Present Day

By now you're probably thinking this blog reads more like a novel. Well I enjoy a good back story and I was hoping it would provide readers with an idea of where we're coming from. Cut to summer 2011. We hire a tutor,  hand in yet another referral to the pediatrician, decide to skip the wait list and have Jitter Bug privately assessed. Somewhere in between all this we welcome a third son to the family. The results are Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder-Combined Type. On top of this they recommend further assessments for his fine and gross motor difficulties, suspecting vestibular, tactile or proprioceptive dysfunction. Which is what we are looking into at this very moment. We are now faced with the questions of what to do next-it feels like the end result is a starting off point. This is where the journey really begins

Intermission

At this point I would like to take a breather. On the bottom of the page you will notice a section called "Helpful Sites". I'll edit the font or location at some point to make it easier to locate. This section will list web sites I have found to contain useful information regarding ADHD, sensory integration disorder, Learning Disabilities, special ed in schools, Educational Rights and a whole slew of other stuff. As I build my own directory, I'll try to seperate them by categories but for now, it's just fun browsing!

SK

At the end of JK I came to pick up Jitter Bug from daycare one day. His teacher was yelling -at the top of her lungs- at Jitter Bug in the classroom. He came out in tears. She yelled because he had peed his pants and didn't want to go to his cubby to get a chance of clothes, in case his friends saw him. Fair enough, most would say. However this teacher wanted him "teach him a lesson" about being too lazy to go to the washroom. On the drive home, Jitter Bug told me she had pushed him off the stool. He had never said anything like this before and hasn't said anything like it since. So I switched him to a different center where he finished JK and continued to attend until Grade 1. I eventually started working there as well, and we were so lucky to have wonderful educators who for the most part, knew that a lot of Jitter Bug's behaviour was not his fault, or intentional.


 SK started and the first month went without incident. Well that's a bold faced lie, but if we're using Jitter Bug standards it went without incident. He didn't try to leave school property, he wasn't having tantrums, and he only had about 3 accidents per week.


I know what you're thinking. The kid was 5 and still peeing his pants?! Well he's now almost 7 and it still happens so get over it. We had a meeting at the school so I could sign his IEP. It was strictly academic focused and not once did it ever mention what skills they were going to utilize to help him improve in areas of transition, self regulation, social interactions, ect. What they did have was a "Safety Plan" that included having a staff member trained in NVCI (non violent crisis intervention) and the entire plan included calling me to have Jitter Bug picked up. The only words uttered by his principal were "I thought we were beyond this stuff" Thanks a lot, a$$hole.


At the same meeting Spot's teacher was present. She presented to me two stories about Spot telling a "tall tale". Both turned out to be true stories. No apology was made for the mistake. Principal told me that when a group of students targeted Spot-and only Spot- with snowballs, he had threatened them. There was no mention that some how the yard supervisor had neglected to see the students all ganging up on my son. The problem was that he didn't react positively to this incident. Who would? I thought.


I now see what they were trying to do. They wanted to make the issue a family issue. This had nothing to do with Jitter Bug, this was a meeting to show that they had built a case against our family. Quite curious considering Spot's parent teacher conference had taken place just a month earlier and not one damn area of concern had been brought up. But now without a phone call or note home, all of a sudden it was so much of a concern they needed to squeeze it in to this useless meeting about Jitter Bug. Well one phone call to principal with me using my serious voice fixed that problem. I've never had Spot included in a meeting again.


 I came home and vented to Hubby, who thought I was over reacting to due to pregnancy hormones. The year went on with Jitter Bug getting sent home about twice a week. The principal even went so far as to ask me once "How stable is your home life?"


I was done. I decided now, that if I was going to get what Jitter Bug needed, I couldn't approach this as a popularity contest. I was going to step on some toes. I was going to make some people mad. I knew the squeeky wheel gets the grease. So I set out with a plan. What's that saying again? Oh right. If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. Well I'll bet He was rolling on the ground just watching us.

As we soldiered on

So after the initial visit to the paediatrician, I was able to give the all clear to Jitter Bug's teachers at school and at daycare. Even though I knew something was different with Jitter Bug, I was glad the paediatrician had declined to carry on with an assessment. No one ever wants their child to have something wrong with them. I held the doctor's lack of concern to me like a comforting blankie. He's fine, the doctor said so. One thing that did unnerve me was the doctor's advice.


He had recommended a behaviour management program that included choosing five behaviours we really wanted to work on and anytime we saw the undesirable behaviour to put Jitter Bug on a five minute time out. Hmm so carry on doing what we're doing? What do these people think I do all day?


I thought after all that, maybe Jitter Bug just had emotional issues stemming from the separation of his father and I and our recent move. So I called our local community children's health centre to set up an appointment with a case worker. They had a program through the centre to help children develop social-emotional awareness.


This program would have been highly beneficial if Jitter Bug had been able to sit for five minutes to participate in the activities. Or if he had been able to focus long enough to take in a word to facilitator was saying. However, he was not so we spent two hours each week, for eight weeks, to create another source of frustration for both Jitter Bug and myself.


