Yea for the OT

Another busy day. Today we had Holland's OT appointment after fencing. We did this last week and it was a disaster. He was literally bouncing off the walls by the time we got to the OT. He could not pay attention and his body was bumping into everything. He is really not wanting to do fencing. It's hard to know how far to push him. He refuses everything we offer. On Mondays I pick up Romania from the bus stop and we drive up to meet Super Hero in Portland. Holland goes with him and I take Romania to handbell practice. He kept crying saying he didn't want to go and wanted me to page dad and tell him I said it was okay not to go play at the club. I told him that Mondays were his night with dad and I didn't care what they did, but I was still dropping him off. I emailed dad and told him this. He needed to figure out what to do - I didn't care if they sat in the parking lot - just don't involve me. So getting him to do fencing has not been fun. He has working memory deficits that make it difficult for him to remember a sequence of things. He is also not very aware of what his body is doing and as a result got yelled at two weeks ago in fencing class for being a bit out of control. He did not want to go today, but I said we were still picking up his cousins and he needed to at least try. The first 30 minutes of the class are spent warming up. The kids play games and today the instructor asked which parents wanted to play against the kids. Everyone just sat there, so I jumped down off the stage and joined for a game of dodgeball with 20 kids. Eventually some other parents joined and it was fun. My legs still hurt from that. I consider it my exercise for the week.

After returning my nephews to their house and picking up Egypt, we drove straight up to Portland for the OT session. I was worried that it would be a repeat of last week. He fell asleep in the car ride up. Never a good sign. But he seemed alert when we went in and had many things to share with Camille. I sat in for the first 20 minutes and he did an awesome job listening and trying out the exercises. Some of them are very difficult for him because they require some upper body strength. He didn't complain once and each time Camille asked him to do it again, he did. I left for a bit to talk to the speech path about possible services and to ask her opinion of how to deal with this school situation. She has never worked in the school system but we talked with a PT who has been in public school and told me that I needed to lay out the reasons why it wouldn't work and them tell them "these are the circumstances that I will accept your services." I loved that. I want her to come with me! They keep saying ' oh you're in charge. Whatever the parent wants, it's your decision.' That's a bunch of hooey. What happens when you disagree with them is they bring in a table full of people all on their side and you show up bombarded with reasons why you need to listen to them. The wording she gave me was perfect for retaining control of Holland's education. If they're not going to provide speech by coming to our house, then I'm not going to accept their services. I would love to not have to pay for something, but it doesn't look like we'll make any improvements because the school speech path is only looking at the incorrect way he's making the words and not the underlying problem.

So say a little prayer on Thursday when I go in to face all the big wigs of the school district. After all, I'm just a mom who has no idea what the best thing for her son is (insert sarcasm if you didn't already).