Be A Good Dad

Interesting IEP meeting

beagooddad — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:32:11 +0000

BeAGoodMom already did a write up about our latest IEP meeting.

I only have a couple comments to add.

First, a couple (or maybe even three years) ago, I argued for a bit at the IEP with his teacher. It was a very mild argument but the teacher stated that Pookie is so busy talking all day that he frequently isn’t paying attention. I agreed that the echolalia is a huge distraction and is constant but argued that he was almost always paying attention. Since it was only partially relevant to what was going on, I let it go.

This year at the IEP meeting his teacher brought up the echolalia and how constant it is but made a special point of mentioning how amazing it is that he can be fully engaged in his own echolalia AND paying attention to the teachers at the same time. Then a couple of the other teachers started talking about just that and how no matter what he is saying if they ask general questions to the class, Pookie is frequently the one to answer no matter how little it looks like he is paying attention.

Second, I have been fighting to get Pookie’s IEP to include some scheduled time in a regular classroom. They keep saying he is not ready for it and that his echolalia would be a distraction to the other kids, etc. etc.

We brought it up again this time and they instantly said that they are working on making it a goal of the ILP program in general to get the kids to spend part of their week in the regular classroom with an aid. It will probably start very small. Something like 5-15 minutes at a time maybe 2 or 3 days a week. I gently reminded them how important this issue is to me and they wrote a blurb about it in Pookie’s IEP. So after the first couple of weeks next year, if they haven’t already started to experiment with getting him in a regular class for a few minutes once in a while I will start bugging them about it.

Why is this so important to me?

I love the special ed department from the administrators down to the aides. They do great work with the kids they are responsible for and Pookie definitely needs that kind of attention right now for the bulk of his school day.

However, one of the main goals of special education for most kids with autism is teaching them social skills. Kids in a regular classroom learn a ton just by watching how other kids respond to each other and with their teachers. Pookie has very few good peer models for those types of behaviors. Just like Pookie is not the best model for the kids in his class, they are not the best models for him either. By definition, they aren’t which is why they are in the class they are in.

Pookie is definitely starting to pay attention to kids his age and watch what they are doing and often doesn’t know what to do about it. There was a kid in his swim class last session that kept coming up and trying to talk to him. Pookie tried a little bit but did a horrible job talking to this new kid. He just didn’t have any idea what he was supposed to do. I tried to help but it didn’t work very well. But, during class, the boy frequently would start to splash Pookie trying to get him to play. Pookie almost always would try to splash the kid back while jumping up and down in excitement and making eye contact with the kid and smiling. He needs to be around typically developing kids more often to start seeing how they behave in places like a classroom and to learn how to learn from them.

All in all, one of the better IEP meetings that we have had and yet another one where their plans for next year meshed well with our goals for next year.

Dear School Office People

beagooddad — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:53:11 +0000

Dear School Office People,

If a dad calls in and asks if there have been any known chicken pox cases and you don’t know but will ask the nurse and then ask for the dad’s phone number so you can call him back with the answer, don’t say “Your wife should keep the kid home until that mom can get the kid to see a doctor.” And then after taking that dad’s phone number, don’t end up having the nurse call the kid’s mom’s cell phone instead of the kid’s dad’s cell phone whose number you just wrote down.

Just a friendly reminder that not all sicknesses will be handled by the mom especially when the dad is the one that initiated the phone calls.

Thank you,

A Dad Who Sometimes Uses Sick Days To Take Care Of His Sick Kids

Something I do not recommend

beagooddad — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:46:36 +0000

I decided to double up on classes this spring. I am taking MAT415 (Advanced Calculus) and MAT421 (Statistical Methods).

Here is the description of the statistical methods class:

Introductory course for statistical analysis techniques. Topics may include review of basic statistics, multiple linear regression, analysis of enumerative data, analysis of variance, multiple comparisons, design of experiments, and analysis of covariance. Additional topics may be chosen from principal components, factor analysis, discriminant analysis, and nonparametric tests.

And here is what we are going to do in the advanced calculus class:

Advanced technique in Calculus; including a section on Fourier Series

Functions of several variables

Vector calculus/Analysis

Integral calculus of functions of several variables

Integral Theorems (Green’s Theorem, Stoke’s Theorem, the Divergence Theorem; with proofs)

Gamma functions

Partial differential equations and applications (it time permits)

I’m loving the math!

My company had an "economic adjustment" last month that cause a bunch of our people to start looking for new employment. I was one of the people who made the cut and inherited a really badly managed project. So, I’m working about 50-60 hours a week until I get get it all sorted out.

The projects have me doing a few things that I either haven’t done before or don’t get to do very often. I love when I’m not just pounding out the same kind of work over and over so that’s kind of neat.

I’m also working on 5 work orders for 3 different clients at work. I am a really good singletasker and an absolutely horrible multitasker and frequently forget which client I’m supposed to say I’m working for when I am on the phone. I really need to get better at juggling projects, so this is a good experience, too.

If you are ever in the position to take two fun 400 level math classes while being married and raising 3 kids while working 50-60 hours a week at projects that are both interesting and that give you the chance to improve your multitaksing, I recommend that you not do it. It’s not as fun as it sounds.

Reading books together in the modern family

beagooddad — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 18:15:00 +0000

Geetle and I are reading The Wind in the Willows together. Before bed, I read a few pages to her out of the paperback copy that we have.

I just remembered that I have a copy of it on my iPod Touch and the kids love when we read books on the iPod. I mentioned that we could switch to the eBook version if she wanted.

