Back to school tomorrow!

Jenny starts her senior year of high school tomorrow. We spent six hours together yesterday at the mall getting her desperately needed new clothes. Anna starts second grade tomorrow and Dominic starts kindergarten. I meet with Dominic's child psychologist this Friday to go over all the test results from his evaluations... I'll let you know how that goes.

Today I met with Anna's new second grade teacher and her main resource teacher to go over how our summer went and talk about her change in seizure presentation. I was suprised to see the art teacher, music teacher, two PE coaches, the school nurse, her speech therapist, her one-on-one aide, and the principal also join us. Suddenly I felt like I was conducting a formal meeting! Everyone was very attentive and asked questions about how to help her if she should have a seizure at school. She is at higher risk than last year since the last seizure she had really had no cause that we can discern. We decided to not tell her classmates about the epilepsy... if she has a seizure at school, then we'll talk about it. We went over the protocol for using the Diastat and I reminded the nurse to call 911 should we need to use it since it depresses her respiratory system so much; she'll need supplemental oxygen. I really felt the mood shift talking about this in such detail and it hit me how serious it is dealing with seizures.

The speech therapist asked if we should talk about Anna's autism with her classmates while she's out of the room. I think it's a good idea... from the experiences my other mom friends have had with their special needs kids, peers start teasing in the third grade. If her peers are informed now, maybe they will stick up for her later? I'm hoping for tolerance and acceptance, Anna's behavior can be aggressive (especially when she's scared) and different so I want to be sure the kids are comfortable around her and not scared of her. They asked if I would like to talk to the class. Whoa! I'll need to do some reading on how best to present this information. Maybe since I love her so much, that love will shine through and the kids will want to be her buddy. I hope, I hope.

I'll be posting some pictures later this week of the first day of school, Dominic's birthday party, and various other events this past month. This will be the first time that all three kids are in school at the same time! Woohoo! I can get caught up on requests and start doing some other projects that have been on hold.