When is Enough, Enough? Why We are Choosing A Different School for Logan

When is enough just enough? 
I have had some issues ever since Logan was diagnosed with Autism and finding a decent school for his dayhab as they like to call it but I prefer to say preschool. That is basically what it is but he gets his OT, PT and ST during this time. 
Logan started out at Friendship Community Care and I was happy with his teachers and his classroom. The downfall was the fact he was not receiving all his therapies and the times that he was supposed to get them weekly. They had a huge turnover rate and could not keep therapists. I then went on to get him outside therapy services so I was taking him to school, picking him up then going to therapy. Our days never ended. Fortunately we moved. The move meant a different school. 
This particular school had some rough starts. They did not send home daily notes or anything. I am somewhat of a picky mom I guess because I wanted to know how his day was daily. I wanted to know what therapies he went to, how long he went to them and what they were working on. I also wanted to know what foods he ate and how much of it he did eat. He has tons of allergies and I wanted to make sure they were not giving him something he was allergic to and also I could keep up with his food intake because he is one picky eater at home. If they gave him something new and liked it I wanted it to be known to me so that way I could introduce it to him at home. With some advocating and making my own copies of daily notes they finally sent home these notes in a binder. The teachers seemed to have had a hard time keeping up with it in the beginning so with lots of phone calls this started being a resolved issue. Logan was the only child they did this for. In my opinion they should have done it for every child. The daily notes were sent to me and I do read them every single day and kept noticing they were giving him food that contained milk (he is allergic) No wonder I could not get his eczema under control. We got that solved. His classroom, therapies and diet was running smoothly until...Time for evaluation. Ugh this was a mess. We had an issue and disagreement with the Physical therapist who told us Logan had improved so much over the last 6 months that he did not need but 60 minutes per week of therapy. In this meeting we asked about his orthotics. Oh my this therapist did not even know he wore them!! How in the world did she give him the proper evaluation without taking off his shoes and pulling up his pants, taking off the socks to see how his Achilles tendon was doing (both were curved)? Oh yes an argument broke out. She was rude and hateful and told us in her professional opinion he no longer needed orthotics (even though she did not even know he had them). 
We got a second opinion and his PT stopped with this particular therapist. She would not even allow her other girls to work with Logan because we disagreed with her opinion. Our second opinion proved us in the right. We brought this proof to the attention of the school director which he did nothing but relay the info to her. We had to go above to the top of the line to get anything done so my son could resume physical therapy. Not only did my son need orthotics but he needed better ones and also a build up in one of his shoes because one leg is longer than the other. We were told it was like he was stepping off a curb with each step he took. 
If this Therapist did this to my child I wonder how many others she has given this horrible advice to? Anyways she was told by the big bosses that she had to follow the second opinion. She then would not work with Logan at all and had one of her girls do it. How unprofessional. 
Logan was then moved to a different classroom. Problems began again........Giving him food he was allergic to, not writing down how much he had ate and not letting me know anything about his day. We had minor issues that was taken care of with a phone call here and there and then he came home with dirty hands....All the time!! I realize that children get dirty but I had to clean his nails out everyday. I would let it slide and not say much.
Logan receives ABA therapy at home after school and when the therapists started noticing how dirty his hands were I tried to bring it the schools attention. I was told basically kids are kids and will get dirty. Okay that is the truth so I let it go. During this time Logan was having issues with his classmates. I kept getting accident reports sent home. Logan has been bitten several times by the same child, a toy thrown at him which we were told it was a accident and that the wind caught the toy just right and happened to hit Logan. He has a scar from this incident! He had a chair pulled out from under him and fell and hit his head. It was numerous things and he would come home with new bruises all the time. We were never told how these bruises happened but yet when he went to school with a bruise from our pool ladder we were notified! The therapist at our house even took note of this. I had about had it and called and talked to the director and was told once again that nothing could be done because they will not kick a kid out of the class because of behavioral issues. But there was not another classroom for Logan or this other child to go into. Not only that but Logan was going to be moved into a new classroom in a month and the ratio was 2 to 14! Umm no!! My son is autistic and needs a better ratio than that. So here I was contemplating on whether or not to switch school. The last incident happened about a month ago and my son came home with poop on his hands! That was it, he was no longer going to that school. That was the last straw. How unsanitary was that? It was crap!! Literally he had crap on his hands and he had not even had a bowel movement that day. None of the teachers could tell us where it came from. Imagine that. 
So currently we are waiting to get everything done for Logan to go to Pediatrics Plus. I am excited about this new school and hoping for the best. Its been a longer wait because we just found out that Logans previous speech therapist did not do his evaluation right so he has to have another in order to start the new school. We do this Wednesday! Hopefully he gets to starts soon because I feel so horrible that he has been out of school for a month and has not received his therapies but the ABA therapy. 

