Wednesday had not been good. I forgot to send a new water bottle with Nathan to school (he threw his the day before, and it was nowhere to be found). Apparently Nathan fixated on the fact that his bottle was missing, and was extremely frustrated by it. (He likes to make a sugar-free lemonade or punch with a powder that I give him to pour into the bottle.) He was on the verge of a melt all day long, and kept telling the staff that they couldn't make him do what was expected of him.
Great.
I emailed the teacher back, and tried to explain that his obssession with the water bottle concerned me, because it sounded to me like he was very stressed. The water bottle should not have caused that kind of fixation. We have water and drink mixes all the time, and we run out from time to time, but he has never reacted like that before. That tells me that something else was going on, and the water bottle was not really the issue, but just a symptom of the real problem.
I tried to tell her that when he has a meltdown, it is rarely the preceeding incident that was truly the cause of the melt. Usually, whatever sets off the meltdown is really just "the straw that broke the camel's back." He might have had ten things happen to him that day, that all upset him, but none was enough to send him over the edge. But then the water bottle was missing and boom, he melts down. It wasn't one thing, it was many things. Having him fixate on the bottle would be a sign to me that something is very wrong, a red flag, as was his rude backtalk about not being able to get him to do what he was supposed to do. Nathan is NOT a rude child. He is one of the most polite kids you could ever meet. When he is rude, there is DEFINATELY something else going on. Red flags should have been waving all over the place. Instead, they just got angry that he was being defiant.
I tried to explain about the straw that broke the camel's back in the email, but the teacher wrote me back and said no, that they had determined that the water bottle is really what he is upset about.
With that kind of open-mindedness, I can see why they have meltdown after meltdown.
They have their own idea of what is going on with Nathan, and I don't know what I'm talking about. Hell, I've only lived with him, and his precise version of autism and sensory modulation disorder, for over nine years. Why would I know anything about this?
Somehow they managed to avoid a full blown meltdown, by talking to him, giving him breaks, and allowing monitored cooling down times. Thank goodness.
(If the whole thing had simply been an issue of a missing water bottle, why didn't they just give him a cup to make his lemonade, and solve the problem?)
They told me that Nathan wouldn't bring home a book he needed for homework. I asked if we should have a copy of his books at home. They said he needs to learn to take home what is necessary for his schoolwork. Okay.
I later found out that Nathan wasn't trying to be naughty when he wouldn't take the book. He felt that he didn't need to book to do the work. They had read the book in class, and he thought he knew the material well enough to answer the questions without it. He did the work he needed to do, without the book, answering the questions from memory. I thought he missed an assignment, but he didn't at all! He just made them mad because he didn't think he needed it. (If they gave him an assignment to do some very simple addition, and then suggested he take a calculator home to do it, he would have refused to take the calculator too. Why is this a bad thing?)
Then came Thursday.
Meltdown number nine, Restraint number six.
Nathan got to school on Thursday, and discovered that his para (his one-on-one aide) was out sick for the day. He had a substitute para. Recipe for disaster.
I received a phone call from the school nurse. The principal was not in, so they took him to the nurse's office. She called me, and I asked her to put Nathan on the phone. At the time, I could hear him growling and screaming in the background, and crashes, like he was throwing things. Hoo boy. If I didn't hear it for myself, I may never have believed it. He NEVER gets like this at home.
Once I got Nathan on the phone, I tried to talk to him. I didn't even know if he could hear me or not, or if he had thrown the phone, but I kept talking anyway. Finally I got him to answer me. He could only give yes or no answers at first. I kept telling him I needed him to calm down and relax, and I asked him to take deep breaths. To my surprise, he actually did! I could hear the deep breaths. I quickly realized I needed to tell him to exhale too, since he seemed to be breathing in, but I couldn't hear breathing out! But he did it, and quickly de-escalated. The only real sentence I got out of him was when he told me his para was absent. The nurse got on the phone again and told me she would give him about 5 minutes and then take him back to class. She also said she would have him apologize to her for hitting her. (yikes). I asked her to put him on the phone again, and told him to apologize. When she took the phone back again, I tried to tell her that I hoped the day would improve, but she hung up on me.
When dh went to pick Nathan up from daycare, they told him he had been upset there, too, but they handled it just fine. They have been doing SO well with him.
So then we come to Friday.
Nathan woke up happy, and ready to do schoolwork. I normally would see this as a good sign, but this is pretty much how he has gotten up all week, and that was certainly no promise of a good day.
I was extremely sick with some kind of stomach virus (or food poisoning?), and could not make it to work. I hoped to pick him up from school in the afternoon, if my rebellious tummy would cooperate.
I was so worried about him all day. This had been such a rough week, and I didn't think any of us could take much more. I went to school early, planning to observe if he was doing okay.
When I got to the school, I was buzzed into the principal's office. There, they told me that Nathan had a "FABULOUS DAY!" whooooohooooo!!!!
After getting the okay to go to his class to check on him, I slipped quietly into the back of the room and sat down on the counter across the back.
The para came up and told me that Nathan had been having a really good day. His teacher did the same. Nathan was sitting nicely, working well, and grinning from ear to ear when he realized I was there. The case manager saw me, when she was walking down the hall, and called me into her office. There she showed me a neat little book the Autism Team had created for Nathan. It was a social story, based on the "wellness chart" I created for him. (This was a chart that showed how he progressed from happy to meltdown, and what he could do to calm himself along the way.) It was basically the same information, but it was elaborated on, and put into book form. She offered to get me a copy, and I was delighted.
I had barely returned to his class when the Speech Therapist called me into the hallway. This woman is really wonderful with Nathan. She not only told me what a great day he was having, she also told me that she has seen Nathan make some significant progress lately! She said he was taking an interest in his schoolmates, and asking questions to learn more about them! How cool is THAT! She has helped him so much with his social skills. And she always makes a point of telling me something positive about Nathan. God bless that woman.
It was at that point I talked to the para, who was explaining how they were sending home some work that he missed during the week due to his meltdowns. I inquired about that book he refused to bring home, and asked what the reading assignment was that he missed. That's when she told me that it wasn't a reading assignment, it was just supposed to help him answer the questions on the handout. She went on to tell me that he must not have needed the book, because he told her he could answer the questions without it. I would have been really irritated by this, since they led me to believe he had refused to do his work, not that he refused to bring home a book that he didn't really need, but I was feeling too happy about his good day to let anything bug me.
No school for four days! YAHOO!
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