Taking the Scenic Route

Zach’s mom is going to have bypass surgery in 4 or 5 days.  Naturally, Zach is wishing he could be with her.  Besides being too expensive, it is a bad time in the semester, he is teaching, and Zane is going under anesthesia next Friday.  It is a sucky situation, but that is how it goes sometimes. 

Tomorrow Zach has to put some tranny fluid in the car.  Dad thinks it might be low after the radiator replacement last week.  He bumped it or something.  That might fix the car.  Hopefully it is that simple.  Then Zane and I both pick up our glasses, then on to a dr. appt. for both of the kids. 

The youth director at church is supposed to call us back,  Hopefully they can work with me on getting Zane into the Sunday School program.  They do a Rotation Model Sunday School which I think would be good for Zane.  It sounds like they take the same concept and present it in several different ways over a period of several weeks (if I am understanding it correctly).  It sounds like it would be a lot more successful for him than the style of Sunday School I grew up with.  (more old-fashioned school type learning environment…requires the ability to sit quietly and listen for long stretches which is not something Zane is capable of at this point).  If they can’t work with me, I will call up the Mennonite Church across town and see if they would be able to.  The drive, the price of gas, and our less-than-reliable car would make that more dicey.  Driving (or walking if the weather permits) a mile or so is a whole different thing than driving 20 minutes across town for the Mennonite Church.  We might as well drive out to my home church at that point…it is an hour away, but the service is an hour later and Grandma & Grandpa & a nursery cry room are there. lol. 

I am also waiting on a call back from the Speech Language Hearing Clinic to see if they have additional slots for speech.  There were only 2 available where he is now and the the therapist said she thought he could benefit with more if we can swing it, and that she would want to know so they could work together for a better program for him.  I know that there is a waiting list for the preschool there, but I want to get my name on the list.  A preschool where they are equipped to deal with speech and language issues would be good for him.    I want to homeschool, but at this point I think he needs more socialization with peers to help him with language.  I may look into the Montessori school and see what some of the other preschools can offer too.  I am not sure if we can do the public preschool unless we can get a medical exemption or religious exemption for the vaxes.  There is no way I am giving him the MMR and chicken pox vax just so he can go to school.  If I have to find other solutions, I will.   The chicken pox vax just seems stupid to me, and the MMR is still surrounded by too much controversy over causing and increasing autism in kids.  He has some speech now.  The possibility of him losing what he does have just so I can put him in a public school in a district I don’t really like just seems beyond stupid to me right now.

I wish the preschool they are planning on starting this fall at my home church was starting up this summer.  I plan on spending a lot of time out at the farm this summer anyway (especially since Zach will be at the internship and I am not talented at single parenting at this point) and I am less fearful of him picking up a ton of bad behaviors from the other kids there.  Since he learns by imitation, I am really cautious about who he interacts with on a regular basis.  It has to be a fairly well controlled environment with good supervision.

For right now I will stick with YMCA kid zone and make more effort to meet up with the AP playgroup and the homeschool group.  If that helps, I might just drop the whole idea of preschool other than the specialized one.

I need to get to sleep.  Big day tomorrow. 

***edited to add:  The Youth Director called.  The school year is almost over, so he is fine in the nursery for the next 4 weeks, then we can transition him into the “Kid’s Club” over the summer, which is slightly more structured, and then into the Sunday School program in the fall, which is another step up in structure.  His age group is pretty small (3-4 kids), so that should help him too.  If he was a year older, there would be closer to 10-12 kids in his group.  The person who runs the summer program is an experienced elementary school teacher, so they are likely to be accustomed to ASD kiddos.  He has been in the nursery before and, for the most part, did alright.  (When the class was really crowded with the large group of boys that were a year older the room got really loud, but they are in the regular Sunday School program now so it should be better)  *whew*  good news!