I haven't posted on my son Jacob in so long. I meant to after school was out, but just never got around to it.
When he left school, he was close to being caught up but also no where near 1st grade level. Which is expected. The school of course fully expects him to cooperate and adjust to 1st grade, which will be hard because I know he's not ready. When he starts 1st grade in the fall he will be expected to go to a first grade normal classroom with an aide, and only have a few hours in the SLC at a time. Considering that he's been fully in special ed for the past 3 years, I'm not sure how this will work.
When Jacob left school, he wasn't reading much, he was doing math very well, including subtraction, and still wouldn't write sentences. The teacher told us to do homework with him every night and try and help him learn new things to help him get ready for first grade.
We took her copies of workbook sheets to do, bought countless learning work books, and decided to make a trip to the library once a week. He kept with routines for about 2 weeks. Then he was done. He did well on his California Vacation with his dad, but he's still been beating up on his sissy.
As a result, my doctor put me on Celexa, because I can't leave the house with Jacob because he's so cruel to Nat, and I can't just take Ativan all the time. And all I have is panic attacks because I can't find what Jacob wants in a timely manner, he'll start destroying the house. And since I still don't have a job, my husband is working 2 jobs to support us. And then Jacob's psych decided to up his meds to try and see if we can keep him on track.
The meds for Jacob have been working well with some side effects. He went through 1 week without meds(which was a horrible week, and he ended up coloring himself green and giving his cousin a hitler stache), and then almost 2 weeks of endless crying drama, and now we're in the "focus" stage and beat up anything that ruins my focus.
He's officially given up on homework, he hates doing it. And some of his skills have declined. He won't do math at all anymore. But I have been able to teach him some concept of money. And what cents and dollars are, he's also learning to be money responsible, which means he returns pop cans in OR with his dad, and keeps the money, then he goes to the library, picks out used books he wants to buy, and they tell him how much, and he pays them. I have successfully gotten him to read. He needs short books with only 3-4 letters per word and not more than 4 word sentences. Otherwise he gets distracted and bored. I've been encouraging him tell me about the story after he reads it so that way he is understanding the concept of what he's reading. I have been able to teach him spelling to try and start spelling out sentences. He won't spell out sentences on his own but he loves to spell. He'll draw me pictures of the Avengers and then right what it is above it and say, "Look I wrote the Avengers" and if he doesn't know how to spell something he's also been successful to find a book that he knows the word is in, and find the word to spell it.
We are officially back to the organizing, and reorganizing and lining up stage. Which is annoying because the other kids will get hurt if they mess up his organization, but we're all working on that He is talking a lot, to us, but he still won't address anyone he doesn't know.
I did get him to go fishing with us to catch a fish, but he wouldn't touch it, or reel it in, and cried when they would nibble and swim away. And yesterday, he did walk around holding a leaf with a caterpillar on it. So there is progress.
He lost 2 teeth this year. One the week before his birthday and another when he was on his California Vacation. I warned his dad before they left but he didn't listen, and when Jacob bit into a donut, out the other tooth came!
He still isn't eat much, most of the summer he's been eating rice and spinach salad or eggs, and he is enjoying cereal with soy milk on it. So like I said some improvement.
I just mostly can't wait to see what the new school year has in store for us! We are going to finally have the school evaluate him on eating at school, since he'll be required to be at school all day now, and he doesn't eat properly enough to stay at school all day on the food he eats now.
Here's picture from the summer!
Oh and Jacob has managed to pick up a girlfriend, a 3 and 1/2 year old that is just as wild and crazy and rambunctious as him. So he's been enjoying her as well!
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