I wish you would SLEEP

School starting for Jaymes has been both good and awful. On one hand, it's soooo nice to be able to relax with Sierra and play with her and get house work done. Those are things I can't do when Jaymes is home. It gives us all a much needed break from his new-found stimming and behavioral issues, wherin lies the "other hand" portion of things.

Jaymes is a child who copies what he sees. If he is surrounded by typically developing children, Jaymes copies their mannerisms. Last year at school, he was in a half typical half disabled classroom. He followed the other kids as they lined up, he sat on the carpet when they did, and he copied the words they used. This year, Jaymes is in a self contained "AU" class. The kids (from the limited time I've spent each morning at school) appear to all be mostly nonverbal, and many show a lot of stimmming and obviously autistic behavior. Makes sense, it being an AU classroom. However, remember that Jaymes copies what he sees. He's not seeing any typical children anymore.

On the third or fourth day of school, Jaymes was severely bitten by another child. That day, my son who has NEVER been a biter, came home and bit his sister very badly. He's been biting ever since. Could it be random coincidence that the biting began the day he was bitten at school? Sure. But I doubt it. Jaymes has plenty of undesireable behaviors, but biting other kids has not been one of them. At one time when he was younger he would bite me if I held him during a meltdown, but that was the extent of it. Never another child.

So, now we have Jaymes, much changed since he started school. Before school began, he stimmed less. He slept at night. He listened better. Now, he's stimming nearly all the time, and he's learned some brand new stims from the other kids. He is hurting himself again, and he is no longer following directions like he had been. He bites, and he spits. He has stopped sleeping at night, something we have not had in YEARS.

I am exhausted. I need sleep! It's one of those things I have always been lucky to get, Jaymes has been so good about sleeping at night. I'm having a hard time with not getting as much, now that he's up screaming and throwing things at 3am.

Tomorrow is the IEP meeting that took more than a month to get scheduled. I'm not looking forward to it. Jason isn't going, smart man. I wish someone would go in my place! Advocating for your kids is a hard, uncomfortable thing to do. Hopefully something will be accomplished, and make all this stress in the last month worth it.

Jaymes has not had a bus because they changed his stop to up on a VERY busy, narrow road without a sidewalk. I like him alive, not in road-pancake form, so we've been driving him instead. This means Jason has to take hours off work, and Jaymes has to be picked up early almost every day. We're spending a ton in gas, and Jason's getting in trouble at work. Not a good situation. That's an IEP discussion.

Another topic for discussion is Jaymes' class placement. He needs to either go into a class with higher functioning autistic children, or spend parts of his day out of that classroom to get his peer interaction time. I do not want him to continue the way he is. Originally the teacher told me they ate lunch in the cafeteria- asked an aide yesterday and she said "oh, of course they eat in their classroom!"

Great.

So, long story short, I need sleep, the IEP is tomorrow, and I'm not excited. But Jaymes is still snuggly.