The biggest thing that we were worried about this summer, in terms of having ten weeks off from school without full-time support there from a special-educator and his specialists, was the possibility of regression.

This school year saw a good deal of progress from the Monster in terms of at least not falling further behind than he’s already been.  He started to write and read, and he was most of the way to the point of being toilet trained during the day, at least in terms of minimizing accidents.  Because of the school’s concern that he might regress, he was given ESY services.

I realize that ESY can’t really do everything.  Hell, ESY is just in July, for that matter – four weeks out of the ten that he’s going to be out of school, with a six week gap between the end of the services and the beginning of his school year.  But, they assured us, this would still minimize the chances that he’ll have any slip-back.

We’re already seeing regression.

I don’t know that we’re seeing it so much in the writing and reading – he’s always been reluctant to do his homework and sight-read, but he still seems to be doing it alright when put into a mode where he has to cooperate or can be induced to do so (ie, bribed with food).  We have a book of assignments that he’s supposed to do over the summer, and we’re trying slowly to get back into a habit of getting a few pages done a night (and by we, I do generally mean the wife, since he’s more cooperative for her).

On the other hand… toileting’s gone entirely out the window, it feels like.  We’re having more misses than hits of late, and he’s stopped telling us when he needs to go.  We’re at the point that we’re looking for any of his indicators that he might need to go to the bathroom and rushing him there PDQ rather than waiting for him to give us clearer signs.

Part of this might be on us, since we’ve put him back largely into pull-ups for ease of his one-on-one’s sanity… but all of us agreed that perhaps it’s better if we put him back into cloth underwear and see if he can be pushed back in the right direction.  This is likely to be a bit of a headache until he gets back into the swing of things, and we’ve packed extra supplies in his backpack just in case.

I don’t know why I feel like the school calendar sabotages us so…