this process with is “no longer with the district.”  They have hired a new OT, but she doesn’t start for another couple of weeks.  When she starts, she’ll have to be brought up to speed with Tommy. (as well as MANY other students.)  If we have communication open between Kristie and the school staff, I think things will be good.

As we move forward, I’m really starting to see what one of my friends has told me several times already.  This is a process.  We will tackle things one at a time.  Each step of the way, we’ll have to see what comes next.  This afternoon I compared Tommy to an onion.  We’ve peeled away the layer of behavior issues, which has now allowed us to see the focus issue more clearly.  I tend to agree with what the social warker said…with time, we will be better able to see how much of this is sensory and how much is out of Tommy’s control.

On the right track.

Tommy is having a fabulous week this week.  Tonight he was a bit distracted while doing his homework, but that’s my only real criticism of him since Saturday.  His 2nd Quarter report card came home today, and it shows improvements both academically and socially.  This is all really great news, as we are headed to our 2nd SST meeting tomorrow afternoon.

After what we saw from Tommy last week, his OT reminded me that sensory responses are cumulative.  We are supposed to have a daily communication system between the teacher and myself, but that fell through the cracks last week.  If we had known that he had a rough day on Monday and/or Tuesday, we could’ve really loaded on the sensory input for him to help get him back on track.  Goes to show that I need to stay in tune with Tommy’s behavior trends.  I will also be stressing the importance of this communication when we meet with the team tomorrow.

I am curious to hear more details about how Tommy has been responding to the classroom inverventions these last 4 weeks.  I think there are still some things we discussed at the last meeting that may not have been put in place yet.  So again I am wondering what’s the next step in the process.  Will we be having another follow-up in 6 weeks?  Will we be making changes to some of his accomodations?  What will be the end result of all this paperwork?  Will we get a 504?  How often will we need to adjust his accomodations?  I know I won’t get answers to all of these tomorrow, but I need to get some general feel of where we’re headed.  At least I’m not nervous like I was the night before the first meeting. 

Love is in the Air

It’s February, which means Valentines Day is right around the corner.  Are you looking for a gift for someone special? Or perhaps, are you looking to pick up a little something for yourself?  Either way, this cute little glass tile pendant could be just the thing you’re looking for!

Love Glass Tile Pendant from Sapphire Lizard Designs.

As with all Sapphire Lizard pendants, this pendant ships free.  It also comes with your desired length of ball chain, so it is ready to be worn straight out of the box.  Stop by and check out our selection of glass tile pendants today.

Spring Flowers

Yes, I’m trying to bring on Spring just as soon as possible.  I have simply had enough of this cold weather.

Here’s a little bit of Spring to brighten up your day.  These stunning Spring Flower Bouquet rings are available as a custom order in your choice of colors and sized to fit your finger perfectly!

Just gotta roll with it

There are always ups and downs with Tommy.  We have a few weeks that are smooth and then we hit a rough patch.  This most recent rough patch caught me off guard.  It wasn’t as bad as the one week we had back in November though, when every day brought something new.  Tommy was running on high most of the week.  He was clearly having trouble with modulation.  His intense emotions were starting to show again.  But why?  I still really don’t know what brought this on, but my gut says that something must be out of place or off schedule for him.

When Tommy went for his OT session this week, I was mentioning to his OT that he had been like this for a few days.  I was so relieved to see him display this right there for her.  She asked if I had heard anything from school, which I had not.  She suggested that perhaps he was just having to work harder to keep it together at school and that he was just completely spent when he got home.  Given the patterns we’ve seen with him in the past, I could totally see this.  She did a lot of heavy work with him that session and tried to get him more settled.  When we left, we still had a ways to go.  Her best advice was to spend the bulk of our evening, from dinner to bedtime, engaging Tommy in calming activities.  Ultimately this should help him get to sleep easier and hopefully sleep better.

