Our Life With An Autistic Child: Week 85

Report Card Time. This past Tuesday, we had our first Parent-Teacher conference to go over Ryan's first report card. They scored a variety of items on a scale of 1(the lowest) to 4 (the highest). While he did not have any 4's he did not receive any 1's. His teacher commented that he volunteers often, is making steady progress academically, but he requires significant teacher support and assistance. We are hoping that she put that in his report card so that she can keep the aide that is in his room and that we can show that he continues to need an aide through this year and next. Over all it was a good report card but he has a long way to go to becoming an independent student. But it was a good start and we have to remember that a few short years ago he could not handle circle time and now he is handling half day mainstreamed Kindergarten. He has come a very long way in a short period of time.

However, at the end of the meeting his OT teacher gave us a consent form to sign because they want to evaluate Ryan for speech. This made us a little crazy because if you remember he was receiving speech 3 times a week last year and at his CSE meeting they denied him speech services. Now they want to evaluate him for language development and pragmatic language. These were the things that we had been dealing with for the past three years and that our school district denied to us. Now they want to do further testing on Ryan for these exact things. It is frustrating that he could have been having these services for the past 12 weeks!

The next evening, his elementary school had a Literacy Night. This was where they explained the K - 2 reading program. Two teachers gave an overview of the reading program and had a very interesting power point. What was very interesting was that they had about 20 high school students, from the Math Honor Society, stationed in the cafeteria. They were there to watch the elementary students and Ryan had a blast playing checkers with two of the high school students. They even told me that he won one game and almost won the second game. His friends were giving him a hard time that he was in the math honor society and a kindergartner was beating him in checkers! At the end of the evening program they marched all the children in and read them story, demonstrating the different techniques that were describing to us. Ryan really enjoyed the interactive aspects of the reading program and really got into making the animal sounds when they were needed for the story. He had a great time.

Ryan's December school project.

Today we had a great time as a family trimming the Christmas tree. Both Ryan and Julia had a lot of fun putting the ornaments on the tree. He did such a great job this year and he kept his focus for the entire time we were hanging them on the tree. He hung a lot of them himself and when he could not reach, he told us where he wanted us to hang them.

Ryan helping daddy, papa, and Uncle T put the lights on the tree.

Hanging one of his ornaments.

The finished product!

Today was also the Ciaramella Family Christmas reunion. We had a great time and Ryan had a lot of fun. This year, one of Dawn's uncles was the DJ. hHe step up a freeze dance competition and a huge game of Musical Chairs. In both games Ryan was very excited to play and had a great time. While he lost both games, he was age appropriate upset. He did not throw himself on the floor, cry, or lose his mind. He just walked off the floor and sat down. He was upset but he was upset that he did not win just like the rest of the kids that lost the game.