My Little Corner of the World

Thoughts on raising and homeschooling a special needs child who has Aspergers, Tourettes, and ADHD. The life of a domestic goddess. Documenting the life of Superman (11 yrs) and Ladybug (4 yrs).

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

A moment in history

There is no better way to bring history to life than to watch Obama be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States of America. It thrilled me to no end to sit, spellbound, on my couch with Superman by my side, and watch the days events unfold. All of the questions, the wonder of the moment in my son's eyes. He loved it. He knew the importance of such a huge milestone and he was captivated. There is no better opportunity than that to talk about history and the struggle of nations and cultures and religions and how it all brought us to this one defining moment that will carry us forward. It was a brilliant moment in time.

Things here are also moving forward brilliantly. I've been trying to kick a cold that seems to like me too much and refuses to leave my body. As I went through the motions of the day, Superman was busy on various tasks and at one point he was emailing my parents about some topics of interest that they wanted to know more about. He kept calling out to me "Mum, is this how I spell....." and it hit me that after the 20th time of him calling out words, he had made no mistakes in his spelling!!! I stopped to look at him, feeling so proud and I pointed out to him how every time he asked me about a word, he had already gotten it right all by himself! I think his eyes literally sparkled.

Ladybug is still enjoying school. She loves her work, having friends to play with (some little guy by the name of Cody is a constant topic of conversation at the dinner table every night) but she's having a tough time getting out the door in the morning. We've slowed down our daily routine so we can fit in some extra snuggles before it's time for her Daddy to take her. She says she misses me too much and would rather be home but the promise that I will be there as soon as her day ends seems to bring comfort.

Over the weekend Superman and his Dad went to the Monster Truck Show with a friend of ours and his son. They had a blast. Superman took pics and was quite excited to show us when he came home. While the boys were gone, the girls had a pj party!! Ladybug and I put on a fire, curled up on the couch under blankets, had snacks, painted our toes a matching burgundy colour and watched Broadway's Lost Treasures on DVD until our nails tried. We were both feeling under the weather so it was the perfect afternoon in. The down time did us both good and help to fill that anxiety Ladybug has been having about being away from me during the day. This has also caused her to suggest that pj parties are something we should add to our DAILY routine. ;)

Saturday, January 17, 2009

I'm giddy

Things are really great. I find myself continuously surprised at how relaxed life is now. It's like it sneaks up on me, the day passes, and then I think, "Wow! The day went by beautifully!" I've spent the week with my nose in a book. My girlfriend told me that I should read the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer. The storyline didn't interest me at all and I never got around to picking up the book. Then last weekend I was at the bookstore and decided to buy the first two. I have come to find that if my girlfriend says I'll like it, I don't argue. She knows me too well and nine times out of ten, she's right anyway. Sure enough, I finished Twilight in three days. Then went on to New Moon and finished it in one day!! Now I'm 300 pages into Eclipse and will be sad when I finish Breaking Dawn. And yes, here I shall put it in writing. She was right. I love it! ;)

Superman has been keeping busy as well. He's been working hard on his reading and English. He flew through 5 pages of work on Friday in just a few minutes. It was incredible! He did all of the writing himself and was relaxed while he did it. That's a big first for him. He also did 10 math questions in under 2 minutes. Again, a big stride forward.

Ladybug came home from school on Friday and said to me, "Mommy, we were in the gym and the bell rang. And we went to the fire station outside and it was cold so they put us in someones car." Uh....I had to investigate that one a little more. I think what she was trying to say was that there was a fire alarm and they had to go outside but it was -25*C and without coats, very chilly for the little ones so the staff took them to their cars and stayed with them until it was time to go back inside. It kept them out of the wind. But it's incredible how things can sound just a little off when you hear the three year old version.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

I'm missing Ladybug today

Today was the first day that Ladybug said she didn't want to go to school. So we got her ready and she crawled up on my lap and said she just missed me too much. That she would rather stay home, snuggle with me on the couch, and play with Superman inside the fort he built in the playroom. It's one of those things where you know that as soon as she's out the door, she'll be fine. But I miss her today.

