There's a lot going on right now. I'm not sure if I have enough spoons to do everything. As a result, I'm not blogging across any of my platforms right now. I'm barely keeping up with my daily journal work. Actually, I'm not doing too great at that, to be honest.
My brother-in-law is in the hospital. He had a kidney transplant recently. He started out looking ok and then everything went sideways. My sister-in-law is just this side of having kittens because she doesn't know what to do. Beloved is doing his best to be supportive and the voice of reason. Things were looking really grim for a little while. Now, my brother-in-law is doing a bit better but his cognitive state isn't the best. The going theory is his problem is sleep deprivation. He's at the best hospital in the area and getting the best care that can be given. It's still a very stressful thing for the family.
The kids are not aware of the ongoing matter. They've been a handful all on their own since summer school ended two weeks ago. That ended on a contentious note due to a massive communication failure, which got resolved (?) the day before school finished. The kids got their first shot for the Covid-19 vaccine at the beginning of the month. Next week is when they get their next shot. Amazingly, my needle phobic boys didn't freak out. One of them actually high-fived the pharmacist who gave him the shot. I'm hoping that the second round goes just as well.
Cuddle Bear is currently doing talk therapy once a week to develop some behavior interventions for his tendency to perseverate on his imaginary world to the exclusion of things he needs to do. We got started on this path because of a teacher thinking he was suffering from psychosis. This lead to a full psychological evaluation back in April (I think, time's a blur). The result was the psychologist said that he is showing classic autistic behaviors and that he is perseverating on his imagination. The experts have consistently said this through out the entire business. We've made a point of keeping all of his care team in the loop and making sure that the school shares information with them.
But, at the time of the teacher's panic, I called the autism center and got set up with their behavioral intervention program. I then forgot all about that until the behavior intervention program people called me to apologize for the wait and schedule his assessment. That was at the beginning of the month. We've hit the point now that the child psychologist that we're working with has developed a treatment plan and we're getting ready to implement it.
Less damn fights about what's real and what's not would be fantastic. Less fantastic stories about how his imaginary friends are causing trouble would be helpful too when the situation is that he is actually the one up to mischief. I don't want to snuff out his imagination and I don't have a problem with imaginary friends. But he has to learn when and where to let his imagination to run wild. I am hoping that the treatment plan is going to work and he learns what we've been desperately trying to teach him on our own - discretion in his imaginary play and better focus on reality.
If we're lucky, some of the skills and interventions that we learn from this process will be helpful with Snuggle Bug, who is beginning to demonstrate some of the same perseveration behaviors (obviously on different topics). I just want my kids to be able to navigate the world with some measure of success, I don't really care about their approach because everyone does it differently regardless of how neurotypical they are. The perseveration, unfortunately, is turning into a hinderance and I don't want them to struggle because of it.
I'm just still kinda burned on how we got started on this path. The teacher who thought that Cuddle Bear was psychotic is going to be Snuggle Bug's teacher next year. I'm rather dreading it. Because I have a bad feeling that she's going to find something else to complain/fuss over. Beloved and I are fairly sure her education in Autism is lacking. But, I know what I'm going to do if we go down that road again because of Snuggle Bug's fascination with robots and his occasional insistence that he is one.
It's been a rough couple of months.
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