The answer should be yes. Not "how can I get my loved one help?"

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Day 8 ~ Facilitated what? and new friends !Success!

Since coming online with the new blog and website on January 3rd, I have made an incredible number of new friends.  Some really fantastic people are connecting with me.  How lucky am I?

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Back to the topic for the night.  Have you ever experienced a Facilitated IEP? According to the website http://www.directionservice.org, a facilitated IEP is:

“A facilitated IEP meeting is an IEP meeting that includes an impartial facilitator who promotes effective communication and who assists the IEP team in developing an acceptable IEP. The facilitator keeps the team focused on the proper development of the IEP while addressing conflicts that arise. IEP Facilitation is not used to resolve disputes unrelated to the IEP.”

In the state of North Dakota, the facilitator is paid by the state, which in turn enforces the impartiality of the facilitator because they can’t be influenced by either the school district or the parent.  This makes sense to me.

So tomorrow I will make application for a facilitated IEP.  Hopefully that will get my our back into the public school.

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On another note, We had a fairly good day today.  Ah heck, let me rephrase that, everything considered, today was FANTASTIC!!!  We had some minor incidents that had to be mediated between the youngest two boys, but hey, ya know what?  give you a little hint… sometimes brothers argue and fight… I should know, my brother and I fought like cats and dogs.   We are both still alive and value our relationship.  So I consider this largely normal behavior.

What we didn’t have today.  We didn’t have any melt downs.  We had some pouting, but pouting isn’t the end of the world.  When something necessitated the need for a time out, the time out was handled without complaint.  Overall, this day was a huge success!

Tomorrow looks to be shaping up to be a good day as well.  Why? or how can I know that?  Easy! Everyday is a good day!  If you wake up each day, isn’t that a good day?  If nothing else happened, at least you woke up. 🙂  Cheers. Carl @whynotfathers

Day 8 ~ snot today I tell you, don’t suck it in, blow!

I would call it a night cap, but I don’t drink, so we will call it a recap. 🙂

Last night, I had to go through some of our youngest son’s stuff. I found 5 9-volt batteries, the lids of two cat food cans, 8 pens, 2 nail clippers, 1 bag of cough drops, 1 box of granola bars and a screw driver from my computer tech kit.  So we are back to hoarding things again.  Not sure why he feels it is necessary to do this.  But, he does have OCD so maybe that is the only explanation available.

This morning, we heard only one thing from the school principal after our response yesterday to the PWN.  And that was a response that indicated that she was out of the office until Friday morning.  It wasn’t an out of office responder from Outlook or anything like that.  I know what those look like, and this was definitely not that.  But it also makes no attempt to schedule anything for the coming week.  Maybe she is just going to wait until Friday and try again. I don’t know.

On another note, the school counselor is a family friend who is deeply religious.  A trait we find endearing.  He is being lambasted by the administrators for not participating in meetings and activities at the elementary school that he has effectively been thrown out of.  He is never told about these events in advance, and since he doesn’t maintain time at the elementary school except for Fridays, he is not attuned to what is going on in that building.  Yet, he is constantly being lambasted for not attending events in the elementary school.

Now, I understand the concept of two sides to every story.  But, given the way we know the school treats parents, isn’t it reasonable to assume the possibility that they treat their employees almost as bad or just as bad?

Ok. Enough about the school. 🙂 For right now anyway, I promise.

David, our youngest is still fighting his cold. He was up frequently during the night coughing.  Hard to convince him that if he wants to get better, he needs to spit out whatever he coughs up rather than just swallowing it.  Same with the nose, if you sneeze, don’t suck it back in… get a kleenex and blow it the rest of the way out.  I know, it’s gross, but how do I convince a 10 year old oppositional defiant child with OCD, ADHD and autism that it is better for him to get it out than keep it in?  He is absolutely miserable when he is sick.

Today has been a fairly good day so far, yet it is only noon.  Here is a cheer for continued positive behavior  on his part, and continued positive support on my side.

Now it is time to put a turkey in the oven. Hope your day rocks!

Day 4 ~ Waking up with Pooh, Tigger, Eyeore and Christopher Robin

Day 4 in the household.  Fabulous morning, even if it is below zero.  We are definitely not morning people.  Well, except for our youngest son.  Seems like he is on a spring this morning.

Tigger is actually a Pomeranian named Tobey.  And Tobey bounces up and down at the mere sight of someone going toward the door.  We call them four off’s, because he clears all four feet a good two feet off of the floor.

His brother and playmate Eyeore is another Pomeranian named Brown Sugar Bear, or Sugar for short. Sugar doesn’t get excited about much except his Aunt Sheila. When aunt Sheila comes to visit, you would think that he was a puppy.

Pooh is our Old English Sheep dog.  Pooh’s real name is Max.  Max loves the cold most of the time.  He prefers to be outside in the weather. No, I shouldn’t nickname him Pooh, as the only time he is sedate is when we try to bring him into the house.  Other than Tigger, is there another character that is excited about life and the world?  Maybe we need to spend some time in Pooh’s world this week and see.

And then there is Christopher Robin.  Our youngest son.  He likes to play.  He is on the go all of the time.  He greets each day with a smile.  He is inquisitive about everything and likes to cause the slightest bit of mischief. Nothing he does is meant to harm, things just happen when he is around.  In actuality, his name is David and he is 10 years old.  David was born addicted to a number of street drugs, and has been in a residential facility for behaviour training.  He was recently discharged to home, hence the “Day #” in the title of this post.

Time for Coffee. 🙂 Have I said, “I am not a morning person?”

 

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