Things are continuing to go extremely well with Superman at home. We've had a really good couple of days. We've added an exercise component to our plans. We use the stationary bike and the treadmill. I run for 10 mins while he bikes for 10 mins and then we swap. Er..he doesn't really run on the treadmill though. He puts it at a good incline, a good speed, and then does this sort of walk/run/look at me I'm doing the tango. I guess when there's good dance music pumpin he just can help himself but Dance. I think he has a bit of Ellen in him. She would be impressed ;)

Yesterday it was insanely cold (-29*C) so we did the ever popular "throw a cup of boiling water into the air and it turns to vapour before it hits the ground" trick. He thought I rocked when I came up with that little plan (thanks to Kevin Frankish on BT). Then we worked with electromagnetics. I got him a set for Christmas and we talked about circuits and he figured out how to set it up to turn on the light, the fan, make LED chasers. It was fascinating.

I don't recall if I mentioned this in previous posts, but Superman is technically in Grade 5, but I'm doing Grade 3 curriculum with him. The past 2 years have been crazy for him and I thought that if we work on Grade 3, I'll get a better idea of where he's at, but also because he's breezing through most of it and that gives him a good confidence boost. It also allows me to give him a solid foundation so that we can build on it from there.

Yesterday I was feeling a bit off so we were in our comfy clothes and decided to lay on the bed to do our Math and Reading Comp work. After awhile I told him he could have some free time and I was going to read for a bit. A few minutes later he came upstairs with lunch! He had made us turkey sandwiches with lettuce, cheese and ketchup. I was shocked! It was such a nice surprise.

Each morning he makes a cup of tea (today's choice was Chai) and sits on the stairs to watch Ladybug get ready for school. He always wishes her a happy day and says he'll miss her. To see him so quiet and relaxed is a wonderful thing.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Holy productive day Batman!

Today was one of those days that you dream about. The kids were up on time, breakfast went smoothly, and hubby and Ladybug were out the door in good time. Then Superman and I got down to work for the day.

He created a dolphin show on Roller Coaster Tycoon to add to his amusement park city that he's been working on. The fact that he's remembering to take care of the customers who visit his park and diligently meet their needs is quite a feat. Usually Superman has his own agenda but he's been quite particular to make people happy so that he gets good ratings for his park. I was curious to see how he would do with it. He also creates roller coasters that I would never dream of. They go underground and twist and drop. Incredible.

He also did all of his morning chores, reading, 2 pages of language, and an entry in his "All About Me" scrapbook. He created a story about his beloved Webkinz, a raccoon named Ginz, which was seven pages long included text and pictures. He created a board game called Su-opoly which included all of the pieces to move around the board, a homemade dice set, and cards. Then he made a home movie about the animals in our house. All of that before 9:20am!!

Can you believe it? It's just incredible. I told D (hubby) that if the rest of the day went to pot, I could not care less because I got so much out of him in the morning. But he was on fire. We ran errands to the bank (and got to see the vault door which was open and that was exciting) and we looked to see how many security cameras we could find while we waited in line. We went to the post office and he mailed the package himself. We headed to the library to return our videos and books and discovered they had a self return area so he scanned the books and dropped them in the book bin and picked out new items.

After that it was off to the pet store, Best Buy, and grocery store. He was engaged, sociable, and enjoyed every minute of it.

When we came home he did more reading and then tried out a new program I got for him called Crazy Machines. I highly recommend it if you have little ones (or big ones) with mechanical minds. http://www.crazy-machines.com/ It has 102 puzzles that you have to solve using mechanics and you can also create your own machines and puzzles. I'm astounded at what he can come up with and how it gets all of the machines to work. We've had a lot of fun figuring it out together.

We also went for a walk, he made himself a snack, and we watched Extreme Home Makeover together (it's a regular Monday date for us as we're big fans) so it was an incredibly productive day. I noticed when we were shopping that he was showing signs of increased confidence. He was sociable and relaxed and interacted appropriately with the people around him.

I'm guessing that Ladybug had a great day at school. I still can't get much out of her. But she had two drops of grape juice on her shirt and pants so I know she drank her juice box at lunchtime! Ha! When we were leaving three little girls from her class that were about 6 years old were running by us and shouted "Hi Ladybug!!!!" and Ladybug gave them a little flip of the hand and a smile and said "Oh, hello." LOL Superman was shocked and said, "Wow Ladybug. I guess you've got friends, eh?"

