Meeting at school....

Oh nuts, I had this almost complete and lost it :(  So here it goes again....

This morning I had the meeting at school to discuss the plan for Joey's next school year. I gave them a verbal summary of what the report from Children's said and the principal basically wrote down in simple terms, everything that the doctor put in her report as ways to help Joey. Yes it was that simple! Nothing she said was out of the ordinary so in my opinion shouldn't have been an issue no matter what and it wasn't. I really love my principal for this. I do realize from the depths of my being how lucky I am to have an awesome team at this school who has never given me any problems with giving Joey what he needs.

We discussed things to help him succeed academically from placement in the classroom to breaking down his work into chunks so he's not so overwhelmed. Discussed the use of one of those wobble seats and/or bands that they tie around the chair legs. Having him work one on one with the lady who offers the extra help at school (Mrs. A) and how to redirect him without singling him out. His teacher seems to be similar in nature to my good friend Nikki who's passion is the tough kids. She runs her room as if they all had ADHD or Autism which I think is GREAT. I was so happy to hear that by the end of the year he jumped up one more reading level! This is wonderful news. He spent a full year (and I mean 12 mos) at reading level B. Then from March to May he went to C and now D! He needed to be a solid C to pass onto 1st grade so being a slight step ahead is only going to benefit him. Mrs. A has done wonders with him and I'm so glad she's willing to work with him this summer. He will do summer school reading 2hrs a day, 4 days a week for 5 weeks then Mrs. A will work with him a couple hours a week until school starts.

Social-- I brought up my concern that he's not being supervised well enough in certain situations (ie lunch room and recess) and how he is not the kid that goes looking for trouble but he's sure to stare trouble in the eye when it finds him. So when he gets into trouble they are to take everyone into account for what happens as it's usually another kid teasing Joey. He's having issues recognizing teasing for fact too like when the boys this past year were teasing they were going to cut up Joey's coat. He took it seriously and felt his coat was in serious danger so he did what he had to to protect it. I have no problem with him paying his dues for knocking the kid's head into a table while trying to get past him but at the same time those boys, both of them, needed to be in just as much if not more trouble for teasing Joey like that. Know what I mean?  I also said I want it stressed to Joey that he talk to an adult when there's trouble and not react... thus the adults have to take his issues seriously. What sounds petty to you or I is serious stuff to Joey and the adults need to diffuse the situation.

Medical-- His teacher did notice quite a bit of PICA stuff going on but never brought it to my attention. So we addressed that and wrote in there his ability to snack or chew gum as a way to keep inappropriate objects out of his mouth.

At home-- The teacher uses a color chart for behavior. She had the kids write their color in their assignment notebooks each day so the parent knows how they're doing. She will also send home a note for RED or BLUE (GREEN and YELLOW are minor offences). So I will have a calendar/diary for this. He can color in the day with his color and I'll keep track of his meds (which ones, doses, changes etc...) along with vacations/days off so we might see some patterns to bad behaviors and as a way for me to reward him for his good behavior at school.

Speech-- he's all set up for his ESY speech help, 40mins a week. His ST is awesome, I so love her. She called today and asked if I could bring Joey to the dollar store tonight and have him pick out 5 items. He will earn those items by working hard for her over the summer. She is one awesome teacher who doesn't think about her schedule or unions or anything like that. She loves her speech kids and gives her all to them. I was going to buy Joey's $5 worth of stuff to save her from having to do it since she's doing it for all her kids... I think I offended her for wanting to buy it. These kids are truly in her heart. I will get her something nice at the end of the summer school session :)

So that's about it... Joey turns 7yrs old on Friday, Summer school starts on Monday, BP check on Tuesday and we can try the meds next Friday when he doesn't have any school. Praying it goes well!!