Quite the week!  We started with a play date and a birthday party on Monday and wrapped it up with another birthday party on Saturday and a park day on Sunday!  Very fun stuff!

We had a pretty good week post Nana visit.  Nixi's hallucinations have been steadily increases over the past 4 days, but we kind of expected that after the excitement of the visit.  She's been doing a great job of coping.  She's started repeating mantras like "I'm not afraid of--insert current hallucination here--, I'm brave."  And when it gets to be too much she goes off somewhere and quietly talk to her hallucinations and her herself to calm down.  She hasn't been screaming too much and she's been panicked much less.  We're all really impressed and proud of her!

I had a pretty good week.  On Wednesday right before school was out another girl and I had a misunderstanding.  I told her, under my breath, "I just looking at your shoes."  She thought I said that I didn't like her shoes.  She got mad and told the other kids and all of them were telling me to say I was sorry.  I didn't understand what was wrong so I didn't want to say sorry.  My teacher got involved, saying "We don't say things to hurt our friend's feelings.  I would like you to say you're sorry."  I said it but I was rattled.  When mom came to pick me up she could tell something was wrong.  I told her I was nervous.  She asked the teacher what happened and she relayed the even t to mom.  This is where I'll let mom take over the story....

Hi all.  A quick update on Safi's IEP before addressing the above situation.  The IEP was Tues and it went well, a long 2 hrs. but I was relatively pleased.  We all discussed our goals for Safi in the next year.  A big focus was on social skills and social emotional skills.  I specifically addressed Safi's difficulty with accepting feedback and saying sorry, as she is afraid that people wont accept her apology and she just wants everything to be ok.  I modeled how we work with this by stating what we would like her to say without directly confronting her as that makes her more anxious.  We just repeat verbatim what she should say and she eventually says it...everyone moves on.  I addressed Safi's difficulty with offering information and the need to ask lots of follow up questions...her teacher assured me that she does this.  We discussed what we want in a teacher next year....more warm and fuzzy, less task master.  I brought an exercise in differences of perception for the IEP member to do, it seemed to go as well as I usually expect.  Nothing to be over the moon about but fair enough. My main message was that Safi needed to end the year out strong and we all needed to support her in doing so.  Now back to Safi's Wednesday school fiasco.  When I asked the teacher what happened and she relayed the incident, saying "Just like we talked about in the IEP, she had difficulty saying sorry.", I about lost my mind.  Sadly, what the teacher took from the IEP were Safi's struggles, NOT the interventions we already have in place to help her with them.  I pointed out to her that she did NOT do as we had discussed and I had role played numerous times in the IEP, but rather she confronted Safi and told her that she wanted her to say X.  NOT the same thing and NOT the way to get the result that she was looking for.  She immediately became defensive and said that as I had modeled it in the IEP, "You made it seem like it could take 10-20 times of saying it to get her to respond and we were in the last 5 minutes of class so we were getting ready to line up."  Ok, so it wasn't convenient to do it as I had requested?  No, autism and the many interventions and supports in place for it are not terribly convenient.  But if you only do them when its convenient for you there is no consistency and you will not get the desired result.  Regardless, I needed to attend to Safi so I left the teacher for the next day and addressed my kid.  She was absolutely confused and sad.  I asked her why the girl was upset and she said "I don't know" and began to cry.  I asked her if she said she didn't like her shoes, "no."  I asked what she did say and she relayed that she said she was looking at her shoes.  I asked her if she said it quietly or loudly, "Quiet."  So, it was all a misunderstanding.  Which brings me to my second issue...asking follow up questions.  Had I not continued to ask questions in a myriad of ways I may never have found out what really happened because Safi answers only what she asked, no elaboration, no correction.  I addressed this in the IEP.  That night when Safi was climbing in to bed she turned to me and said, "I think Ava's shoes are pretty, mama."  About broke my heart.  Poor kid.  So, the next morning I asked the teacher if she asked Safi what happened and it became very apparent that she had asked several questions...of the other children but NOT of Safi.  I pointed this out and finally told her point blank that I am very frustrated with her and the fact that I am constantly providing her with "recipes" for Safi's success, only to see her add her own ingredients or omit some of mine ending in disastrous results.  She was miffed, I was miffed but appropriate and the next morning the principle was there and asked me to come early or talk to the teacher after school from now on because it was holding up the class...despite the fact that I confronted her the morning before 10 minutes before the bell rang.  No matter what we need this lady to help Safi so I'll continue ramming my head into her brick wal until I can't do it anymore...then I'll send Mike.  Should be interesting.

Ok, so mom filled you in.  She made sure to do some damage control with Ava by explaining to her that she had misheard what I had said.  I like Ava but it seems like she maybe doesn't like me because on Friday she ran up to mom after school and tried to tattle on me.  Mom told her she was not interested unless I was hurting someone or breaking something and that shut her down pretty quick.  I still like her though, and I told mom she's nice.

So, that was our week.  A little draining, a lot of fun, and some frustration along the way.

xoxo
Safi