First, let me say hello to everyone. I apoligize for my absense last month, alot has happened in my life and I went on a little summer vacation of my own. I am back now and feeling refreshed and ready to begin posting regularly. I am hoping that I will hear from all about your new experiences and fears about the upcoming school year. As I know, the new school year can produce some massive anxiety for our children even on the best of days. So as our special needs children enter the new year, emotions can go off like the finale of a fireworks show on the fourth of July. What I would like to do is to enlighten you as to my experiences this week from my special needs son Matt. His first week of school has been interesting and I hope that all my fans will be able to relate to and take comfort in the fact that they are not alone.
I must begin with the week before the first week of school. I went in to the doctor to take a blood test that the he ordered for a physical he wanted me to take. I was ordered back the next day and was greeted with the news that I am now a type 2 diabetic. As many of you know, it pains us all to hear the doctors label our children with something so to be labeled myself with something was like, as I put it, hitting a brick wall at about 90mph. Matt took the news suprisingly well, or so I thought. Matt has begun practicing with the football team for this year. He has been doing well and hopes to start in their first game. This however, takes up almost all of his afternoon after school. On the first day of school, he missed his bus because they were late in arriving at the house. As you know, if something like this happens to a special needs child like mine then his whole day is thrown off. As it happened, my wife took him to school and then she and I went to the bus company and ordered that this be remedied starting the next day. Since then we haven't had any problems. The third day of school was picture day. Because he is partly mainstreamed in his class schedule, he wasn't sure who he should go with to get his pictures taken with. As it turns out he wound up missing his picture take and now has to wait until mid October for retakes. So, done with the first week right? Wrong. By the end of the first week we had lost his cell phone, jacket, hat, and a music book he lent to a classmate to "look at" to see if he would like to use which we have to pay for.
So goes the end of week 1. We all hope that things will get easier as we embark on the journey of 7th grade and I know that things will. It amazes me however that things like a new school year always seem to go like this, even with the best planning and preparation ahead of time. So, to everyone who may be going through similar experiences as these this week, please rely on the fact that things will get better and that routines will become routine as time passes. The important thing to do is to be there for them when they need you for guidance and direction and assurance that all will work out in the end.
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