Since Tuesday, he has subsided quite a bit, but first we got hit by quite a train on Thurday.  He was completely out of control Thursday evening.  He couldn’t follow directions and was very quick to yell and blame others for everything that wasn’t right for him.  He had only managed to bring home half of what he needed for his homework.  The last straw though…was when I found the note from his teacher that informed me that he’d been struggling in the classroom all week.  ACK!

In the middle of all this chaos, I received a call from the school nurse.  After our SST meeting last month, the team agreed that it would be good for Tommy to get a vision screening.  There are some things that have us concerned about his vision.  When the nurse called, she informed me that he had failed not 1, but 2 different screenings.  She thought it could just be a perception problem, but with knowledge of our family history she became more concerned.  When I asked him about the screenings, he looked at me with this sad face and just said “Mommy, I couldn’t see the letters.”  Poor little guy!  As we tried to prepare him for this eye exam, he was clearly excited about the idea of getting glasses.  I couldn’t believe how eager he was to go to the exam.  I was very proud of him.

So, I still don’t know what’s going on.  But, like I said, he’s subsided quite a bit.  I am optimistic about this week.  Besides being a new week and a fresh start, Tommy will be headed off to school a new young man tomorrow…with his brand new glasses.  We don’t really know how long he’s been struggling with his vision.  It is not likely to be the cause of the trouble this past week or so, but it certainly couldn’t have helped things.  Poor guy doesn’t really know what is missing.  I’m hopeful that being able to see today will help refresh his attitude towards learning.

Think Spring

I know, I’m getting a little ahead of myself.  But, with this icky cold weather we’re having this week, I just needed to think of something bright and warm.  I thought perhaps that the bitter cold was behind us for this winter, but this is January in Chicago.  I’m not sure what I was thinking!

Anyways…I have a list a mile long of things I’d like to blog about, but there’s just not been time.  Until I get time, here’s a little something from my shop.  This is one of my Simple Wisdom necklaces:

Moving right along

Things have been fairly smooth and steady around our house lately.  Each day, I have been thinking about my goals.  I am finding that this is leaving me a little more calm.  I have direction now that I didn’t have before.  With that direction in mind, I am better able to realize that the bumps we encounter in the road and the detours we take are just that.  They are not the end of the world.  They are not a complete derailment.  This is good. 

That being said, last week was a fairly busy week.  Things just happened.  We hit several bumps in the road.  Wendesday the garage door went kaput.  The tired old thing just didn’t want to open.  Thankfully Aaron was able to get someone out to look at it on Thursday over his lunch.  $400 later, we have a new garage door opener.  Meanwhile, I was returning from my lunch when I got a phone call.  Anna was burning up with a fever, so I was off to daycare to pick her up.  Friday morning, I attended the funeral of a friend’s mother.  Then I spent the afternoon nursing Anna back to good health.  Satruday brought a bit of a break.  Anna was well enough to go to a birthday party in the afternoon and then we all turned around for an impromptu get together with some of my husbands co-workers.  I must admit, I had serious doubts about this shindig.  It wasn’t clear to me how many children would be present.  Without other children, the kids would’ve been terribly bored and I would have heard about it.  Thankfully, we arrived to find that there were a total of 11 children there, ranging in age from 4 months to about 12 years.  Yay!  When we left 4 hours later, I was stunned.  Both of our children were well behaved all evening.  Unfortunately, we paid dearly for that on Sunday, as it appeared that their good behavior had run out and their unruly behavior was being fueled by lack of sleep.

This week, things have been fairly normal.  No surprises.  That’s exactly the change of pace we needed this week.

I must admit that I am worried today.  Tommy hasn’t had any huge behavior issues lately at school.  There was an incident 2 weeks ago in art class, but that wasn’t huge.  He didn’t get to do the project that day, but because he apologized and corrected his bad behavior after the 2nd warning, he did not miss out completely.  Today is the day he will get to make up that art project.  So why am I worried?  He’s been struggling with keeping his hands off of other people’s property.  3 of the last 5 school days he has been moved to yellow for this.  I’m worried that today he might go too far, perhaps while in art class, and end up losing his 2nd chance for that project.  I really don’t want to see that happen.  We talked this morning about being on our best behavior today and making good choices.  Now it is up to Tommy to make it happen.  We shall see.

