Mom Trep Autism: It's not been quiet and Special Olympics Autism

From your end I've been very quiet. From my end, it's been hectic! So here's the deal. My last post I made mention that we were preparing for Science Fair and water color was getting everywhere. A lot of things have been found out that you as parents need to be made aware of for your kids. Parents who read my blog are parents just like myself who push the schools and push your kids. Some of your kids are like mine and are in self contained classes. But before any of that, here is the back story.

I'm the class mom in the classroom. You guys knew about that at the beginning of the school year. Especially, my displeasure with the parents in the class during the Fall/Halloween party. So I had my duties for the class to prepare for Special Olympics. All of which came out of my pocket because well only two parents paid their part for their kids crafting time and seat cushions that I made.

I pulled a muscle in my shoulder and have been battling that pain while trying to get all my work done. I teach art and calligraphy classes at Michael's craft store so I pretty much stay on top of going above and beyond even in pain. FYI frankincense works great for 8 hours of relief but the pain does come back. I was helping out at the school for book fair, something that I was looking forward too this year. And of course we had the writing event at school, Science Fair and Special Olympics.

This is the way that I do things and the way I look at things. Our kids are largely ignored by the school. There are no PTA fundraisers for our class and our kids are pretty much treated as lepers. So there is nothing wrong with me being the class mom, because as I kind of hinted to the teacher I don't mind being the bad guy to make sure that our students have a fighting chance. I'm used to being Doodle's voice and in most cases I can be just as loud and scary as Doodle can be. That's my job as her voice.

Doodle did the science fair, that post will be later on. Not in this blog but what you need to know about has to do with it. I found out though the school news letter that Doodle's grade was doing the science fair. And it was due in a month. When her project was presented, it was the planets because she knows the planets, their order and all the bits of info on them. There was not enough time to try to teach her about a synopsis, conclusions, predictions, you know all the good stuff that goes along with a good science fair project. That would take months to teach her and we only had a month to get this done. Anyways, I got to go see her project in the library with the rest of her grade level. And there is where the problem fell. Seeing all these projects, many that looked the same. So many students doing similar projects. Hold up now! That means that parents and teachers were on the same page of what to do. Why was I left in the dark? Checking some of the kids work, it went all the way back to November! NOVEMBER! Hold up! Why was I not informed? But that's not the best part. I bought all of Doodle's supplies. The tri-fold, the planets, the paints. Everything came out of my pocket. The entire fourth grade got their tri-fold and information sheets of what to do for free! And Doodle was left in her class to be ignored by the school.

Did you know that according to IDEA which is apart of our rights, all children that have special needs are to do as the regular ed students. They have the exact same rights as the normal students and yet Doodle's rights were ignored??? Want to tell me how right that is. If you are a pushing parent like myself, keep that information to heart. Start stalking your childs grade level and make sure you keep an eye on that school news letter.

After Doodle turned in her project, it was only then that the regular ed teacher for Doodle's grade level started submitting work that Doodle needed to do. How do I know this happened? Well, the homework changed. It wasn't what had been coming home. Talking to Doodle's teacher, it was then the regular ed teacher remembered that Doodle was in the school. So that just tells me I have to work even harder now. And yeah, if I have to act all mafia on a school teacher so be it. I will stroke under my chin and get them something to remember. Because, yeah, I'm a jerk of a parent to deal with. I also have a heard of gold and a huge spot in my heart for my daughter and her classmates.

Now back on task. Doodle is out for spring break, I'm not busting my hump to get her to keep up in school with events so the pain in my shoulder has been gone for about a day now. It had to have been the fact that I was really stressing over everything that needed to be done. Doodle penguin walked the 50 meter. The starter gun freaked her out again. And the girl who was to keep up with Doodle well, she did more running on the field trying to catch Doodle then Doodle actually did in the 50 meter. And yeah I was heard on more then one occasion asking why my kid was running wild on field. She did the ball toss this time around, because we got rained out on that one last year. And the bus got hit by a car coming back from Special Olympics.

As class mom, I had a car load of everything that needed to be in the stands for the kids that were not participating. Figet fingers, seat cushions, incentives, umbrellas and of course water. And I'm kind of glad that I had what was needed because the "adults" watching over Doodle's classmates spend a lot of time on their phones. They didn't even think to bring incentives to make sure the kids didn't make a break for it and stayed in the stands. Kids are happier with small candies when your sitting in stands and can't do much. Figet fingers is also a great distraction. Especially for the screamer in the class.

I had gone to pick up one of the parents that morning that wanted to go but had no ride and since I had already decided that I wasn't going to ride the bus this year I gave her my spot. And I'm really glad I did. After the wreck happened and the school informed me, I went and picked Doodle up straight from the scene and we started spring break early. I didn't have to worry about giving a ride to the parent that I picked up, Doodle's teacher told me that one of them would give her a ride home. I might add that Special Olympics day was my birthday and I was ready to be done with the day! I was ready to spend time with Doodle's father who had come into town just to see Doodle in her event and spend time with Doodle. Okay I will admit it. I was looking forward to him watching Doodle so I could shop without having the beggar with me. I promise you every single store I go into she has to leave there with something! My poor wallet really hates me when I try to window shop and Doodle is with me.

So that's about it in a nut shell. You guys have a great night. I'm going to play some Sims 3 for a little bit and then I'm heading to bed. Tomorrow is another busy day for me as I have to bathe a dog and start working on my 1940's bathing suite. I'm sorry I'm not about to pay over $150's for a bathing suite when I got all my supplies for it for under $40.00 with enough material left over to make Doodle a bathing suite also. All of my work for open house on Saturday at work is done and I'm still looking around at the things to change my web page around too. I think I will tackle that next week, after I get a mani pedi when Doodle goes back to school.

As in the words of Froggy from my frog stuff, Happy Crafting! And you guys have a great night and a great day!

I don't have all the photo's as they are on my camera. But here's some that I took and a friend of mine took. Yeah, she came and stood in the stands with us along with another of my friends.