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!