The booboo he got from the toy hitting his head.

So when is enough, enough? Have you had issues with your child's school? 

Dinosaur Footprint Project

Have you noticed that craft projects with younger kids such as toddlers is actually a craft project for the adult that is helping? My son has a craft he does at the end of his therapy sessions and it usually turns into his therapist doing it or today it was me doing it. 

Logan has 4 hours of therapy everyday but Tuesday and Saturday and by the 3rd hour he is just plain ol give out. Especially when he was going to school. He has been out a couple of weeks now and that will be a future post as to why. In order to make it more fun a craft hour was implemented into his therapy which involves puzzles, books and a craft. Well he likes everything but the craft he could care less for. 

He was supposed to do paint and trains yesterday but he had no interest in it. So I found something on pinterest and wanted to see if he would enjoy it. 

Like I said it was us that ended up doing this project.

What you need:
green paint or whatever color you want your dinosaur
black marker
googly eye
glue

As you can see he was not the happiest person in the world to be doing craft time. The finished product is cute though.

Find the Pin HERE and follow me on pinterest! By the way I just joined picket fence blogs so please click on the button on the side bar to give me a vote so my blog can get in the line up!  c61c0edb9fdbe9c356fca185331cad1ea5f09fee3e526c1ba6

ABA Success after 4 Months

What is ABA you ask? It is Applied Behavioral Analysis. I will go into more detail on a later post. If you can not wait that long then go ahead and check out THIS SITE.
Logan had been accept into the Autism Waiver Program back in October of last year and it took them until February to hire people to come out to our house. In this field of therapy there is your line therapist, lead therapist and a consultant as well as a program coordinator. To make a long story short, things were not being done correctly at all. I finally made enough complaints that the program coordinator came out to our home and seen what a mess things were and how everyone was not following the proper guidelines. They were training my son wrongly. He would get bored and frustrated. Especially since he had to repeat a task 40 times in one day and he had 6 different tasks to work on. He can only "sort" so many times without losing his temper. Now Logan only has to do the "sort" task 10 times in four hours as well as the others tasks. They are pretty simple right now. It consists of imitation, pulling up his pants and working on sign language. 
Logans consultant had not ordered much of anything as learning tools. Logans ABA supplies were very very lacking and ineffective. Within the last week Logan has gotten a new lead therapist and a new consultant. The line therapist showed up today with an armful of things. Logans face lit up with all the new goodies to play with. Only problem, he found it hard to concentrate at the tasks because he wanted to play with the new toys! His reinforcement for completing his tasks was to be able to check out these new pretties. His favorite toy today to work for was the Handy Manny tool box.

Order Here

Next on the list of supplies that were brought today was Melissa & Dougs Rainbow Caterpillar. This particular toy will help develop gross motor skills. Logan has this bagged and passed. Even though it is easy for him he loves to play with it either way. It spins and anyone who has an autistic child knows that they love to spin things. That is a classic sign of autism. 

Order Here

My son is not the violent or destructive autistic child. In fact he loves to cuddle. Of course that would be on his terms but he has never "hit" a thing unless told do so. Even then it is iffy if he would even do it then. His line therapist brought in the whacky ball toy. Once he figured out how to hit the ball he enjoyed it. This toy was used in his functional play time. Functional play time is where we all play and show Logan how to play with a toy properly. He even played with it after the therapist left. 

