When Little Man was a little baby and had some health issues, I used to say, "Health issues? I can handle this. Please just no developmental issues." Then he was diagnosed developmentally delayed. Okay. I can handle developmental delay, just please no autism, I could never handle that. You can guess what came next. Yup, an autism diagnosis. I could go on, but you get the point.
This year school has been hell for my little sweetie. He's in a self-contained special ed class (meaning only special ed kids) and still....failing. This is the first year he's ever really noticed his grades and what he sees is depressing. The biggest lesson he's learned? Work your hardest so you can still get an F. Ouch. His IEP meeting was a disaster almost a month ago with such phrases as "he needs to get used to failing" and "we're making all the accommodations and modifications possible, there's nothing more we can do" and "if we give him academic work on his level then you're (meaning me) giving up on him." Despite losing progress in both math and reading, they insisted on frustrating him with work he can't yet attain and then punishing him when he didn't complete it on time.
As his frustrations at school have grown, his mental state has declined. Drastically. In a kid who already has a fragile emotional state due to many factors, this sent him over the edge. He started having visual and auditory hallucinations, lost tolerance for things such as Beans having the television on, lost interest in his toys and started wetting the bed again. Aggressive behavior we haven't seen in a very long time came back, emotional swings from laughing to hysterics and back again in moments. In short, I feel like my son is being sucked away a little at a time.
Our only hope was today's appointment with his psychiatrist and developmental pediatrician. I have been pleading for the past month that they would have some answer. I got all the paperwork together - his IEP, samples of classroom work, videos of him doing his best to do his homework, my list of his current issues and begging for help from the school, and perhaps most important of all - a letter Little Man himself dictated to his doctors. While the contents of the letter are private, the insight it provided into the frustration and hurt my little guy has been going through is shocking.
Today we finally, finally got help. These doctors know Little Man very well and their care for him is quite evident. They reviewed all the information before coming into the room with us, paying special attention to his letter. Our normal 15-minute appointment took an hour and 15 minutes. Tough discussions were had and tough decisions were made.
The most drastic change is Little Man is pulled out of school and placed on hospital-homebound effective immediately. This means I will be responsible for most of his schooling, but the district will be responsible for sending a teacher out to oversee it. I'm not sure exactly how this works as I am very anti-homeschool (hence the never say never title), but he cannot take one more day in his current placement.
Over the next couple of months he will undergo more testing, specifically redoing the psychoacademic testing he had done two years ago (the developmental ped is calling in a personal favor to have this redone) as he has not made the progress they expected and are highly suspicious of a degeneration process (at worst) or confirmation of no progress (at best). Once they have those results they will be pushing to make an exception and the psychiatrist will be calling in a personal favor to get him into another neurologist or a neuropsychiatrist as they are certain there is an underlying medical process causing these issues and we desperately need to find it. They also once again confirmed his seizures even though we don't outwardly see them they seem to be affecting his brain and learning.
When we finally have all that information we will do what it takes to get him into the proper educational placement. One where he can learn, but is not stressed to his breaking point. Obviously this is a huge change, but I am desperately hoping this will give me back my little boy who was so stable, interactive and happy over the summer.
and cursive letter 'a' and 'A.' Handwriting/fine motor is a huge struggle for him so at first we're just working on tracing. He did the best I've ever seen. 
I'm not a teacher, and really never want to be one, but if just me implementing things his therapists and specialists have told me over the years makes such a big difference, imagine what he'll do once he's in school with a qualified teacher and in the right placement. He's going to fly!! Watch out world - here he comes! :D
