A Little Update on Matthew

 It's been awhile since I've given an update on Matthew. Remember in the beginning of this blog how I was having him retested because he was behaving so well that I didn't believe that he could possibly have autism? Well, that all went out the window. It's amazing how behaviors will change from day to day and week to week.

Doing distance learning was definitely a challenge for him. He refused to do homework for us. The school didn't want to work with us; he didn't have an IEP this year because he was so "good" in school that he didn't need one. They started a 504 Plan for him, and after he had testing with the U of M, I told them that his neuropsychiatrist recommended a para to work with him on his homework. They pushed that off until the actual report came in, then agreed to it. Then it was just a matter of getting Matthew to work with that para.

Basically, the testing showed that Matthew has such a high anxiety at school that he behaves and then lets loose at home. My boy is so anxious about behaving at school that he's a completely different kid for them. Then he's a completely different kid for us at home. He doesn't even know who he is. He's not allowed to be who he is. We're getting him into a psychologist who can help him work through his emotions. He's also started speech therapy to work on how to talk to other kids in social situations without dominating the conversations with talk about electronics or other topics that he wants to talk about.

In-person school just started back on January 26th. Matthew was not excited to go; he was, however, excited to have three days off the week of the 18th while the teachers prepared for the kids to come back to school. He had a ton of homework to catch up on. I'm lucky that he'll do some work for Tea and that she has the patience to work with him.

I'm trying to reach out and find support with other moms who have children with special needs. I'm doing my best to attend online support groups, although I missed the first one that I was trying to attend, but I'm determined to make it to the February groups. I'm excited now that we have a better internet and I'll actually be able to participate instead of just sitting back and listening with my video and audio off.

I'll leave you with this drawing that Matthew did in mid-January. It was again from a time where we had to remove electronics from the picture due to behavioral issues. He gets so creative once electronics are gone. I love when he takes out his paper and coloring crayons or pencils.


On next week's dirt, we'll be reading a little more of my poetry.

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