Difficulties & Kindergarten on the Horizon

We've had quite the difficult summer when it comes to Kaitlyn's Aspergers. There has been terrible regression in bathrooming and she has been back fully in Pull Ups since about mid July. She has just recently gotten better at going to the bathroom while at home and will go on the toilet a few times a day. She is telling me that she is having trouble, sometimes, feeling that she has to go but I really think that comes down to her sensory and control issues. We're still working to get her back in underwear because she has her first day of Kindergarten this week on Sept 8th. As of now, the school has told me to send her to school in underwear and send extra clothing with her in her bag and they will help change her. This is one big concern for me for a lot of reasons that I may not get into right now... we'll see how it goes and I'll update. I do know that it bothers me to think my child would be the one getting picked on for going to the bathroom in her pants (and, as she does, not telling anyone) and being the "smelly" kid.

It's also been a pretty meltdown filled summer as well... there has been a lot of routine changes and uprooting and changes in schedules and all kinds of instability for Kaitlyn and she has not handled any of it well. I do believe that has had a LOT to do with the regression and going into a regular public school kindergarten is only going to cause the regression to worsen. I'm looking forward to getting Kaitlyn back into a very rigid routine and hopefully control some of the outburts.

We did do a trial with her and took her off of her medication for a few weeks to see if it really was helping and we found that, though it doesnt seem like a lot, it is helping. Without the medication the outburts and meltdowns were horribly worse. She became very aggressive, angry, destructive and violent.

Now, as I mentioned, Kindergarten starts in a few days and acedemically Kaitlyn is more than ready. She has been doing workbooks at home and is doing 1st Grade work in them. She is starting to read a lot more too and LOVES LOVES LOVES learning and how things work and is constantly asking questions about things. She is my little "Johnny 5" and "needs input!"

Kaitlyn will be starting Kindergarten in a regular public school. For the first week of school the kids will all be clustered together and evaluated on their acedemic skills against their peers and then placed in a classroom with a teacher. We have no idea which teacher Kaitlyn will have but we do know that each class will have 1 teacher annd 25 students. We do NOT see this going over well as we all know how Kaitlyn does NOT do well with large groups and also is delayed when it comes to social, emotional and behavioral things. Basically we're going to send her into school for a few weeks and see how it goes before heading back to the CSE... we're going to tell the CSE exactly what we want for Kaitlyn (ultimately we want her to go to Crossroads) and if they do not agree to give it to us then we will be pulling Kaitlyn out of the public school and will be homeschooling her. We feel that she will be served better at her own acedemic pace and will then be able to spend time working more on her social, emotional and behavioral growth and then we can attempt 1st grade next year when she is a bit older and hopefully learned more skills.

It's all, again, a waiting game and we will see how things go!