When we walked back to the truck we noticed an orange tabby sitting on the sidewalk and she pounced over to us happily. In fact she was so happy to see us that I had to prevent her from jumping into the truck with us!!! I read her tag and "Ginger" was apparently quite used to being outdoors (she was rolling all over the snow purring happily) and once I had her convinced to go home she went back up to the porch she had been lounging on. The kids were thrilled.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Finding that elusive balance of needs

So here's the thing...I think I'm in the middle of a crash. It was my fabulous mother who brought this to my attention. I'm fortunate that I have the kind of relationship with my parents where I can just unload it all. The good, bad, ugly, insanely embarrassing. Yeah, I don't hold back. In return, I get brutal honesty, a few inside jokes, and some movie quotes relating to my situation (thanks Dad).

I couldn't figure out what was up with me lately. I felt off. Really off. I was staying up late because I couldn't sleep, waking up feeling run down, I couldn't sit still but I wasn't motivated to do much. What does a girl do when she's feeling like this? Call her mother of course. That's when I had my ah-ha moment. For weeks I've been building up to two big events. Sending Ladybug off to school full time, and making the decision to formally pull Superman from school. Both of those things happened on the same day and that is when it all came crashing down. You have no idea how much you're holding it in, and holding it together, until you come to a point where you no longer have to do that anymore. I sent Ladybug off to school, I wrote to the school Admin first to let them know of my final decision, and then I wrote to the board team. Then Saturday appeared and I felt run down. I had a migraine and went to bed for 2.5 hours. It was all done. I didn't have to hold it together anymore because now I had more control over the situation.

So today was about finding out what I need to do to meet my own needs. It's very easy to throw all of yourself into homeschooling and your child's needs. I don't want to become that person. I want to find a balance between meeting Superman's needs (physically, emotionally, scholastically) and also meeting my own. This situation presented a great opportunity to dialogue with Superman about how I was feeling. He was incredibly supportive and he understood what I was feeling and we decided that I needed to set some goals for myself and he would help me meet my goals (reminding me to spend time doing XYZ, and being enthusiastic about me taking the time to do it...we're talking REALLY enthusiastic, as in bordering on cheerleader mode) and in return I would do the same for him (also in cheerleader mode).

My wonderful Mum suggested a variety of teas, crafts of my choice for my downtime and a trip to Chapters. I'm well stocked up on bath supplies so I'm good to go.

Ladybug is no longer coughing up a lung like she was yesterday (and my previous entry sounded persnickety...sorry. Wasn't meant to come across that way) and she's really excited to go back to school tomorrow. Although you try to get any information out of her about her day and it's like she took an oath of secrecy. I'm still working on that.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Welcome to going to school

Ladybug woke up this morning sounding like she was coughing up a lung. Welcome to going to school and the flu/cold season. She was miserable. She woke up, had breakfast and then she laid in bed until 11am. She had no enthusiasm and she felt miserable. She said that the only thing that she wanted was to snuggle with Mommy. So that's what we did. It was wonderful.

We had to back out of my neice's 2nd birthday party which was disappointing. My husband was going to take Ladybug and I would stay home with Superman. The party involved too many people in one small space. It's so overstimulating for him that he sleeps for hours afterwards. Often people tell us that the people who are there would be very understanding if he melted but they're missing the big picture. The meltdowns don't bother me. Heck, we've had huge screaming/kicking/self abusing meltdowns in the middle of a major mall. It's that I don't want to put him in a position that he finds physically painful due to overstimulation. Most people don't realize that it really is physically painful. His head hurts, his muscles hurt. Try feeling like that for 4+ hours. But as it turns out, none of us went anywhere.

I was bordering on a major migraine today so hubby stayed home to help with the kids. I slept from 1:30-4:00pm and that helped a lot. Superman missed out on his friend's 6th birthday party. But again, too many kids in one space.

It was a good day though. Movies, snuggles, hanging out. With hubby's work schedule, we rarely get days like this.

Friday, January 09, 2009

A new year and a new beginning

Shortly after school started things began to spiral out of control. I didn't write about it because I didn't want to talk badly about people or situations so I sort of kept it close to home.

