To help our son with his combination of sensory differences, functional deficits, and disability-related needs acclimate to an environment such as a public school is more complicated than just showing up and gradually increasing his time when he shows he’s ready for that. There are so many moving pieces to think about.
How complicated is his schedule already? Very. His school days start at 5 am, when he wakes up and does his first community safety walk (which we determined to be necessary to help him succeed with the increased expectations for sitting in the school environment) and often therapy tasks depending on the day will go until 6:30 pm after he leaves school. Change too much at once in his schedule, and he’ll freak out and reject the school as the cause of it all, because he really struggles with too much change at once. Add too much more and he’ll struggle, feeling too overwhelmed to focus on all of it combined.
Are there steps that need to be added to help him grow into the school environment outside of it? Many.
Right now on days ABA isn’t able to come in to do that therapy work, I am extending his time in public spaces during habilitative therapy so that he can get used to being out of the house for longer periods of time by starting first in environments he’s already demonstrated a tolerance for doing things that involve practicing his appropriate waiting, sitting, and food ordering skills and expanding to just tolerating all of the differing sensory elements of public spaces for larger portions of his day. We continue to work on helping him adjust to the behavioral expectations of the school environment in all therapy types, and I spent more time than I envisioned last night and this morning looking at fidget toy options with switches similar to light switches on them to help give him something to control that’s not a classroom light when he’s feeling the need.
And there’s more, so much more. Learning to use glue sticks, scissors, communicating and coordinating with all of his providers as regards to what his current behavioral needs and interventions are so everybody can be consistent…honestly, it’s a lot. Plenty of normally developing people can’t schedule or wouldn’t want to schedule like Tony has to be scheduled because of the complexity of his needs.
Sometimes it’s a lot for him, and it’s a lot for me. I’m right there walking with him at 5:30 am, trying to sneak in little bits of things for me like responding to messages, inhaling a few minutes of meditation and yoga before I jump into the shower…is squeezing in 4 minutes on my rower really enough to help my cardiovascular health? Probably not, but hey, the 20 minutes of kettle bell I did while Justine was in doing PT this past week count for something beneficial there…right? Right.
Because how Tony has to schedule, as his one-to-one aid and primary habilitative therapist (and the person who shows up to most of the therapy sessions as the parental support) I have to schedule, and sneak anything that I might need to be doing for me in and around it. So, that’s as much as I’m writing this week. Because I finally finished episode 102 of La Usurpadora somewhere in all of that, I need to go find something else to watch while I wash dishes, and then it’s off to do things for our other beautiful child. Because that may not be on Tony’s schedule necessarily, but it’s surely still an essential part of mine.
Wishing all of you wonderful week! (pictures are from other parts of our day yesterday).
