One full week of school down and Lily is walking on sunshine. Seriously.  She’s elated.  I’ve never seen her this happy about school…. ever.  She’s feeling confident and she’s proud of herself. We’re proud of her.  She’s really working hard on handling this transition well.  I’m amazed.  This is how I always imagined my kid would be… if I’d had a plain ol’ boring, ordinary kid.  

Thanks to her IEP, Lily can wear a hat, chew gum and sit on a exercise ball, all of which help her focus.  The fluorescent lights are filtered so that the flicker doesn’t give her a headache and make her irritable.  She has a system in place, using index cards, so that she can ask her teacher for sensory breaks without drawing attention to herself.  She can eat lunch outside if the cafeteria is too loud.  She brings her lunch so she doesn’t have to wait in line where it’s noisy.

As far as organization goes, one of the 6th grade Special Ed teachers has been heading up the Lily containment effort.  I’ve been keeping her in the loop on any issues Lily tells me about and then she helps Lily on that end.  I let her know that Lily was scared of the power tools in Tech Ed (aka Shop) and that Lily was worried about being able to keep up in typing class.  She reassured Lily about both things.  I told her that Lily had some signed papers in her backpack that I thought might need to be turned in.  She helped Lily take care of that.  It’s been wonderful having that liaison at school.

Now, I know there are going to be ups and downs in all this.  In fact, the downs will probably start as soon as they start really getting to work in the classroom.  When Lily has to begin keeping track of assignments and start on them herself, I’m expecting some challenges.  But that’s where her Behavior Support Plan or BSP comes in.