Yesterday i dropped Marshall off for a 2 hour assessment
with Janel from Next Step.
This is the Autism Program that M will start
attending 5 days a week, 2 hours per day.
His first week will be August 8th.
Marshall has seen a lot of different therapists
and has had a lot of testing type things
happen in the past year and a half.
He always does fairly well.
Marshall appears at ease with new faces in a
therapy and intervention environment which is great,
as it's about to get much more
intense for him.
With everything, even the
Autism testing we just went through,
i have been in the room,
i have been there.
This 2 hour session with Janel was a hard one for me...
i had to leave Marshall alone.
I never do that.
I do leave him with family members or in the
church classroom with people i trust,
but here, i really don't know Janel.
I don't know what happens if Marshall gets upset,
or if he starts to act aggressively...
and it's just Janel and M, in a room where the blinds
are closed and the door stays closed...
and i have to walk away.
I have to leave him.
And if things aren't ok when he's there,
he has no language to tell me about it.
I have had some anxiety and lost some sleep
over Marshall not liking this Next Step Program
and wondering how i am supposed to drop
him off somewhere and just trust these people.
Trust them...
with meeting my son's emotional needs,
with dealing appropriately to his tantrums,
with changing his diapers and getting him potty trained.
It also didn't really help me mellow out
when i went onto youtube to view some videos of
children with autism and came
across this horrifying video
of an 8 year old autictic boy who was in a straight jacket,
screaming and trying to free himself...
yeah.
I thought i was going to throw up and turned it off
after about 5 seconds.
It was terrible.
And now my mind wanders.
So when i brought Marshall in to Janel yesterday,
i asked her straight out how she would deal
with M should he be upset or become aggressive.
I told her about the straight jacket.
She gave me all the right answers :)
They do not use straight jackets.
Phew.
I didn't think that they would as that is a thing of the
past, but you don't know until you ask right?!
Marshall and D played in the therapy room which
was really nicely set up and which
M was completely content to play and explore in.
Janel told me that she could tell i was nervous,
but that i shouldn't be.
I knew everything was going to be fine...
well, that he wouldn't die or anything (lol),
but you just don't know cause you're not there and
because this is a first.
Janel told me that i could sneak out this time,
but once Marshall is in the program,
I will have to say proper goodbyes so he will learn
them... which i understand.
(Screaming and pealing him off of me... oh the joy
of the near future! lol. Hopefully not.)
So D and I snuck out and Janel closed the door.
I wanted to just walk down the hallway confidently,
and i knew that if i heard him starting to freak
out that it'd be that much harder to leave...
but i had to stand in the hall and listen a bit.
I didn't listen for long.
I heard M come to the door and try to open it.
Then i waited for the calling of "mama"
and the crying...
but it didn't come!
Then he flicked the lights off and i heard
Janel playing with him.
I started to breath again and walked
down the hallway, in peace.
Two hours later D and I waited in the lobby
for Janel to bring Marshall down.
M came walking through the door and he
was HAPPY!!
All smiles and gave me a hug and Janel
looked happy too. Yeah!
Janel said that M did well, but didn't quite understand
his purpose there and was on his own agenda,
so she only got a good reading on him for
about one hour.
She said that M had a lot of good eye contact
with her which i was happy to hear.
Marshall seems to have great eye contact with me,
so all along when different people have said
that M has bad eye contact,
i didn't really understand what they were talking about.
But in Dr. Brown's report, she stated often
that M looks at mom, and shows mom toys,
but that he would not look at the instructor.
In those sessions i could really see how M avoided
the therapists. So i was really happy to
hear Janel sound kinda surprised at the amount of
eye contact M had with her.
This statement also made me happy because it
meant that Marshall was comfortable, that
he trusted her and enjoyed his time with her...
which means that i can trust her too :)
Basically what Janel is doing is seeing where M's at.
Similar to the Autism testing but much more
detailed.
Her goal is to push him until he fails at everything.
This will give her a strong picture of where M is at
and how to best move forward.
We booked another 2 hour session for M with Janel
to finish up the assessing next week.
Ahhh...
all this worked up worrying and it was all for nothing.
But hey, i'm a parent, i'm a mom, and that's part
of my job right? to worry!
I have a picture with sunshine in it now when i think
about M attending Next Step daily.
He will be ok... and he will do great there.
I am confident of this.
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