School Anticipation

Only a few more weeks until school starts again. I think the anticipation is building for me. Mostly it is with trepidation that I anticipate the new school year. For children like mine the right teacher can make or break the entire year for both the kids and myself. We’ve had everything from awesome to mediocre to is the year over yet because you suck teachers.

This year oldest has to move to a new school because he is moving into grade 7. This year will bring a whole host of new changes and I suspect issues as well to the forefront. We are adding rotary and instrumental music to the mix. I suspect it may be an interesting dynamic for him to deal with on a daily basis.

Just this year we finally acquired a true diagnosis for oldest and found him an amazing doctor. He was diagnosed with Aspergers with anxiety and OCD. He also has hyperaccousis (extraordinarily sensitive to noise) which heightens some of the other issues. He was misdiagnosed with ADHD Inattentive Type when he was 6 years old. Once diagnosed at 6 the doctors and teachers stopped questioning the problems he continued to have. Unfortunately many children who have Aspergers are incorrectly diagnosed with ADHD. As far as the anxiety goes his new doctor has prescribed a medication which is helping him a lot. On top of this he will be starting Cognitive Behavioral Therapy this fall with his new doctor. I am hoping these treatments will help to offset the problems that this new school environment may present.

Youngest is entering grade 3 at the same school he went to last year. I really don’t know anything about the teacher that he has been assigned to. They couldn’t even tell me if he would receive EA support in the classroom or not. Last year he received shared afternoon (his worst part of the day) EA support which worked well for him. I am hoping that his new teacher will embrace his need for structure, routines and schedules. Luckily for him the children at this school seem to be very accepting of his differences and very caring towards him.

I guess ready or not we will be diving head first in the new school year. It’s never boring and always an adventure!

Living in the burbs

It’s will be a year in September that we moved here. We’ve lived in 4 places in the last 5 years. This is the first place that finally feels like HOME. I know home is where you live but it’s hard to feel like it’s home when you know it’s temporary due to situations beyond your control. We really love it here and while it’s nothing fancy it definitely just right for us. A bedroom for everyone to have their own space. An area to play outside. A basement to hide stuff in. My own washer and dryer! That’s right no more laundromat for me. Control over the temperature in the house. No more broiling to death in the middle of the winter! Two bathrooms for 3 people is bliss. Hopefully no more moving for us for at least 10 years.

A year

It’s pretty much almost been a year since I last wrote here. I guess time really does fly!

Moving Along

I was able to register the kids for their new school. It is a small school with just one classroom of each grade which always helps with the boys. I also went and paid my first months rent on the new place so that I can just get the keys on the 1st.

I finally figured out how to get moved from here to there. I found out that there is a local charity they helps low income families with low cost moves. The price is less than 1/3 of the prices that I was being quoted. It includes two men and truck and it is a flat rate instead of hourly. The kids and I will move as much as we can ourselves in the few days between getting the new place and the movers coming. I need the movers to move the big stuff. The heavy furniture and heavy boxes.

Move date is coming soon and I don’t feel like I’ll ever be ready. Oh well back to the packing.

Moving

Packing is going well and I hope to be done by next weekend except those last minute things. The thing I dread most about this move is getting the boys registered and settled into their new school. A new school year is always a challenge and changing schools and informing them of my kids needs is yet another battle I will have to fight. Hopefully since it’s a fairly small school they will be able to be more accommodating than some of the larger schools.

The largest issue we may have is in getting support of an EA for youngest who is high functioning autistic who is going into 2nd grade. They had set up a minimal amount of support for him by the end of the school year at his old school and I knew this fall I would have to fight for more but now I feel like I’m starting from the beginning again. The new school will need to learn both the good and the bad. The good thing is it is within the same school board region so they at least will have the records fairly quickly. How do you put it positively to the teacher that if they push my son too hard and watch for his cues they could soon be within his line of fire as he is big on physical aggression. Unfortunately the physical aggression has really started to come out early in new public situations with and without myself present which has caused some great concerns for those who are around him most often. Also youngest does not have an IPRC yet or a definitive IEP as he didn’t have a diagnosis until 1 week before school ended so that will also have to be tackled this fall.

The worst for the oldest will be the anxiety of a new school. It is my hope that he will get an excellent teacher who can make him feel comfortable but not coddle him.

The boys are very excited about moving into a house and actually have green space to run around in. There are also many parks in our new neighbourhood. One weekend I took them for a drive by of 7 parks in the area. We stopped and played at 3 of them. There are many more parks to explore.

I’ll just be glad when this move is over and we are all settled in!

We got it!

So we got the townhouse and we can move in mid September which is perfect. The boys will be able to start at their new school at the beginning of September and I’ll just drive them back and forth as needed. Now the fun of packing begins. Picked up a bunch of empty boxes today. Mostly this weekend I’ll probably get sorting and decluttering done but that’s an important part of the moving process. If we don’t use it why take it with us! Some will go to trash and some i’ll sell or give away on kijiji depending what it is.

Maybe?

Maybe we have a new place to live? I have applied for a town house rental in a not to far away neighbourhood with better school area and daycare. Should know if we got it by Tuesday at the latest I hope. Income is borderline(36% of income instead of 25-35% they want) but I have an excellent credit rating so I’m hoping that pushes it over to yes. It would be great for the kids and I to have a house with an upstairs and a basement and a postage stamp backyard. Trying not to think about it too much because I was very dissapointed the other week when we didn’t get one we loved because the landlord decided to rent it to someone else without even checking my credit.

I truly do believe though that things happen for a reason. We ended up where we are now because I was going to school near here. If we were not here youngest would never have gotten into the special speech grade 1 program that exists in a mere handful of schools. This year has brought him so far and we were meant to be here I believe for that reason.

I have been working alot of hours these last few weeks as all the regular staff goes on vacation. More hours for me means more money for moving which is good as I’ll need to hire some movers to move my furniture as I can’t do it myself. I am also going through and sorting things and selling some stuff on kijiji as it’s just been sitting around since we moved here 2 years ago.

The youngest has recently had a medication dosage increase it seems to be helping to an extent but I wonder how long it will last as it’s not been as great as when we first started this medication. I hate trying to find just the right medications. If we could avoid medication all together we would but it is just not possible.

Well I’m off to pack a few more boxes and toss more junk. Hurray for on site dumpsters and recycling with no garbage limit. Especially since the rest of the city has a 1 garbage bag limit.