We’re starting to come into what passes for winter around these parts, with the first ugly snow-and-ice storm of the season on its way inbound.  We’re probably going to get hit on Sunday… but there’s also the chance we’ll have a bad commute Monday morning as well.

So, that means we have chances for the school schedule to be disrupted.

I remember being a kid, and thinking that school being off was the most awesome thing in the world – who wouldn’t enjoy having a few days off unplanned in the middle of the school year?  The problem gets magnified dealing with the Monster and his various therapies…

Let’s set aside that a cancelled-or-delayed day of school means a disruption to his own personal schedule, something that’s going to throw him off already and risk pushing us closer to a meltdown.  It’s bad enough when you have to bear that in mind.

Bigger is the concern that the disruption to his schedule means that delivery of his therapies are impacted.  I don’t know for instance which ones are delivered on Mondays (I think we might be lucky and the answer is ‘none’ this year).  But… it could potentially mean other therapy dates this week being pushed around somewhat as they try to ensure that every child gets all of the services they are required to have.

I’m usually not too worried about the delivery of services when push comes to shove… just more that any disruption to his schedule might put him in a mode where the therapy is less effective due to his inattention.  Like most five year olds, he’s very prone to being distracted.  This distraction somewhat blunts the impact of any of the SLP or OT sessions he gets at school, leaving them to try to get him reined in once again so they can gauge his progress.

I’m thinking that we probably should start preparing now for these eventualities, since it’s more likely than not that we’re going to have at least one snow day this year.  A good stack of his sight-reading materials from school, so we can work on that subject as well as concentrating on identifying sounds themselves.  Perhaps a couple of other toys to work on his fine motor skills.  Something other than the iPad, which doesn’t require him to do any real fine-motor skills and might indeed have other things to distract him if he gets it into his head that he’s not in a mood to do what we’re asking.

Now, as long as it happens on a day where I can work from home (ie, not Monday or Tuesday next week…)