Mid-CenturyModernMoms

Looking Forward to College: Part 1

Happy Birthday to Abe (for Sunday).  He is 19!!!

Abe went to college open house last weekend. 

And he also got a huge scare.

BSC only houses around 50% of its students, the rest mostly being commuters with a few living just off-campus.  But Abe wouldn't go here unless he got housing.  But it was stated at the open house (and true for all Massachusetts state schools) that if an applicant is accepted Early Action, s/he has a much greater chance of getting housing than those students that wait for general decision.

The deadline for getting the application in for Early Action is...... TODAY!!!!

Luckily, the application is on-line and they allow all of the supplementary documents to come in after the deadline (like the HS transcript and the SAT scores).

So rush, rush, rush.  Abe has written an essay- for the common college application (which BSC does not take) but it's at school and not at home, so there were arrangements to be made to get it emailed to mom and then Mom to press the send button. (done)

Eeek.  But then I get into a funk, can Abe actually handle college?  Sometimes I think yes, and sometimes I think no.  Time will tell.

To be continued.....

Back to School, Back to educating the &$!* Educators

Many are the times I've wished I didn't teach in the same district that is educating my disabled teenager. I've taken abuse from principals, snotty attitudes from teachers, insults from administrators, and in general, tons of crap that I know they wouldn't heap on other parents. We've resisted filing complaints against the district because I have feared professional repercussions. 

We've learned to cope. We don't contact teachers through my school email unless there's an emergency. Husband does most of the talking at our IEP meetings (we plan the script together ahead of time) so that teachers don't take offense at hearing negative statements from a fellow teacher. 

Last week I was actually glad to be on district email - sort of glad, that is. I read an email from our HelpDesk telling us that the district had permanently upgraded to Office 2007. This upgrade would allow us to blah, blah, blah, and yada, yada, yada, and in general be more efficient. There's only one (BIG) problem: Office 2007 is not compatible with Jaws for Windows,  the screen reader Amigo uses.

I sent off an email immediately (through school, as this was urgent) telling HelpDesk, the vision teacher, and the head honcho for special education saying, "...Our past experiences have shown that JAWS is not compatible with Office 2007. Please address this as soon as you can. (Amigo) is a blind student at (Big Round) High School. It is essential that the software is working when school starts so he can successfully do his coursework."

In case that wasn't enough, I red flagged it as high importance, and Husband followed up in engineer/ techie language. "There likely is a new version of JAWS that can be purchased.  However, JAWS is expensive and the parents are not able to afford changing the home.  Home and school equipment needs some sort of compatibility so the homework he creates at home can be interpreted by the computer at school and vice versa -- what is prepared at school and has to be continued at home can be interpreted by our home computer. Please also be aware that Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) is not compatible with JAWS.  Please inform Mom and Dad as soon as possible what and how this will be handled."

Now what? If I hadn't been on district email, this problem wouldn't have been recognized until Amigo first tried to log in and work on a school computer. School starts September 1; do you think they'll be ready? I hear your laughter. Shall we place bets on the odds?

Where's Ringo?

 Abe finally started working at his engineering internship.

Yes, it was supposed to start at the beginning of the summer, but hey, lawyers happen.  But the wording on the forms was all worked out and I signed it and Abe started working there several weeks ago.

Here's a conversation we had about it.

Mom: Who's your boss?

Abe: David.

Mom:  Is there anyone else working in the lab with you?

Abe: Yes, John and Paul

Mom: So where's Ringo?

Abe: (laughs)

Now the reason that this conversation is so amazing to me is that Abe NEVER knows the names of the kids that he goes to school with; he's just not that tuned into them to remember their names.  This is part of his neurological condition.  And he is even giving up several days of computer game time at home to return to school- while classes are NOT in session- in order to go to work at this internship.

I told Rosie about that on the drive home from camp last week and her response was to question whether we were talking about the same kid!

It's so nice to have a success- and I know that he loves it.  He even can explain what he's working on (but then, I know the products and have used them myself).

OPK- or Remembering that things could always be worse

Abe and I went down to Providence overnight and stayed with one of my second cousins.  She has a lovely, historic house (with a pool), a nice job, a nice husband and 2 teenage boys.  The younger of the boys is one day older than Rosie (15.5 yo) and the other is 10 month older than him.  But, oy, I wouldn't exchange my world for hers.

Neither of the boys listen at all to their mom and barely at all to their dad.  I know, a lot of that is just normal teenage stuff, but this household is rampantly out of control!