Reflection and direction

Yes, here I am talking about resolutions again.  Actually, I’m going to call them goals.  Like I said the other day, I’m not typically one for resolutions, but this year I’m really feeling compelled to turn over a new leaf.  I have stumbled upon many seeds for contemplation over the past few weeks.  I have done a lot of reflecting and soul searching.  I would love to blog about some of this reflection and about how I got to where I am with these goals, but that’s for another time. 

My goals for this year:

~Turn our house into the home we’ve been dreaming of by prioritizing home improvement projects.
~Sacrifice quantity for quality in everything that I do.
~Define my dream for the future and work towards implementing it.

Sure sounds like I’m going to have a busy year. 

The first meeting

On Thursday we had our first SST (Student Success Team) meeting for Tommy.  These meetings are typically held with the school psychologist, classroom teacher, parents, and other necessary support staff.  For Tommy, that was the OT and the social worker.  Due to the fact that the psychologist was unable to attend, our meeting, I’m told, lacked some of the fomality that it would typically have.  That being said, I really appreciate that they still held the meeting without her, rather than keep us waiting for a couple more weeks.

We shared Tommy’s evaluation report from his OT.  We also learned more about what is already being done for Tommy in the classroom.  I knew that he was supposed to be working from a visual schedule in his locker, but that he was still forgetting things at school on a weekly basis.  I have known that his teacher was to be discussing other possibilities with the OT prior to this meeting.  I had assumed that she was trying some things out, but I had really no idea what she was doing and with what frequency.  (The chaos of the holiday season is largely to blame for this lack of communication.)  I was pleased to learn that she has put some things in place that seem to be helping Tommy quite a bit. 

Overall, his teacher and the OT are pleased with Tommy’s response to the accomodations.  We are definintely pleased as well.  He’s been wearing a weighted vest in the classroom, and has been taking the initiative to put it on (and take it off) as he feels he needs it.  This is helping to calm him, which helps his ability to focus.  They have also implemented what they call the “Concentration Station”.  This is a quiet area in the classroom where students can go to take a break.  It is something that was designed with Tommy in mind, but can be used by anyone in the class.  He can ask to go there if he feels he needs it.  He may also be sent there if the teacher feels he needs a break.  His teacher says that he has already been using it and it seems to help him.  He also continues to be motivated by the “jungle dollar” reward system they are using in the classroom.

He still needs work with organizing himself and his belongings before leaving for the day.  The schedule is helpful, but he needs reminders to use it.  We’ve seen this same type of behavior with checklists that we have at home.  They serve as a home base to go back to when he is “off”, but he still needs to be reminded to go there.  They’re going to try to get someone to come to the classroom in the afternoon to help him get into the habit of using his schedule.  The other area where he needs some help is when sitting on the carpet.  He chooses to sit in front, but is always creeping forward and needing reminders to stay sitting on his bottom.  At the social worker’s advice, Tommy will be getting some sort of visual to keep him in his own space.  It may be a carpet square or even just a laminated piece of construction paper.  Just something to help him define his own space.

We will be meeting again in 4 weeks to discuss his progress and perhaps make further adjustments to his accomodations.

Return to creating…

I started writing this post way back in December, and then it sat in my drafts and collected dust….

Now that the holidays are behind us, I really hope that I will be able to return to creating new jewelry.  With all that has been going on at our house lately, I just have not had much free time.  I have also let my beading materials reach a terrible level of disarray.  Things are just so unorganized.

I have a vision.  This vision begins with reorganizing my crafting space.  The vision continues into my shop.  I’m still working on fine-tuning the image in my shop.  To really get things to where I want them to be, I will need time.  I will need a chunk of time to hunker down and really dig in.

I have some really awesome ideas that I would like to try out.  One is a necklace idea using buttons.  I also want to go back to making earrings.  So many people ask if I ever make earrings, so I think it would be awesome to get them back in the shop.  Oh my, I could go on and on about my ideas!

I have been on this creative hiatus for WAY too long!!