The title of this post is a common phrase that we hear Marshall using around here lately. One thing that we could reflect on as being ridiculous at present might be: I haven't blogged about Marshall since fall, and he is rounding up term 2 at school already! My last post was about my daughter's health journey, and I had triple the views on that one!! wow! I guess it is nice to have a story where there is a beginning, middle, and end :) For Marshall's posts, I usually try to keep lists of all of things I want to blog about for when I finally sit down to type, however that has not happened for some reason, so you are getting a 'fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants' post! Whatever I can share within the next half an hour is all I am able to offer at this time!!
Marshall is doing well in Kindergarten! From what I can tell and from what his first term report card read, he is able to keep up with his peers academically at this point which is fantastic!! Rounding up term 2 I am excited to tell you that Marshall now knows his upper and lowercase letters, and almost all of the sounds! He is reading sight words and has almost mastered his assigned 30 first words for the year... it is SO awesome listening to him READ!! Just really never knew if that day would happen for him :) He is getting pulled out of the classroom to work on his IEP goals with his EA. The first term report card did not show much progress as the IEP is created near first report card time, so we will see how it is coming along in our report card in a couple of weeks!
Below I have listed Marshall's 7 IEP goals in general form. These goals are created based on my input, the assessments and paperwork from M's past and current programs, as well as the observations in the classroom by both the teacher and the EA, and are support by the learning coordinator:
1. Will be able to initiate play
2. Be able to develop self-regulation skills
3. Will be able to stay on topic in discussion
4. Will improve language skills
5. Be able to retell a simple story
6. Will learn his alphabet- names/sounds
7. Will be able to achieve grade level outcomes with support/adaptations
** M was recently seen by the OT and a new goal that stemmed from that assessment is to work on his pencil grip. Now, it's not perfect, but his writing is beautiful and that is why no one has been working on changing his grip up to this point. From an OT's perspective, it seems Marshall's whole academic career will be destroyed if he does not hold his pencil correctly! oh brother. We will support trying and hope that M's penmanship is not jeopardized in the process!! haha. The other day using a pencil grip with his BI here at home, he was so uncomfortable with it that he started using his left hand to grasp the top of the pencil to help him! HA! Two hands... cause that's better than what he is currently doing?!?! We shall see how it goes as so far he is not fighting it and apparently doing it correctly with the grip at school for limited periods of time :)
On top of the school support Marshall is receiving, he gets extra help daily from the BI therapy we have going on in our home (covered by Autism funding- what a blessing)...plus what I do with him myself. He has so much support right now, that I do have a slight fear of whether or not he will be able to keep up next year with less BI/therapy support and with full days of school that are more academic (he will still have an EA in a shared scenario I am sure). I had a chat with another parent recently that then led to me talking to M's teacher about next year, to which I was given a 'pretty sure' to him moving on to Grade 1 (of course they can't say for sure as it needs to be assessed by several people on all levels). I would be surprised if they suggested holding him back... he could probably use the extra social support provided in Kindergarten with all of the play, but academically I think he would get bored. Anyways, that will all be processed and talked about in May/June.
Also at that time Marshall's funding will drop down to a third of what he has been getting due to him turning 6. Two of my friends dropped the BI therapy and are using their boys' funding on a hired SLP (speech), and are finding it very successful thus far. We will have to figure out where to focus Marshall's therapy and how we want to go about that as it will change from what we've been doing for 3 years. More on that in the coming months as we figure out the direction we believe is the best fit for Marshall.
I am becoming more aware of just how much Marshall's sister and the cousins he is close to, adapt their play in order to keep the peace. Generally I have felt like M does pretty well with other kids, but after spending time in the classroom, and attempting a play date here with a peer from school, I am seeing M's challenges plain and clear. Now when I sit back and observe his play with his sister, as well as with his closest cousins, I am hearing how they either give in to his demands before he becomes angry or upset. Also, and this is especially true for Devyn and I kinda knew this already, she has picked up on how we talk to Marshall, mainly, all of the pre-talk that we do before anything and everything. It is common for us to pull into a parking spot at the mall, turn off the engine, and for me to lay out the expectations of behaviour prior to going into the mall, as well as what will happen (we will leave/no reward afterwards) if he chooses not to follow 'the rules'. He says ok and I know we will have success, and if we don't, he knows I will take away what I said I would do... and everyone is calm and happy (most of the time). Devyn totally does this with Marshall too, and i'm noticing it more and more... and it's great, yet it is quite unhelpful in setting up scenarios of how to interact with typical children who don't listen, who don't warn, who grab, who... anything!! haha. It will be interesting to see when/how/if these lacking social skills will develop to being natural and easy for him.
We took the kids to Great Wolf Lodge over the Family Day weekend! This was our second visit and we had even more fun this time round! Last year, Marshall kept to the kiddie pool. He did try out some of the slides, but came out crying at the end yelling, "dis is no fun at all!" lol. THIS year, he told me pre-trip that he was going to be so brave and try the slides again. And he did, and HE LOVED THEM!!! I had hoped so as he now takes showers and can handle the water on his face a lot better (obviously, if he's taking showers!). We did ALL of the slides multiple times and with joy! It was awesome and I was so proud of him even just for trying! We went with two other families and a total of 9 kids all around his age. It was a blast and we will definitely head out to Seattle for the trip again!
I am totally out of time... but there's always more to say. Until next time!