In the meantime Jitter Bug was still being sent home from school. On days when I was supposed to be at work or school, I would have to find coverage or explain to the professor why I had to leave. Poor Jitter Bug had developed this perception of himself as "the bad kid", and let me tell you it was a self fulfilling prophecy

School Days

One thing I hate more than anything is the advice parenting books and magazines offer on helping parents and children transition to school. Do a practice run, enroll them in a school readiness program, read them books about going to school. F$@! YOU KISSING HAND!

I did all this, and more. When Jitter Bug started school he was already on a 6 month waiting list to see our local pediatrician. Another word to the wise. The second you think something may be a little different about you child, get them on a waiting list. It's better to get the all clear from your pediatrician than to wait until life is unbearable and still have to wait for months and months. 

Anyhoodle, within a month of starting senior kindergarten Jitter Bug was assigned an EA, put back a year in Junior Kindergarten and put on half days every other day. So on Monday, Wednesday and every other Friday, he went to school for a half day in the morning, and went to daycare in the afternoon, as I was now working full time. On Tuesday, Thursday and every other Friday, he went to day care full day. Yeah, it wasn't at all confusing for the boy that has issues with transitions. 

The Pediatrician visit came and went and since Jitter Bug was able to answer questions that the Doc asked him without jumping up and down 100 times, Doc found no need for an assessment. W2TW if the school offers to have their special ed counsellor attend a pediatrician appointment or referral appointment with you it's usually useless and inhibits what you would actually like to say. Just saying.

However even as I was leaving I just knew he was wrong. There was something different about Jitter Bug I couldn't put my finger on, different than many children I had worked with, and I had worked with some doozy's. Always trust your parental intuition, because as you will find out, it's damn reliable

The Preschool Hop

     When I finished my diploma in ECE I took a job as Program Coordinator at a local child care centre in their before and after school program. The hours were long and on a split shift so I worked from 7-9 in the morning and 2-6 in the afternoon. Spot dealt with it fairly fine and Jitterbug was okay with it, but not fantastic.


 After Jitter Bug turned 4, I was feeling heaps of guilt about being away from him for so long during the day. I decided to switch him to the center I was working at. Initially I had reservations about this, not wanting to create another change for him, but decided this was the better option.I decided not to tell my employers or colleagues about any of his struggles, as I wanted to avoid him being labelled a problem child. This worked....for a short time.


The center I was working at had an "interest based curriculum". Now, in theory the programming is supposed to be based on the general interests of the children in the classroom. However at this particular centre, the supervisor took it to mean, if a child isn't interested, they don't have to do it. It went like this.


Jitter Bug doesn't want to come to circle? Jitter Bug doesn't have to go to circle. Jitter Bug doesn't want to eat lunch? He doesn't have to. After 6 months, he started school. Obviously, the idea that he had to comply with whatever was told to him was not going over well, as he had spent the last 6 months in a centre that did not require him to do, well, anything!


So I switched him back to his old preschool, where they seemed to at least take a little more interest in building his skills and abilities. The battle was just beginning

What Came Next

It’s been 5 years since that first visit. Yes, he did end up attending that center. There are many things that I would do differently, knowing all that I know now. You see, the very reason Jitter Bug was starting daycare was so that I could start and finish my degree in Early Childhood Education.

The first time I was approached by a staff member concerned about Jitter Bug’s development was when he was about 2 and a half. I was dropping him off at the center in the morning. It was during finals, and I was running late. Some genius ECE decided this would be the best time to approach me about filling out a parent questionnaire.

 “We’ve seen a lot of behaviours from Jitter Bug that lead us to believe he would greatly benefit from Early Intervention Services, which are available to us here. They can provide assessments that would lead to a diagnosis, and open up a lot of doors for him”

Diagnosis? Pardon? I stared blankly for a minute, looked at Jitter Bug. There he was in his Diego overalls, sitting on the carpet, playing with a car. He looked like any normal child his age. How dare they suggest there was something wrong with him? I swallowed the lump in my throat, fought back the urge to take him with me and replied “I’ll think about it”. The worried/judgemental look that flashed across the ECE’s face said it all for me. I’ll show them, I thought. We had the whole summer off together after this week, and I thought if I just parented harder, in a more organized fashion, the problems would disappear.

Summer came and went and Jitter Bug started preschool in September in a new room. The new ECE was wonderful. She commented on how much he had grown and the progress he had made. Ha! I showed you. Yeah, that’s right I was victorious. We just needed an established routine, some slow down time, and now he was fine.

The months went on and so did Jitter Bug. Only now we were starting to receive “incident reports” about his behaviour. True he had epic tantrums sometimes when we dropped him off. I would literally have to hand him over kicking and screaming sometimes. If someone pushed his buttons, he was prone to physical aggression. He didn’t sit still for circle time, play time, snack time. Hell he didn’t sit still at all. I thought it was a cause for concern that the terrible two's were now the throttling three's. I thought he was just one of those rough and tumble boys that needed consistent consequences.


 So I parented harder and harder and harder.......