An Early Summer??? Sure hope not...

After 15 or so years of navigating Riley World, one would think I would be pretty in tune with what’s happening all most of the time. Yea right. Wish that were the case. *sigh* I have come to realize that what I struggle with the most in Riley World is coming to grips with the idea that sometimes things just don’t work out or aren’t meant to be for whatever reason and through no fault of anyone.

In January of this year, Riley was assigned a new SEA (Special Education Assistant). In the beginning things seemed to be going well. Towards the end of February things started to change. For the first time in 12 years at school, Riley started having “behaviours” which were described to me as “aggressive”.  This was very atypical of Riley.

I was confused and inside felt that something was not quite right but just couldn’t put my finger on it. Riley was also having challenging behaviours at work experience which in turn led to having to discontinue working at the grocery store after a year and a half. The confusing part for me was we weren’t seeing these behaviours at home or on weekends (even with a new support worker). What was going on???

Now ever since Riley started school we have been using what is referred to as a Homeschool Communication Book. In the past month, R’s SEA had to be reminded to check and record in his book a number of times. Then there were some conflicting stories and the last straw being a matter of safety.

When you have a kid like Riley who has significant communication issues, as parents we need to be able to trust without a doubt the person who is working with him. We felt we no longer had that trust in R’s SEA and for the first time ever, were not comfortable sending Riley to school.

From Riley’s standpoint this was not a problem.  As a matter of fact R's been off school since last Monday (one week) and is happy as a pig in sh*t!  This past Friday was a Pro-D day (no school for kids). All through the week R kept saying happily "No school on Friday" as if he was finally going to get a day off school. I was like haaalllloooo...you haven't been at school all week in case you hadn't noticed. Oi-vay!

I had mentioned in a previous post, I do not like conflict and will do just about anything to avoid a confrontation. Unfortunately this time we felt we had no other choice than to keep Riley at home. In the meantime I will put on a clean pair of my big girl panties (not sure what men wear in this case), we will go with our gut feelings and hopefully we can work with the school on a plan going forward. 

Wish us luck!