Across and Inside my Universe

Special Needs Child & Starting Junior High

OY.

It's been two weeks, and I've got a headache just thinking about it.

Every time I think, "Oh, I've just emailed back and forth with x period's teacher and gotten on top of something, " something else will smack me in the face a minute later, like missing work in Computer class because it wouldn't print and she didn't know to ask for help like other kids might.

Or tonight, after sending an email to all her teachers to introduce some of the issues (self and time management and organization of both, being the biggest ones). I had been encouraged by the responses from two teachers I had individually emailed the week before, so I thought I'd better email them all, even though I hope they've all read her IEP as it demands certain accommodations that every class had better make.

I get done doing this, and then my husband flips over a recently-graded Enlish assignment and on the back, written twice, harshly, is, "I HATE ENGLISH CLASS".

My heart is breaking and I feel like how can I expect her to stay on top of so many things when I'm having trouble staying on top of trying to keep her organized and on track with everything?

How can I expect her to be up on all this when new things and all sorts of changes are difficult for an autistic child to handle, when she's likely overwhelmed by all these new things that I feel like a "Bad Mommy tm" for doing what I need to do to help her, but feel like I'm just piling on her more?

And yet I feel like a "Bad Mommy tm" for the days when I've not reminded her about EVERYTHING, when I've not gone through her accordian organizer and her planner to check if she's written down homework and tests, and then see if she's brought the homework home . . ..

Can I pull my hair out yet? Please?!! Somebody say Junior High and a special needs child will get easier, at some point, pretttyyyy pleassseeee!!

Things I Never Want to See (or Step On) Again After Cleaning Daughter's Room

PERLER beads!! Ouch

Easter Grass. Not a pain to step on, but when you are sorting out umpteen billion tiny things, and have to pull strands of Easter grass out from around them and among them, you curse your autistic daughter's love for stringy things . . . (not out loud, just in my head!)

Tiny Polly Pocket accessories; especially footwear, that you practically need a magnifying glass to see.

Orphan puzzle pieces, that seem to have been breeding in the heaped piles of stuff (yes, it's been awhile since we overhauled her room.)

Lego, of course. Some of the pieces rival Polly Pocket stuff for microscopic-ness, although these hurt much more to step on.

All the torn off, torn apart, dissassembled pieces of toys that my daughter's urge to deconstruct has left in her wake.

Things like screws, washers, twist-tie wiry things or similar from packaged toys, miscellaneous wire, and even a "be careful where you dig this flag marks an underground gas pipe" flag on rusty wire from the local gas utility (sternly scolded for that one, with lots of internal frustration because her desire for metal objects, and especially wiry ones because that intersects with her desire for long, thing, stringy objects, makes it likely that something she shouldn't be bringing home will definitely be coming home with her in the future).

Some of my clear, vinyl cling stamps or silicone clear stamps, ruined. I think the texture and feel of them appeal to her sensory cravings, like the metal and stringy things.

Umpteen-billion rocks, some smooth, some with sharper edges (at least as felt when stepped on. If given a choice, I believe she prefers smooth rocks but she'll take any rock that catches her fancy. Lots of tactility here (and muffled or not-so-muffled curses when stepped upon).

15 shirts of varying sizes from the 4 years previous, almost always gifts (at least when we buy we have some idea of her preferences as well as she has alot more input on her wardrobe now), and 85% long sleeve. A few even still have the original sales tags on. It's money wasted, but grandparents and others that want to buy her clothes for her birthday and Christmas (she has a cool-weather birthday) would get offended if they didn't get to pick out clothes for her, or if we asked them not to. They enjoy that aspect of grandparent hood; the problem is, if they don't get worn, it's money down the drain until she grows out of it and we give it to a cousin or something. The long-sleeve issue is partly because of the water on the elbow that she gets, in both elbows now this last year, which we are having her tested on Thursday for rheumatoid arthritis . . .

The same frustration with little to no times worn, for dresses. If it's a dress that's not red, or pink to a lesser degree, then there's onlyu a 10% chance she'll wear it, and only if she likes it.

Erases popped out of the end of pencils, and the little metal piece that divides it from the pencil is also off, and chewed to almost unrecognizability. She has sensory issues here, too.

A host of other things but these things I could really do without. Because of her cravings for certain sensations, feels of objects, etc., some of these problems aren't going away any time soon.