The older son is PDD, just like Abe- but also very different.  Max is a lot more social than Abe was at 16, but then again, he's already been in a residential program for several years. (Unlike Abe who just has done 1 year.)  Max is an electrical genius and he's working for an electrician this summer, but since there was no work this week, he has completely turned his schedule around- sleeping a lot during the day and prowling around at night.

The younger son, Alec hates his brother and won't even accept a hand-me-down pair of shorts from him!  This kid has anxiety attacks and just wants to stay inside all summer.

But both boys were totally normal in that I was able to get them to do things that they never would have done for their own parents.  I got Max out of bed on Sunday morning (at least long enough to have a little conversation with me and then come down to get a cup of milk).  He even went out walking with Abe, me and my cousin the night before.  I didn't give him an option, you see.  I just told him to get his jacket and come with us.  Probably the peer pressure of Abe coming along had a lot to do with that, actually.

I got Alec to sit at the table with all of us eating dinner (well, he ate something else, but he sat).  And I got him to select clothes for a trip that he was taking the next morning.

Meanwhile, Abe is behaving great and taking part in conversations (with the adults) but also playing video games with the boys.  My cousin was so encouraged for her boys to see mine doing so well.  So just remember, when you see someone with a life that you envy, you probably don't know the real story.

(p.s.- Abe finally started his internship, and he loves it!!!  he even knows the name of his lab-mates!)

The Bike Rides

Abe went out for a ride on his new bike this weekend- actually, he went out for 2 very LONGGGG rides.

 

In order for Abe to have a chance at all at becoming an Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts, he needed to be made a Star Scout at the June Court of Honor.  He just needed to finish up his biking merit badge with a 35 mile+ bike ride.  His troupmasters decided that he could finish up the ride over the summer and that they would raise him up at the June court.  So they did.

 

We picked up Abe's new bike a few weeks ago, but he didn't ride it as soon as we got it.  Then this was the next time that he was home.  Larry, a family friend, was going to do the long ride with Abe but told him that he had to do a ride on Saturday to get used to the bike.

 

So to give Abe a goal, I checked and it is about 10 miles to Framingham going out on Rt. 30.  Rt. 30 has the advantage of being fairly level and mostly low speed.  And Framingham means either Barnes and Noble at Shopper's World or GameStop, just across the street!

 

Barnes and Noble is was!  Abe set off to buy yet another Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) book.  I gave him my cell phone for emergencies, but also told him to call when he got there (so I wouldn't have to worry).

 

But, no call..... at least until he was ready to begin the return trip home. 

He had no problems with the ride (that he told me about) and got right into the shower to clean up!

 

Sunday, riding with Larry was more of the same.  But they went all over and up and down hills and it really wore Abe out.  He did the last 8-10 miles home on willpower, I guess, since he was totally  pooped.  No major problems, but he did  manage to run into Larry at a red light once because his attention was shot.

 

But hey, all that exercise!!!! Wow!

authentic learning & summer fun

It's all part of being the sandwich generation: we helped my in-laws move from their home of 40-some years to a condo. Packrats that they are (bless their hearts), they couldn't manage to downsize quite as much as they needed. Result? A condo basement full of Random Indescribable Stuff. Good son and daughter-in-law that we are (patting selves on back), we offered to host a rummage sale to sell off as much of their crap, er, collection as possible. We enlisted La Petite and Amigo, of course, and away we went.

We put Amigo in charge of handling money and making change. If you're a frequent reader, you might remember that Amigo, age 17, is blind. U.S. currency isn't the greatest for vision impaired folk with its identically sized and shaped bills, so blind citizens of our fair country learn to fold it in various ways to keep track of their cash. Amigo knows how to do this, but resists because he sees no purpose in it. "Mom, will you put this in my wallet?" "I'll bring you your wallet. You fold it and put it away." "Mom, why do I have to do all the work?" Imagine the last phrase in the whiny tone that only a teen can manage. If you're wondering, I hand him the wallet to handle on his own and then I walk away. Every. Stinking. Time.

At the sale, however, I fitted him with the fanny pack (we don't use a cash box), showed him which pocket was for $5, which for $1, and which for change and for bigger bills. Without a word, he folded the fives, the tens, and the rare twenties exactly the way he's been taught, and made change each time we asked. We watched over him a few times, and then went on serving customers because, duh!, he was fine on his own. All we had to do was add up the purchase total, tell him what kind of bills they were using to pay, and he handled the rest.

In between, he read news articles about Taylor Swift, his favorite country star, who'd performed in the area two nights earlier.

Darn kid. He is capable of taking care of himself; he just digs in his heels and gets snippy at home with his parents. Growl. But behind his back, I'm smiling proudly. The kid might make it on his own after all.

