Week 111

This week we had Ryan's CSE meeting.  At this point we are pro's at these meetings and yet we are still amazed at how our district runs them.  First the good news.  They are not taking anything away from Ryan.  This is the first time that this has happened.  They recommended that he enters an Inclusion Model for first grade.  This is similar  to what he was doing last year when he was at the PARC program.  There will be a regular education teacher, a special education teacher, a teaching assistant, and no more than 12 special education students with 12 regular education students.  We are hopeful that he will make more progress in this program than he did in Kindergarten.  While it was great that he entered our local elementary school, we felt that he did not make as much progress as he did last year.  Now for the bad news, they did not feel that he needed summer services.  For those that know Ryan he is all about routine.  He is in the routine of school and once summer hits it is going to take us a long time to get him back into the school mode when he enters first grade.  While he did well entering kindergarten, it is a worry.  Other than that the meeting went well and there were no surprises.  At this point they know that both Dawn and I are educators and we know how this game is played.  We just feel badly for those parents that do not know the system and do not know how to properly advocate for their child.  Maybe Dawn and I should volunteer to be parent advocates!

Autism Walk

This weekend was the Autism Speaks Walk and The Ryan Express was there!  While it was our smallest group we all had a great time.  One of the biggest reasons for the small turnout (15 people) was the fact that Dawn's Uncle (and Godfather) Uncle Tony passed away this past Friday.  This is someone that we had seen the weekend before and we were all surprised at his passing.  Over Memorial Weekend he had brought over a train whistle to Dawn's parents' house for Ryan to test out.  He is someone that was great with Ryan and he will be missed greatly.

Uncle Tony 10/24/52 - 6/1/12

Those that went to the walk had a great time and the weather was perfect.  The only bad part was the field that they used to set up the huge jumpy houses was completely soaked from all the rain.  The kids took their shoes off to go jump and their socks were instantly soaked!  The jumpy houses were full of water and Ryan and Julia did not even want to go in them.  The rest of the walk went great and both Ryan and Julia walked the entire 2 miles!  Below are a few pictures of the day!

PC