The Lost DSi Saga

Last week Abe left his hand held gaming system the Nintendo DSi, on the bus.  We heard a cry outside that sounded so primal I thought at first it was a cat's yowl.  Abe is usually pretty good about not losing his precious equipment.  He left it one other time and we were able to get to the bus at the last stop and get it back.  Luckily, it seems that my husband seems to always be home when this happens.  I tried to calm Abe down while my husband went to call the bus company.  Unfortunately, the run was over and the bus driver told the dispatcher that he looked for the game system but didn't find it.  Abe was beside himself with despair.  We told him that we would replace everything but he wanted his old stuff back.  He was ready to bang his head on the floor or chase every bus in the neighborhood in his crazy upset state.  We got him calmed down and told him that we would ask the kids on the bus the next day.  Our concern was that he would interrogate the other kids inappropriately.  We drove Abe to school the next day and left an Email message for the school psychologist.  That afternoon she calls me back.  Abe has had a good day and she has been busy dealing with other crises so she hasn't been able to prepare him for dealing with the bus.  She wanted us to pick him up from school and she would deal with it the next day.  My response was that I was happy to pick him up but that someone had to go check the bus and ank the kids if anyone found it.  How long could I ask Abe to wait without closure?  If he wanted to go to the bus it was going to be difficult to get him into my car.   Luckily, Abe has a 1:1 and I suggested that he go to the bus and ask about the DSi.   Amazingly, it turns out that the 1:1 aide found it!   It was still on the floor of the bus.  I'm not sure that we would have been so lucky had we waited a second day.  What was disturbing about the whole experience was that the school pychologist didn't want to deal with the situation because she had other crises to deal with.  The thing that we have to remember is that school psychologists are very overburdened and often only deal with things in a reactionary manner.  Since my son was having a good day so far, why not wait until there was some time to deal with it?  What most of us parents know is that it is better to be proactive than reactive.  If we had not had someone check the bus we might have had a difficult situation on our hands.  It was important for me to get through to the school psychologist that we had to do something to help Abe in this situation that day in order to allow him to remain calm.  I don't know what would have happened if Abe hadn't had his own personal aide that could check the bus.  I might have had to go to the school myself.  Because we usually are only dealing with our child's needs it is hard to accept that our child might be only one of many that the staff must deal with on a daily basis.  The paradox is that the better your child behaves, the less attention they get. 
      We thought that we had dodged a bullet, but it turns out that the very next day Abe left his DSi in the lunchroom in the morning and by the time he realized it, it was gone.  He did freak out and try to use the loudspeaker system to ask about the game but was able to restrain himself when told that he couldn't do it.  The principal did make and announcement and Abe searched the school but alas, it was gone for good.  Abe was ready to stay at school all night until he found it but we managed to talk him out of it.   In the end we replaced the system and the missing games he had in his case and except for a big financial hit on our part, things have returned to normal.  The hardest part is trying to explain to my other kids why I replace Abe's stuff when he loses it but I don't replace their stuff right away if they lose it.  They know Abe is different and can't cope with stuff as well as they can but I can imagine that it is hard for them that Abe seems to get so much more than they do.

Forgetting Things

Last time I posted I wrote about Abe forgetting to write down his homework. It turns out that the aide had prompted him but had forgotten to check that Abe had actually followed through.   On Sunday, Abe couldn't find his homework folder that had all his homework dittos in it.  He miraculously remained calm, having learned the lesson of the magic letter from mom.  The aide wrote to me that he had put Abe's homework folder in his science binder to keep it clean when Abe's yogurt container exploded at school.  He wrote that Abe "Saw him put it in" and must have forgotten to get it later.  I am getting the feeling that my next task will be to teach Abe's aide about executive functioning.   Executive functioning is the ability to be organized, plan, follow multi-step directions, focus on what is important etc..  As you can probably already guess, lots of kids with ADHD and ASD have trouble with this.  So when the aide prompts Abe to write down his homework, he really doesn't understand that at any moment, Abe can become distracted and forget to do it.  Similarly, just because Abe was there when his folder got placed into a binder doesn't mean that he processed what happened, or that he would remember to take it out later because he needs his homework folder to do his homework.  The challenge is that I do want Abe to be independent and be able to do these things for himself but the reality is that Abe can't handle the consequences of forgetting his stuff.  It makes him too agitated and upset,  Most kids get a lot of practice with this in younger grades when the stakes are not as high and teachers are more forgiving. Also, they can handle the occasional lapse.   Because Abe has always had an aide with him he never really had to be independent.   What I need to figure out is how to teach Abe to think things through without causing so much stress that he isn't able to handle being in a mainstream environment.