She is loved.

Something very bad happened to one of my girls. I can't talk about it, because it's an open case and it's very sensitive (and besides, it's my classroom, and details are confidential), but it was bad. Awful. Disgusting. I heard about it at her annual conference. When her dad told me, I couldn't even talk. I could hardly process what he said. I could feel the blood drain from my face. I was wondering why she was having so many accidents lately. My poor girl. My poor sweet innocent Clouds. Thank God she has a bad memory, it saved her a lot more trauma. But she knows when something is wrong, and she knows certain areas aren't supposed to be seen or felt. Therapy was mandated and it has been very hard on her emotionally. It wasn't until an hour later that I started crying. I cried again when I told my paras about it. And I sobbed when I told Olive. She understood. She used to work with kids who have dealt with that and she said she got out of it because it tore her up. She said it's like you want to take a shower on the inside.

I feel like someone just tore my heart out. I can't even get mad because I'm too busy crying, feeling the pain of what happened to her. I've had people who have been less than respectful to me, and I had no idea how my parents might have felt, but I do now. Even though it didn't happen to me, I feel like a little piece of me is gone. I want to cry and cry because I can't channel my feelings anywhere. I don't know the person who did it. I can't get angry at that person. My skin is crawling and I just want to step out of it. My little girl. It happened a while ago and she may have forgotten about it, but since the sick bastard confessed, the powers that be mandated therapy. I hope they're not digging up memories, but for as much as she's throwing up during and after therapy, they must be bringing them back. And I know that's hard. I've been through similar. Therapy can be a

I went to the dentist after school that day and they screwed up my appointment. I got so mad at them, but part of that was because I needed to channel this. SOMEONE had to feel my anger. SOMEONE needed to pay for this. And if I didn't get mad, I wouldn't be able to cry, and it would still be inside me. So I stormed out and proceeded to fall to my knees on the ground on the sidewalk and just cry. I cried until I had tears running down my face into my shirt, and onto my skirt. My nose was running and the tears were coming and I just couldn't stop. I called Mom, and I cried more. I cried like a little kid, when you hear a long pause and you KNOW the cry is about to be loud. That's how it was. *silence* *silence* *silence* *SOB* I was aching. And breaking. (My head is now filled with mullets and country music....)

It's been hard to talk to people about this. What do you even say? What do you expect? When I went to see Olive, she was matter of fact about it, but really validated what I was feeling, and was able to put some of my feelings into words, because she understood. Then I had a conversation with January.

My para January and I were standing in the gym the next day, talking about it. She and I both shared a lot of things, and I shared things not another soul knows, nor will they. It just felt like the right time to share them. Some comforts are only shared by people whose heart has the same wounds. When two wounded people get together, the walls they've built to guard so carefully those secrets, it's like the walls line up perfectly and they can peek at each other through little cracks. We found each other, and the walls came down just a little bit as we stood by each other, not even giving away that we were sharing some of our darkest secrets. She got it. I felt better after that. I'd let someone in a little. She'd let me in a little. I tell a lot of people a lot of things, but everyone has secrets, even me. I've never experienced something as awful as this, but trauma happens to everyone, in one form or another.

On a lighter note, as we were talking, we had to avoid the Frisbees of Death coming at us from Corolla Punk and Parrot. Parrot probably wasn't doing it on purpose. I'd bet money that CP WAS. Oh, that boy.

I'm better now. I get teary eyed sometimes, but I'm done actually crying. I know it will happen again. My kids are easy targets. But especially the ones who aren't physically strong enough to fight back. My girl is resilient, though. And I am NOT going to treat her like a victim anymore. I take extra good care of her these days, I have put a ban on hugs from adult males especially and we offer handshakes instead (she can't differentiate between hugging men at school and random strangers in the store), and I lift her up. She should know that she is loved here.