Slave Labor

Abe is going to be a slave this summer.

Slaves cannot leave an employer or a territory without explicit permission.  This is a true statement that applies to this summer.

Forced labor is defined as "all work or service which is extracted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily".  But this one ISN'T totally true because there was no menace of penalty, even though it certainly wasn't his idea- but he is game for it.

So what am I talking about???

Abe is going to be an unpaid intern at Brookfield Engineering.  This company is in the same town as his boarding school, and his therapist was working hard with this company in order to get them to offer internships to one or two students.  Brookfield normally only gives internships to college students, so this is really going out on a limb for them.  The fact that both of these boys are already 18 allowed their human resources department to okay it.

And the fact that mom uses Brookfield equipment in her lab at work doesn't hurt things either!  The therapist heavily dropped that fact while he was working at convincing the company.

It turns out that Brookfield already has some ties (in some unspecified way) to other people with Aspergers, so the fact of these kids' diagnosis actually didn't hurt the process!

So it's not definite yet.  But Abe may work 20 hours each week there.  The company usually pays its interns, so they are having some trouble working out that these kids CAN'T get paid.  It certainly is payment enough that they are learning to hold down a job, as well as a brownie point for their resumes.  But they may also get some payment in gift cards.  Abe would vote for one from Barnes & Noble.

One thing that Abe is going to have to get used to is dressing nicely- it's all business casual.  So I need to go get him some khakis or Dockers, some shoes that aren't sneakers (that is going to be hard on him) and some more polo shirts.  And he's going to have to make sure that the clothes aren't totally wrinkled.

Oh, mom is just kvelling over the idea.

One graduation down, one to go

My son graduated from his small learning community on Wednesday. The large graduation is still ahead of us. We have the cap and gown, we've returned all the books outstanding, we've paid all the fees, and we're ready for the stadium graduation.

But first, we got to do the small learning community graduation. It was a thing of beauty with nary a dry eye in the house. Parents so proud of their kids who have many challenges. Teachers thrilled to be seeing the backs of these kids. Friends cheering from the peanut gallery.

And my son getting TWO scholarships.

How can it get better than that?

This label "Ought" to be eliminated.

Have you heard the joke? A blind man walks into a bar and says, "Ouch."

It's not funny. Not a bit, if you're visually impaired or blind or have a family member who meets that criteria. Put-downs based on gender, race, or religion are no longer acceptable in polite society. So why are disability jokes and the related derogatory labels still allowed?

I've left comments on blogs that use retard or retarded as a descriptive word. By using a diagnostic term as an insult, the people who actually resemble the remark are insulted as well as the target group. I received a nasty and defensive response when I objected to a blogger's use of the term blind to indicate clueless or unobservant. Wake up, all, my blind teenager is actually more observant than a lot of sighted people!  Effective writers can find and utilize more creative and appropriate metaphors.

Imagine my dismay, then, to hear a teacher for students with autism refer to the students on her caseload as "my Aut Kids" and her "Auts." Shortening the word autism to aut puts it in a whole new category. Aut sounds much too much like Aught, which also means nothing. Nothing at all.

It's bad enough that students with special needs get labeled with a list of initials after their names, and we're not talking MD or PhD or TLC ASAP. These initials indicate a diagnosis such as LD, ADHD, BPD, EBD, VI, DHH, TAG, ELL, and many, many more.Their cumulative files are inches thick with IEPs and M-team reports and BCTs, among other educational records and various legal documents. They might as well be relegated to bar code status, recognized by a scanned code instead of looking into their faces and learning who they are. Simplistic labels like Aut reduces students with autism to a single syllable worthy of - well, naught.

Respect for all students and indeed all people should put words like Retard out of existence. Aut needs to follow Retard into oblivion - before it has a chance to take hold in the educational community or in society at large.

It's Bragging Time!

During the wonderful IEP meeting we had for Abe (see my previous post), I asked him whether he had gotten his SAT scores.  Abe took the test at his residential school, with breaks, over 2 days and with prompts read by the teachers in early October.  But Mom hadn't seen any results.

"Yeah", says Abe.  "So what are they?" "They were okay, but I don't remember."  But since we are sitting in the IEP meeting, someone jumps up to go get them.

Wow.  Mom is VERY pleased.  Critical reading (what used to be called English) is in the 90th percentile of all college-bound students.  Math (they haven't changed the name of that yet!) is in the 80th percentile.  Even the writing component is in the mid-40th percentile.  Considering that half of his IEP is all about the fact that he CAN'T write, this is amazing!!

But if so many college-bound kids are writing on Abe's level, there is a serious problem in modern education.