Decisions Decisions

Over the past few weeks, my family was thrown a few curveballs that I have had to deal with. They are  personal, so I won't share them, but I think its quite funny how a few things can come into your life at a moments notice and destroy things that you have worked months on building.

Over the past few months, I had been working on becoming as educated in the areas of autism as I could possibly be. I have checked out videos, books, and was trying all sorts of new techiniques to help my kids. I have no other choice. The schools are giving my kids what they need and the insurance company is not covering any of the services my kid needs either. So I must become an expert on what they need and teach it to them myself. I am surprised that there are not more books and programs out there that are focused on training parents to provide the assistance they need for their children. All the books give you references to programs you can send your kids to or the type pf therapy they need, but i can't find any that say.. this is what ABA therapy is and how to do it. Professionals must have learned this stuff from somewhere..right? I need to search textbooks I guess to find what it is I need.

Needless to say, my own personal stuff had stalled out all the progress I had been makin gin this area and I am now forced to try to get back on track. Why is it so hard to do this? We as humans are so reluctant to re-start projects or goals that we had previously started and made good headway on. We remember all the hard work we put into it, all the wonderful results we had because of all the hard work, and instead of having that motivate us , we think.. that sounds so exhausting. I'll just sit here a while longer and think about it. Sometimes, I wish I was more like Data from Star Trek. I can just switch a chip off in my brain and proceed with my mission without letting other thoughts distract me.

Captian Obvious came home the other day all excited. I had purchased him silly bands because they are all the rage and he had worked really hard at saving money to buy some. It wasn't enough money to buy the ones he wanted, so I chipped in to reward his attempts at financial responsibilty. At school, he had traded a few silly bands with some other kids and he was so excited about it. Being a ASD kid, all he wanted to talk about were silly bands and why he liked them. I listened for a half an hour about the greatness of silly bands. Then out of the blue, he tells me in a quite different tone, "Mommy, you wanna know the other reason I like silly bands so much?"  Uh -oh I thought. I am in for another half hour of silly band greatness talk. "Why?" I asked. "Because if you have silly bands, then kids at school will talk to you because they want to know what silly bands you have to see if they can trade. Today, kids actually talked to me Mom." My heart broke a little inside. My kid has to wear these silly bands in order to get kids to talk to him. Then, I got angry. The kids are only talking to him because they want something from him and they are going to walk all over him and take advantage of his desperate desire to have friends in order to get what they want. After they do that, they will no longer talk to him anymore. Then I will have to buy more silly bands or whatever the new craze is to give him the opportunity to be used again. I think that was my breaking point. I had been talking to a lot of homeschooling families and hearing about the reasons why they chose to homeschool. A lot of parents had told me that they wanted to have control over the kids of relationships their kids engaged in so that they can ensure that their children have meaningful friendships and relationships in their lives and not end up in situations where there is peer pressure and manipulation at the core of the relationship. I feel the same way. I want the Captain to be around people that are gonna love the Captain for being him.If that means I have to homeschool him and drive around town all week to ensure that he maintains quality relationships with other kids, then thats what I am going to do.

I have some more looking into, but I am 90% sure I am gonna try virtual school next year.