The outcome was that I pulled Superman from school on November 18, the day of his 10th birthday. It was supposed to be on a short term basis. A medical withdrawal with his return being this month. We had some issues with the chemistry between Superman and his teacher. They were triggering each other regularly and things were going downhill quite quickly. The idea was that Superman would be home and the teacher could receive more training and support and then we would try again in January.

I decided that since he was home, I would try homeschooling him to keep him on a good schedule and because he's always happiest when his brain is occupied. I talked to the school Admin and to the SERT and I was saying how homeschooling was NOT what I wanted to be doing long term. How Superman would be itching to go back after 2 days like he usually is.

I took him to his Dev Ped to talk about the situation and what we both saw was a little boy who was severely depressed and bordering on being suicidal. He had gone from loving his life to thinking that he would never have another good day again. From loving school, to saying it was scary and it made his energy high and people hated him. I came to find that there was quite a bit of restraining going on at times when it should not have been. To the schools defence, the Admin had no knowledge of it at all.

So I pulled him.

The outcome? He has never once asked to go back. That's not like the old Superman. He used to LOVE school. But he his thriving at home. He is soaking in everything that I throw at him.

I have so many mixed emotions about pulling him. First off, I couldn't speak more highly of his school Admin. I just adore them. They constantly went to bat for us and made it clear they would support us either way. I wanted to email them first and let them know my final decision before I wrote about it here. So I am formally withdrawing him and will make that official this weekend when I send my intent to homeschool letter to the principal.

Our board team was top notch. The most amazing group of women who are so incredibly in tune to the needs of children on the spectrum. What I will miss most is sitting around the table brainstorming. They were open, enthusiastic and creative. They really "got" who Superman was and, even with all of his complexities, they were willing to work through it and they rose to the challenge. They made sure that I knew that I was never alone in this.

So now begins the new chapter in our lives. Superman is happy and adjusted. We're working on a unit on the Human Body. I highly recommend the movie "The Body Machine" which aired on The Discovery Channel. It was made in Toronto and it's fascinating.

Every day we do English, Math, Science, Reading, Science, Life Skills and Social Skills. We try to get some Canadian History in there at least once a week. He is more than happy to do his work and I'm astounded at how much he's retaining. It's incredible. He's a child who gets very, very overstimulated in large groups of people/kids. The one to one time works well for him and then, when I do put him in social situations, he is more successful because he has the resources to work through all of the stimulation. When he was at school, everything he needed to deal with the stimuli was done by 10am and he would crash.

In other news, Ladybug has started school (Montessori) and is a full day. She started yesterday and she LOVES it!!! It's great that she has her own routine/world/friends outside of the needs of her brother. For all of her 3.5 years we have been able to do very little because we were constantly cancelling plans due to having to be on call for Superman's needs. We were glued to the phone just in case it rang. So now that she's on her own, she loves it. She didn't cry at all. It was wonderful to see her adjust so well but I have to say it was hard on me. In all the years I've been home with her, I've only had a total of 5 mos of full days with her and they were hit and miss depending on if I had to pick up Superman. I'm trying to let that go, but I feel like I missed out. It's hard.

So with all of that to catch up on, I leave you this. The morning after I had the meeting with the Board of Ed team, it was my first full day of homeschooling. I woke up, fed the kids breakfast, turned on the radio, and this is what was playing.

Ali Slaight - The Story Of Your Life

Do you ever stop and wonder where this road will take you
Whats around the corner
Will it make or break you
Is this your destination
Or is it the start of something new

What will you accomplish
Which way will the wind blow
For every door that closes find an open window
And everyone is watching as you write the story of your life

And you wont look back because it feels so right
And no matter what it will be alright
In the brightest day or the darkest night
You will find yourself in the story of your life

Will you do the choosing or be the lucky one that's chosen
Will you recognize the greatness in your smallest moments
And every step you're taking, you’ll write another chapter in the story of your life

And you wont look back cause it feels so right
And no matter what it will be alright
In the brightest day or the darkest night
You will find yourself in the story of your life
Everything you are and everything you do
Anything you want its right in front of you

And if i turn left or if i go right
No matter what, I'll be alright
Standing in the shadows of the spotlight
Here i find myself in the story of my life

And you wont look back cause it feels so right
And no matter what it will be alright
In the brightest day or the darkest night
You will find yourself in the story of your life