Month: February 2013

Hit Or Miss

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As I’ve mentioned a number of times, one of his IEP goals for the coming year is, with fading prompts, to get the Monster to announce to us – on his own – when he needs to go to the bathroom.

At school, he’s on a relative schedule – they take him to the bathroom before/after lunch, once or twice more throughout the day, and then before he gets on the bus to go home.  Since sometime in the fall, they’ve moved to a classroom that has a bathroom actually in it, so that they don’t have to take the kids (several of whom are in the same boat ) through the hallway to the bathroom. Continue reading →

Service Details

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As a technologist, I look at the IEP as something of a requirements document – it specifies the goals for his services for the coming year, and the acceptance criteria to decide whether or not the goals have been met.  As everything out there reminds us, these goals should be SMART – Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely. Continue reading →

Managing Idle Time

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The problem for the weekends in general is the lack of structure.

I’ve mentioned this before – the Monster works better with a concrete structure in his life rather than the disorder of a weekend.  So during the school week, he has things he can do and then only a few hours of unorganized time, but then Saturday comes around and everything’s left open. Continue reading →

Your Release

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When I started going to the Dads’ Talk support group that I’ve been infrequently attending (infrequent if only due to my own winter schedule), the first thing that they ask new members to talk about is their situation – what’s the situation at home that brought them to the group, what is their home life like… and what do you do for a release? Continue reading →

The Non Event

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About two weeks ago, we got notification for the Monster’s IEP review meeting.

For those of you who follow my tweet feed, you’ve heard me whining about how the paperwork was all late.  Maryland state law requires paperwork to be delivered five business days before the meeting to be admissible for discussion, and none of it arrived on time. Still, we had enough time to review the IEP with the Monster’s advocate, and felt adequately prepared for today’s meeting. Continue reading →

The Cheering Section

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Normal families have Super Bowl parties.

We’re more fortunate than a lot of families that are dealing with an ASD, in that the Monster really is not sensory adverse.  We’ve taken him to plenty of places – amusement parks, fireworks displays, bowling alleys and the like – where other children with Autism have trouble coping with all of the sensory overload. Continue reading →