Five Goals for 2011

Hosts of the Special Needs Blog Hop are Tammy From Autism Learning Felt and Stacie from Super Mommy To The Rescue. This week's theme is name five goals for the new year.

Here are mine:

I resolve to laugh more.

Sometime this year I resolve to stand on a street holding a sign.  After the last elections I was driving down route 9, and noticed a man standing on the street holding a sign.  I thought it was an unusually large “need help” sign.  It wasn’t.  It was an “I’m disappointed in you Massachusetts” sign.  My first thought was that guy better be from MA or he can just pack up his disappointment, stuff it in a bag and head back where he came from.   (Imagine me saying that while sticking out a finger for the full effect.) My second was even though he had obviously mistaken MA for the rest of the country and should have driven a car throughout the country with that sign it was pretty cool he was standing there.

I resolve to eat more vegetables.

I resolve to tell my husband that I will at some point go somewhere that he wants to go and do something he wants to do (at least once in my life) even though I know that saying so will result in me either living on a boat for a month or traipsing through a country I don’t want to go to.  Hmmm, I might have to come up with a new resolution.* I’ll seriously consider that.

I resolve to be kinder and more patient (even to people who are obviously wrong).

I am so impressed with myself for thinking up some goals.  I only wish that it didn’t take me long!  Well, now I have a sixth resolution.  Come up with resolutions for next year early … or not.

*I reserve the right to substitute this resolution for a different resolution, or no resolution at all, at any time and for any reason because I can be a baby and whiny.

Accomplishments

How appropriate that today’s Blog Hop topic is accomplishments because today was Will’s IEP meeting. He has done well this year.  He’s now reading at approximately a third grade level, up from first last year.  His spelling is third grade level (but he’s a better speller than Jake and Lizzy!).  He took a year to get the concept of numbers using the Touch Math Curriculum but now has mastered single digit addition and subtraction and has almost mastered double digit addition.  He moved into a higher academic level group and is doing well.  And he did this in a two-to-one!   

Honestly, maybe his greatest accomplishment to date is being able to move from a one-to-one to a two-to-one!  I wanted him in a two-to-one because as I told his teachers – there was no one-to-one fairy that would magically show up at our door when he was 21!  I needed him to function in a group.

We worked really hard on Will being able to handle being a group and not receiving individual instruction.  When he started taking classes at MyGym I had to stand one foot in front of him and say “do this” and show him what to do.  He bolted constantly.  He couldn’t jump, and barely listened to the instructions.  I took him twice a week for a couple of years.  I wanted him to function in a group!  Every week I tried to back away a little more.  I gave him as much independence as I could.  I choose independence over “perfection” of movement.  And now when I see him swinging his arms back and forth rather than in a circle I’m usually watching him from the bench.

Wow, look at me waxing on poetically about my boy.  This might as well be a Christmas Letter bragging about my kids.  I sometimes write those – but in them, usually I just list the places that Will didn’t wear pants.

Pants are Optional

Will doesn’t like to wear clothes.  I don’t know why.  Maybe they’re uncomfortable, or binding, or not the right name brand.  For years he’d only wear a diaper or underwear and strip every time I dared put a shirt or pants on him.  He also liked to run away.  And often those two activities would intercept.  

Shortly after we moved into our current house, I was sitting at the computer when I heard the front door shut.  I casually looked out a window to see a half naked cherub running barefoot across the lawn.  I ran downstairs.  Though it was November I didn’t stop to put on shoes.  I ran out the door.  Will was wearing a tee-shirt and a pair of underpants turned around and running down the middle of the street.  I started chasing him.

I was slowly gaining on him.  We ran past a landscaping crew raking leaves.  Their heads turned, watching us run past.  A pick-up truck pulled alongside me.  The man rolled down his window, keeping up with me while barely pressing on the gas.  “Is everything alright?”  He asked.

Panting, I thought, “I’m chasing a pantless, coatless, shoeless, sockless autistic cherub who is running down the middle of the street.”  “No, I’m fine.”  I assured him.  Then putting a frantic burst of speed I caught hold of Will’s tee-shirt and slowed him down.