New Year, New Perspective

I haven't been posting much this school year -- that's for a couple of reasons. The first is that DB has 2 terrific teachers this year for 2nd grade.

The second is that I'm a little cowed by a little chat the principal had with me at the end of last school year, wherein she made sure to mention my freedom of speech and that she had not herself read my blog but she had staff members who were very concerned about it, well, basically, nobody likes a squealer, other parents mind find it, yadda yadda.

If I'd had a day or so to prepare for the topic of the meeting I would have had snappy answers like "Nobody likes a bad school year, either," and "It's nothing different than what we say to one another on the playground."

But of course I was caught completely off guard and said little to nothing.
But, surprising for me, was what I didn't say -- which was anything to the effect that I'd stop writing this blog.

So I've spent the fall thinking about what I can write. The posts I look back and find helpful are the ones where I write down what worked and what didn't in a given situation, so I can pass that knowledge forward for the new year.

I also find it helpful to chronicle DuckyBoy's behavior during certain stressful situations -- like concerts -- so I can see his progress (or lack thereof).

I get the most traffic when I write about things I can't find clear answers for on the web; my most-found post is Handling Autism Aggression, which is exactly the phrase I typed into Google and didn't find much, so when I searched around I aggregated what I found.

I'd like to do more of that but don't always find the time. Plus, when the year is going well and he's maturing so well (albeit a little behind his peers, but certainly following a similar curve) I have less to look up.

I'm sooo happy with DB's teachers. I like the amount of homework, and they send up a red flag as soon as he falls a little behind to make sure we do a little extra in that subject to bring him up to speed. He had trouble at first this eyar with counting coins -- he had trouble telling the coins apart -- but now is fast becoming a whiz.

We weren't sure how Mr. Precise would take to the "estimation" unit, so we laid the groundwork at home the weekend before that math lesson started, and it turned out he picked it up in a flash. (He still corrects me sometimes when I say it's "7:30" and he sees a digital clock say "7:29." Sheesh.)

He still has bad days: The day of his class holiday party he acted out so loudly during the assembly he had to miss 2/3 of his own class's party, sitting in the office as penance for yelling out, more than once, during the program. Yesterday, the after-school director told me he'd yelled at the guy in charge of his group, then loudly cried and claimed he didn't ... then quickly recanted, apologized, and moved on.

But more days than not are good. Which is a wonderful way to start the year.