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!

Feliz Navidad

I wanted to leave you with a little Christmas story. For whatever reason, I really didn't like the song Feliz Navidad. I never have. Well, at my school's winter concert rehearsal (the whole school got to see their dress rehearsal) they sang this song. I was sitting next to Fun Times. He was being all affectionate for once, and once they started singing that, he started rocking back and forth and singing along. Now, Fun Times has this cute high little voice. He got the Feliz Navidad part, but he would start mumbling and it would go "Wannamnanyou merry Christmas". It was SO CUTE and it made me go awww. He's going to give me my first gray hair, I'm sure of it, but I do just love him. So I sang it quietly with him, and he rocked, and I sang in his ear, and we were happy.

Tricia and January

Lots has happened. I'll put things in different posts so you don't have to read a huge long one if you don't have the time. This post deals with my paras.

First of all, I feel much closer to Tricia, my other para. I don't know if it's because January is gone all the time and we spend more time together or what. I think the staff Christmas party helped. I was sitting with my people (my people being Ninja Stylist, who is a para in my good friend's room as well as the person who cuts my hair and I LOVE her, my closest teacher friend Olive, and her other para Chelle) and having a grand old time and I had been thinking how nice it would be to get Tricia to sit at our table. I feel bad, I don't spend enough time with her. In the mornings and at lunch, I spend a lot of time talking to Olive. We've gotten very close and we are on the same page about pretty much everything. Heck, she's even a Buddhist! So we're always talking, and since Ninja Stylist is so fun, it's great to be around them. Always laughing. But that leaves Tricia alone, especially with January gone. So I had Tricia come sit with us after people at her table started leaving, and we all seemed to get along quite nicely. We totally bonded over tequila (her) and rum (me).

I talked to my principal again this morning. I basically wanted to just whine about January being gone, this time for over a week (and she never bothered even emailing me, even though she emailed Tricia, I think she avoids me and apparently the principal too) and digging for info on what the plan would be. My principal said that she has been documenting and is very busy and has already sent her a letter. She told me she'd call HR to see what the next step would be. I really do like January as a para. She's absolutely wonderful. So energetic and dynamic. But you know what? That does me no good when she's at home. '

But anything's better than last year and that horrible woman who hated me and defied me. So I'm thankful for my people!

Frustrations

Today was an experiment with Fun Times. My support person told me to see what happened if I ignored him all day. I gave him directions and included him in activities, but if he decided to wander off to let him. He has a lot of attention-seeking behaviors and we wanted to see if he escalated or not if we weren't watching. It actually reduced my stress level a lot. He tried pretty hard to get our attention by making noise, going by my desk, etc. and we didn't budge. I don't know what will become of this. I'll just have to see. He's having accidents, and my support person also told me that because they only occur in the gym, to keep him in the classroom during recess AND gym to see if it's a gym thing, or a time of day thing. I'm not excited about having to keep him in the room that much, but it does seem like a good way to narrow things down. Sigh. He needs a place to run around, but I've had about enough of him and his accidents. He's not all tortured and abused, I'm 99% sure he's doing it on purpose. Not sure what to do about that.

My para (I'll call her January, an obvious pseudonym for her actual name) was gone AGAIN. My principal already told me she was going to talk to her. I think she has a s--t immune system, and she's not just skipping, but is simply sick a lot. And she misses a lot because her kids are sick. They're plenty old enough to stay home on their own to be honest. And I don't know, maybe her husband could stay home once in a while? They might be valid excuses, but I can't run my room when part of my team is missing so much. We are getting to know each other and the kids well enough so that we don't even have to always talk. We just know what to do. And January really brings the get up and go. She's wonderful when she's there, but she's missed probably a total of 4 weeks so far this year. It's ridiculous. That's half a quarter. My principal said she's doing an informal documentation and having a chat with January and telling her to make a commitment or she won't be able to stay. She's aware I'd like to keep my para, but I do think a talk is in order.

The good news is that I am finally stabilized on my medication. I hope to avoid taking this other one that is a wonderful pill, but it makes me hungry ALL the frickin time. All I do is eat. It also raises blood sugar and other bad things. If I stay stable and peaceful, I won't need it.

Time for bed. It's past my bedtime.

Introductions

Let me introduce you to my students.

Fun Times- The oldest kid I have, whose hormones are starting, and his autism has nothing to do with his being a brat these days and hitting and kicking. It is willful and a huge pain. Literally. But he has the cutest little high voice, and is great at memorizing. He likes to draw logos like WB and Looney Tunes.

Space Cadet- The kindergartner who I really shouldn't have (I have 2-4th grade) and I have him just because he has more language than the little kid class and my principal hates the other teacher and loves me. There must have been some alcohol or drug use during pregnancy. His mind is on a loop. Every 10 minutes it's like a new day. And he pulls out random answers for things and thinks they're right. I asked him what a pumpkin was and he said title page. Then he tried author. And gave me this big grin. I know I need to be loving and understanding. He's just sort of annoying. I have tried to pull up love for him, and nothing. No warm fuzzies for Space Cadet. Doesn't help that when he first came to my room, he spat on my face twice, and bit me. And was generally being a little snot. And still, he calls kids names behind everyone's back and makes people outside our room think he's a big teddy bear. Psh.

Cousin- She's a distant twice removed cousin maybe to me. She's ADORABLE and sweet and quiet. I'd like her to talk more spontaneously but she can repeat things if I ask her to. Every day she comes in from gym and comes up to my desk and takes my hand for a moment, then prances off. She has long hair that's always braided, and loves princesses.

Bubbles- A very bouncy third grader who has autism. She is very affectionate and touchy feely, as well as having quite a temper. When something doesn't go her way, she has a very loud cry. Sometimes it's an autism thing, and sometimes she's just pissed off at me because I don't let her do certain things. I am getting good at telling which is which. And sometimes, I just think she's in pain or something, because it's a pain cry. I believe she's starting puberty early so maybe mood swings too. Being nonverbal and having mixed results with communication makes for a frustrating situation for Bubbles. What melts my heart every day is when she goes to a picture I have taped to the wall of me with a former student, and she points to me in the picture
and walks right to me and looks deep into my eyes and grins.

Clouds- She's got her head in the clouds a lot. She's a sweet girl. She, like Space Cadet, seems to have a loop. It's there, it's there, and oh look. Now it's gone. But she is affectionate and kind and likes to take care of others.

Sassy- She's a tiny little thing who pretty much refuses to walk anywhere without holding an adult's hand. She can talk, but is very shy and hardly ever does. She isn't in school much. She's sick a lot and has seizures.

Pigtails- Pigtails is the cutest little thing. Unfortunately she takes so much seizure medication (one of which affects cognition and ambulation) that she is in a haze all day. She sleeps a lot and isn't always aware of what's going on. She uses a wheelchair but is capable of walking holding one hand unless she's had a recent seizure. But it makes me so happy when she smiles, and gives eye contact.

X- I couldn't figure out a name for him. He has Fragile X Syndrome so I went the easy route and stuck with X. He is half day in my room, and half day in my friend's autism resource room. He doesn't have autism but Fragile X has some similarities and he does well in there in her reading program.

Parrot- It's not just that he is echolalic. That would make this a sort of borderline rude nickname. But he DOES repeat a lot, and one day we had a parrot on his puzzle and we said, just like you, right? And he repeated parrot over and over and giggled. He giggles a lot. It gets chaotic sometimes, because when we laugh, he imitates us laughing which only makes us laugh more. This goes on and on. I love him and his little voice. He uses a walker and likes to get a running start and lift his legs up so he just coasts along.