Friday Fill Ins

1. In 1992, I was 9 years old.
2. Bubbles is all laughter and smiles.
3. Do what you feel with your gut, with what you have, where you are led, with aforementioned gut.
4. A place with secure employment is where I'd like to be.
5. The trees and flowers are telling me that they also want spring to be here.
6. My family is the strength that just keeps going on.
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to eating Hotbox, tomorrow my plans include volunteering at Hospice and Sunday, I want to enjoy the end of break!

Recent updates on the kids

I need to make a time to update this from school and email my entries in. That way the school day will be fresh in my mind. I really DO want to look back on this later to relive my students' successes.

Recent successes and changes

Parrot:

• He is now reading sentences in the RM series. Sometimes he cheats and makes up the words based on the pictures, but don't we all? I love the way he says swings. It's very high pitched. I started out pairing every verb with a motion. I've faded those without even thinking about it but sometimes he still jumps when the word jumps comes up.
• Greeting us! I don't notice his autism most of the time. The only thing I really see is echolalia. But a few times he's said "Hi D" and "Hi Tricia".
• He can now answer questions! He doesn't always, but it's increasing every day. I can ask him to label things, name people, and sometimes I'll ask him questions about himself. Those are the hardest. Sometimes he'll repeat and sometimes he won't answer at all, but every so often I'll get a yes or no.

Fun Times

• We started the calculator yesterday. He knows his numbers and has a great memory. His processing doesn't even seem that slowed for someone with a moderate cognitive disability. I doubt the moderate, to be honest. But that's another story. I wrote an equation out and showed him only one symbol or numeral at a time. He punched it in and I had him write the answer on the white board. We did this twice. Next he wanted to write his own numbers. I interjected with the symbols, but he still punched it in and came up with the number. Since that came so easily, I'm wondering if I can approach addition like a typical kid would understand it. We'll see.
• He is working on book 3 in RM. Our pace is good.
  
• I've gotten rather attached to him. I didn't realize this until the week he stayed home. Because of his behavior issues, he has caused many headaches and I get so stressed at school worrying about how he'll react. And he can smell my fear. But I do care for him very much, and apparently he has gotten attached too. I stayed home sick last Tuesday. When I got back to school on Wednesday he wouldn't even look at me. I tried to sit with him at breakfast like usual and he shoved me and said "NO Miss D!" He refused to give me any feedback for almost 2 hours. I guess he thought I abandoned him. Poor kid. I felt awful.
  

Bubbles

• She received a GoTalk from the CAT Team. I'm not sure how to go about teaching her to use it, so I'll just make it up as I go along.
• I'm frustrated at how slowly things move. Apparently her chewies (available from The Therapy Shoppe) were ordered but that was over a month ago. She needs them like crazy. It's so cute, Pimpjuice (formerly known as X) offers it to her every morning at circle time because he knows she often gets agitated there. She insists on trying to get on the computer. So I'm going to try and find some alternatives. I'm afraid to order them myself because I don't want to set a precedent. I don't want to be taken advantage of later, and I don't even know if I can. Maybe.
  

Pimpjuice

• Olive called him this because he thinks he's God's gift to ladies. He is a huge flirt. And because he's pretty high functioning we have to be careful, but we do giggle on a daily basis.
• He's spending more time in Olive's room, which is an autism resource room. He has Fragile X but his needs are very similar to her other students. He's an in between kid. LifeSkills is not entirely appropriate, he's a little too high for it and can grasp different things, but even intensive cross-cat is not enough. At the moment, Olive has the resources to work with him 1:1 in the mornings, and a specific reading program in the afternoon with all the kids. I'm glad. This is working well for him.
  

Pigtails

• Her seizures continue and it makes me sad. She is regressing, really. It is becoming harder for her to keep her head up, and everything is hand over hand. I don't see a lot of purposeful movement except for putting her hands in her mouth. And I'm trying, I really am. I'm trying to find something motivating so that maybe she'll move with purpose, but I haven't found anything yet. It makes me sad.

That's it for now!