Its been many months now since I last updated. As many of you know we had Benjamin in public school and he was doing great, we thought. When he came back from Christmas break he just wasnt doing as good for them as they thought. I went in and spent a couple of weeks with him at school everyday to try and show them what to do about behaviors. That didnt work either. ARD came around in March and then CPS showed up at my doorstep the 3rd week of March with accusation of violence towards teachers and aides. No one contacted me before hand as I was told I would be. So we had to live thru the BULLS*** of CPS investigation. Im not going into details it pisses me off to think to much about it. How a bueacracy can come into your home and threaten your family. Reminded me of Nazi Germany during WWII STRONGLY reminded me of the gestapo. Anyway...............
It was hard for me to understand why they were having such a hard time with him because he was doing sooooo much better at home, following direction more, communicating more, doing more things and on and on and on. Sooooooooooo, I yanked him out of school the end of March and just started home schooling again.
So since the 1st of April Benjamin has started washing his own clothes, putting his clothes in the dryer, unloading the dishwasher, choosing his breakfast food from the pantry and bringing it to us, choosing which clothes he wants to wear and putting them on without assistance (that within the last week), he can put his shoes on without assistance, is assisting in brushing his teeth (we break down each task into steps and then start working on steps), he helps make his smoothie in mornings, goes and gets the eggs, cocanut milk, banana, counts the pineapple pieces as he puts them in the mixer and then runs the mixer and gets his smoothie just right. When he has to take his pills, you tell him to come to kitchen and take them and he will come and do that, puts his glass in the sink when thru, puts his plate in the sink when finished eating. There are tons of things we are teaching him and he is learning!!!!! It is amazing to watch him do stuff, things that 8 months ago he couldnt do. We are working on proper pronnuciation of 2 and 3 syllable words, just tons of things on a daily basis. He is learning to say "no" and we honor it when we can. He is GOOOD at saying no and starting to do good at answering yes when appropriate. He is starting to learn what more and more foods are and will bring those to you that he likes.
Now dont get me wrong, even with all these cool things going on he still has meltdowns and we work on social behavior and him controlling his behaviors on a daily basis. But hey, for a person who is 17 and cant talk like you and I and deals with teenager hormones I think he is doing GREAT and Im very proud of him!
Medicine is changing so fast, talked to nurse at Dr S this morning because he is really emotional right now and she is suspecting a pandas flare because his ups and downs are cyclic. We are going to go get a blood draw today and run some tests, see what comes back and then go from there. So Ive got to go so Ill update yall again hopefully before the end of July. We will be starting ABA therapy and Recreation therapy in July so want him all running smooth so he can learn as much as possible. Until next time.................