Order Here

I felt very confident in todays therapy session. Instead of Logan getting bored or frustrated, he had fun. The way it should be. He even learned two new signs which are cookie and milk. He even learned how to pull up his pants. He still can not get the shorts over his bottom but he mostly gets it. Tomorrow will be even more fun. More supplies coming, meeting the new lead therapist and seeing what other tasks we can work on as well as learning what the parents goals will be. 

Logan did have a hard time focusing on the tasks but I play that off to the fact he has not had a therapy session since his surgery which was May 20th. He has to get in the swing of things again and get used to the new way of doing things. He was also distracted by all the new toys. 

Parents if your children are in therapies or anything else and you just have this gut feeling its not going the way it should, go with it! Research it and get things on the right track. I am excited about seeing Logans progress now. I think it is time for him to soar!!

A Rainy Happy Homemaker Monday

It is the beginning of a new week and hope all my readers had a fabulous weekend. Our weekend was pretty plane and boring due to the fact of the rain, rain and oh, MORE RAIN! I am ready for some sunshine and drying out time. My yard is a swamp and my drive is a mud pit. Its just nasty out there. 

Anyways I am joining up with Diary of A Stay at Home Mom for Happy Homemaker Monday. Feel free to browse and join in as well. As always new followers and sweet comments are welcome. 

As I look outside my window:
Well right now there is not any rain but it gloomy and cloudy. Enough to disgust you. 

Right now I am:
Trying to make amends where they need to be and not hold grudges against others. Life it to short to stay mad all the time or to let that idiotic person get on my last nerves. 

Thinking and pondering:
Trying to come up with creative ways to avoid meltdowns when its time for Logan to give up his IPAD. I have been setting a timer and he can see it and when time is up its "my turn". The first time worked well. He got mad but handed it right to me then ran off to his room to have a fit for 5 minutes then came out to play. The second time he tried to put more time on the timer when I showed him he only had 15 minutes left. Then when it was "my turn" he went into a total tantrum. RIGHT NOW daddy is playing ball with him and working on signing for "ball"

On my bedside table
As always my clipboard for taking notes and my crossword puzzle book

On my t.v. this week:
Since it is the summer its all re-runs so we have no t.v. schedule set up. Every night at 6 we watch an hour of Big Bang Theory and maybe the news. That is the only thing set in stone at the moment. The Walking Dead can not be here soon enough. 

Listening to:
The news is on t.v. and they are saying something about higher milk prices. Tell me about it! We need a cow in our backyard. $4.50 for a gallon of milk. Just ridiculous.

On the menu:
HAHA I do not really plan out our meals. I am not the cook anyways. One thing I know I do want this week is a good pot roast. That will come Thursday, maybe.
Find the recipe that I will be using HERE

On my to do list:
Tons of things!! Mainly this week I want to focus on my blog for once. I want to look into more ways to get it out there and noticed as well as trying to figure out these html codes. I need some more gadgets and stuff. If I can stay concentrated on it this week. I am hoping but I do get distracted easily. 

Happening this week:
Logans ABA therapy starts all over this week. His consultant had everything totally messed up. We are starting fresh and I am so excited to see what new things are going to happen and how it will happen. 

What I am creating:
I think this goes along with on my to do list. Refer to that :-)

My simple pleasure:
I love eating in bed watching t.v. I have not been able to do that in awhile. 

Looking around the house:
Dogs are playing, kid is crying, older kid on the computer and my house is pretty darn clean if I say so myself :-)

From the camera:

Wordless Wednesday 5/14

I know this is usually meant for pictures but this week I decided to post a couple of videos. My son Logan has ASD as many of you already know. He has been in ABA therapy for 3 months now. Here is something they practice and he is right on with it. 

Not only that but he can spell! At barely 3!!

Linking up to Wordless Wednesdays

One thing I believe that helps my son learn so well is his Nabi Jr. Check it out HERE