...and the other shoe drops

After a not-so-good week, we get to OT on Friday afternoon only to find out that it would be our final session there. They are closing the practice as of Friday. Humana has apparently screwed them over with claim payments (or non-payments), and they were nearly $50K in debt as of Friday and no end in sight. I guess 80% of their clients are Humana members. Not us, thankfully, but that makes no difference, they have to close to end the "bleeding". All of the other ped OT practices have waiting lists...which suddenly got much longer on Friday. Our OT is not even sure where she will be working. So there goes any more progress as it will be at least 6-8 weeks before we can get in anywhere else, and that means not until after our deadline of Christmas break.

Ryan had green cards all week last week. I was psyched! I thought for sure the therapy was working. Or something was working. Fast forward to this week...it's only Wednesday and he's already had two red cards and two notices of concern (when he hurts someone). I don' t know what the deal is with him. It's all pretty much out of my control, and I have no more ideas or suggestions for them on how to deal with him. I talk to him every night about the situations at school, and we discuss ways to deal with them appropriately. But it's an anger management problem I think, and he just can't remember the things we discuss when he's in the midst of it. Today he kicked a kid in the stomach because the kid tried to take Ryan's ball from him. Ugh. I guess I should get ready to home-school him.

A better update

I had a follow-up meeting with the resource director and R's teacher on Tuesday morning. We had several communications before that, and I was feeling better about things. The resource director seems to have a much better attitude than she did before. We have set up a 504 plan for Ryan, for accommodations to help him through his school day. I learned that Catholic schools are not *legally able* to plan and implement IEP's, because by law IEP's are funded by federal monies and the government will not allow those funds to go to any Catholic school student (maybe all private schools). And they don't have the private funds to pay for special education teachers/aides, so they just can't provide that. But they *will* provide reasonable accommodations in the classroom, as covered under ADA (which is I believe where the 504 comes from).

We are planning for several things.
1) we purchased a "disc-o-sit" cushion for R's chair at school; it gives him a little bit of movement which might allow him to sit a bit longer each time.
2) I'm sending a backpack with weights in it for R to use during hallway transition times, and for him to use when he gets a little antsy in the classroom. Heavy work helps SPD kiddos to settle themselves a bit.
3) they are allowing R a few more beats to respond to requests to allow him more time to process them and respond appropriately.
4) they are breaking R's day into morning/afternoon for behavior cards. He'll have a chance in the afternoon to get his green card back if he loses it in the morning.
5) R has been seated next to three good role models, which has helped his ability to focus.

He's already doing better! He's had all green cards this week, and not through any special means. I've been pulling him out for lunch to do the brushing protocol and give him some large motor exercises to get him ready for the afternoons...and we've also taken him off of all artificial colors...so I'm not sure *why* his behavior is better, I'm just glad it is! We'll be doing an artificial color "challenge" this weekend, to see if his behavior changes when he's eaten a lot of it. He had an all-morning psycho-educational evaluation this morning, so I'm anxious to see how that turns out.