Paper Pusher

I have been a very busy paper pusher lately. I have copied so many pages of stuff that I ran out of black ink. I had a rather nasty paper jam to undo. I have written numerous letters. I am working on adoption assistance for my soon to be eighteen year olds.I am working with two different states with different processes. I spent two and a half hours on the phone with the Social Security Administration and then got to speak with a guy who could barely speak English and certainly had no understanding of the complex issues that I was dealing with so guess what I get to do it all over again with a supervisor later this week. Why the heck didn`t they let me speak with someone who knows what is going on in the first place! I made three medical appointments and got prescriptions refilled so the wild children do not get out of hand.

After all of that I began dealing with trying to get Paul a new pair of glasses since he lost his and we can not find them any where. We even put out a $20.00 reward which usually get results around here, but no finders so far. This losing glasses creates an insurance mess. First of all we have to get a new prescription since the current one is more then twelve months old. If we fill it and he needs a different one in January (when he has his next scheduled appointment) they will not pay for the change. If we just let him go without them until his appointment then we have the school going bonkers. To make matters just a little bit more crazy we have to get a new paper from the pediatrician stating that he needs flexible frames because he will have the cheap ones in multiple pieces in less then a day. All of this takes time and lots of phone calls and papers to fill out.

This is what I do all the time to keep these kids functioning. I think I could make really good wages as a professional paper pusher.

Creepy

Paul and I were waiting to check out at the store when in his non-stop chatter and jumping around he says to a girl who is likely about the same age, but at least six inches taller, "your creepy"

Her response " you are cute, but I think you might be the creepy one".

This word creepy is one that he picked up at school and he has absolutely no idea what it means and since he is so impulsive and never thinks before he speaks it is coming out at all the wrong times in all the wrong places. I would like to think that creepy is as bad as it will get, but I am pretty sure there will be other things coming out of the kid`s mouth that will cause far more trouble then that did.

Tow-Mater

This morning Paul was in a total panic because he wanted to wear his Tow-Mater t-shirt, which has yogurt all over it and it is in the laundry. He threw it in the dryer and told me that I need to wash it "NOW" so he can wear it to school now. Well there is no explaining that it takes a while to wash and dry the shirt so I was not even going to go there with him because he would not understand. I was able to get some other clothes on him and get his tires (shoes) on, I gave him his fuel (lunch box), and sent him out the door. We could not find his mirrors (glasses) anywhere so he is just going without them for today.

He left stomping and yelling that Mater can not back up without his mirrors. I guess Mater is just going to have to drive forward for today.

I am so in love with that kid, Tow-Mater and all!

In The Bushes

After school yesterday was going as smoothly as things can go that time of day around here. Allen had gone out to release his stress on the swing, Hanna and Paul went to the park with our PCA, and since Lauren was just sitting on her butt I was putting her to work with me. We unloaded the backpacks and lunchboxes and Lauren unloaded the dishwasher. I had just started preparing dinner and was helping Lauren make lunches for today when the park crew returned.

Hanna told me that she was heading to the restroom and Angie was helping Paul, who was freaking out because he had knots in his shoes and he could not get them off as fast as he wanted to. When Angie got done handling the shoe problem I asked her to check on Hanna (we have a lot of issues with her in bathrooms) and after checking all four of the bathrooms and not finding her the search was on.

Hanna does not usually run off unless she is in one of her mad at the world moods and she had not been acting up at all so I got concerned rather quickly. I went upstairs checking closets, under beds, in Paul`s fort, etc and found her no where. While I was upstairs looking Angie was in the basement doing the same.

Then Karre returned from the grocery store so I told her to check in the garage. About this time I was going for the phone to call in our local law enforcement friends once again (they know Hanna all to well) when Karre comes in to tell me to look out the back door. There was Hanna sitting in the tomato bushes (which are very over grown) eating the tomatoes.

I had to explain once again to the kid that she can not just take off and go where ever she wants to because she scared the heck out of all of us and she can not keep herself safe. She just stared at me with that blank look telling me that she had no idea what I was talking about. I sure hope those tomatoes were tasty!

First Grade And FASD

Paul and the first grade are not exactly getting along. He can not sit still, does not understand the material, and in general is not ready for first grade. He most likely will not be there for several years so there is no point in putting it off. He learns by doing the same things over and over again. He is extremely concrete so he needs to learn everything one way no exceptions.

Since school is rather challenging he is picking at his ears, and biting his lip and he is REALLY loud and hyper when he gets home. His meds have begun to wear off by late afternoon so we have been having lots of shoe throwing, paper taring, and one blue backpack flying across the kitchen every day.

I think it is time to make some changes in his day.

The older three kids were going swimming this morning so they were excited to get out the door. I hope Hanna puts her ear drops in so she can keep swimming. The last word I got from her this morning was that she did not need to listen to those rules cuz she doesn`t want too and no one will tell me if she does not follow the rules. I am not about to get into a power struggle with, but there are consequences if she does not do what she is supposed to do, and yes I will find out.

Never fear I will never run out of things to do and issues to deal with.

Beyond Awareness

Today is FASD awareness day, but I think it is time to move beyond awareness. With all the accessible information out there I think people are finally coming to the understanding that alcohol messes people up big time. I know that there will always be those out there who will say "I just didn`t know" and for some of them that may actually be the case, but come on now, the reality is that they really do know, they just do not want to deal with the issue because they are not comfortable with it, they can use alcohol because their kid will not turn out like that, or they feel it does not directly affect them so they simply do not care.

It is time to figure out how educate the kids affected with FASD.
It is time to figure out how to keep the teens and adults affected with FASD out of the criminal justice system.
It is time to figure out how to provide appropriate services for all persons with FASD.

Most of all it is time to stop the alcohol consumption to prevent FASD in the first place!!!

Three-Sixty

When I was a kid I could ride my purple, banana seat bike, the one with a purple glitter seat, everywhere all year round. I could jump the curb, sprint the two blocks to the park, go around the block to grandma and grandpa`s with no problem. There is one thing that I never mastered on that bike, the three-sixty. One of my brothers could spin himself on his bike in the air to make a complete circle without crashing. I do not know how he did that and I guess I was probably to sense- able a kid for that kind of stuff, but it was cool when he did it.

Now that I am parenting kids who need to live their lives in the "system" all the time I an learning how to do that three-sixty. One minute the plan is to stop everything and get the kid out into the community, ready or not because that is the plan that happens to have the available funding right now. No one has any idea what will be happening next month so we had better get moving.

This is not the way we wanted to do things. We wanted to make a very slow transition from school to community, to work, to living outside the home. We just felt that would be the best way to do things, after all the average teenager in not ready to be on their own the minute they become adults so certainly someone who has significant special needs would not be ready either.

This morning while going through the mail I found a letter from another state which informed me that since my child will turn eighteen after Oct. 1st 2011 and is developmentally disabled new legislation in that state has made it possible for adoption assistance to continue. That is one piece of legislation that is working to benefit the kids. This will allow us to do a three-sixty back to the plan that we felt was right all along, ya-hoo!! I just have to figure out what documents from our state will fulfill their requirements. I do have thousands of pages to choose from and I have to get this to the people who make decisions and control the funds before the kid turns eighteen, this task is not quite as much fun as riding that banana seat bike, but it is one I can take on for the kid.