She was excited but then she came up with an even better idea. I will be reading the book on my iPod and she will be following along in the paperback.

I think.

I just realized that she said that one of us could read the iPod version and the other could read the paperback. I bet I’m supposed to read the paperback and she’s supposed to read the iPod. Hmm. She’s a sneaky one.

Tear Down This Wall

beagooddad — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 17:37:00 +0000

BAGM did a metric ton of spring cleaning yesterday while I did an imperial ton of stats homework and laundry last night. I think I got the better end of that bargain.

During the cleaning, BAGM decided it was time to take one of the sides off of Giggles’ crib to turn it into a day bed with a wall for the headboard, footboard, and one side. So, Giggles would have free access to getting in and out of the bed by herself. If you had ever watched Giggles eat a meal in a chair without being tied or duct taped to said chair, you would know how questionable of a decision this was.

So, we removed the sidewall and made sure we kept track of all the pieces…just in case.

She got home right at bedtime, squealed with glee at the new, more mature bed, climbed up and down about ten times…and went to bed. When BAGM let Teddy out of the room a couple hours later she was still there.

This morning, she got out of bed, got a book from the bookcase and went back to bed to read it.

So far so good. We’ll see how nap goes this afternoon. She’s been getting a little let’s-climb-out-of-this-crib-because-I-don’t-think-I’m-really-tired before naps so it might be interesting.

Nixie The Fascinating Cat

beagooddad — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 16:28:26 +0000

Pookie has officially bonded with Nixie.

The kids spent the night with my parents on Saturday. Before leaving, Pookie walked over to Nixie who was sitting on the stairs. He got his face really close and was petting her. Then he asked if Nixie could sleep at Mamaw’s house. I promised that I would take care of her while he was gone.

They came home on Sunday night right at bedtime. He made sure that we would put Nixie in his bed. A couple cat treats and a closed door is all that is needed to get them off to sleep. She was asleep on his pillow when we opened the door a couple hours later.

This morning he was grinning one of the biggest smiles I’ve seen in a long time as he followed her around the house and asked us to put her on the couch with him. I worked on showing him how to play with the cats using a toy that’s a ball on the end of a string attached to a pole.

She escaped out to the garage for a second while BAGM was getting the kids ready to go to the library and he asked if he could go see Nixie in the garage.

In addition to the general cuteness of how fascinated he is with her and how much he seeks her out during the day, I’m even more shocked at how much he talks about her and asks us to help him do things with her.

We briefly looked into professional therapy/companion dogs about a year or two ago but I think we might have just lucked onto a nice cheap cuddly therapy cat.

The Journal

beagoodmom — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 18:26:11 +0000

Geetle has this journal that is made of full sized unlined sheets of paper all spiral bound together. It’s technically more of an artists drawing pad type of thing.

Recently she has been drawing pictures of anything and everything or writing poems about anything and everything.

She recently wrote a love poem for Rick Stanzi, the quarterback for the Iowa Hawkeyes. Yesterday, she wrote a poem about how much she loves snow and being able to sled which included a picture she drew of herself in a saucer sled sliding down a hill.

She does most of this writing in bed after we tuck her in.

Her penmanship has improved dramatically. The speed that she writes has improved even more surprisingly. Her fear of drawing things that look wrong or spelling things wrong has virtually disappeared.

Her use of rhyme or meter still needs some work. Maybe she’ll be one of those post-modern type of poets. She already has plenty of the angst.

Science FTW

beagooddad — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 00:04:19 +0000

I sometimes explain things like the age of the universe, the speed of light, gravity, and evolution with the kids. The kids play along reasonably well, BAGM barely rolls her eyes, and I get to sound like a nerd even more often than normal.

So, the kids were watching Fetch! With Ruff Ruffman tonight. One of the challenges involved understanding the size of the solar system. During that part, they mention that the sun is actually just another star like the ones we see at night.

Geetle looked over at me and said, “Hey, that’s what you told us that one time.”

“That one time” was a walk that I took with the kids late last fall. It was already pretty dark and we were talking about the moon and sun and solar system and that our sun is a star and that a lot of the stars that we see have planets that orbit around them.

I was proud of myself for working a science lesson into a family walk. I was even prouder that when Ruff Ruffman told her about it a few months later, she remembered that she had heard it from me first.

Fixing the gender gap in pay

beagooddad — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 03:22:28 +0000

I was listening to the State of the Union and Obama is talking about working on fixing the gender gap in salaries in the workplace.

I keep hearing that men make more than women working the same jobs which I don’t have any reason to not believe. There are even mandatory signs on the billboards in the break rooms at work that state it.

But how do we know that this actually exists.

It is fairly close to a fireable offense to talk about how much you make with anybody you work with.

Here’s my easy fix. Make all salaries public knowledge within the company. Make it part of a webpage that HR regularly updates. That gap in pay would close in about 2 seconds.

Crazy Cats

beagooddad — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 16:30:16 +0000

It’s been a rough week here with a ton of overtime and needing to keep up with school and take care of the kids and…enough whining already.

I also had an annoying conversation with a client and a non-fun phone call with my boss about making everything on my work slate the top priority and…stop whining, I said.

And I only slept 4-5 hours last night….

So, the cats have been driving me crazy. They’ve been in freak out mode for the last couple hours running around crashing into everything and then climbing it.

I had to pull Nixie out of the recycle bin a while back which I thought was odd.

A few minutes ago, though she dove right back in, pulled out the little piece of whatever it is they put between the pork chops and the Styrofoam container and proceeded to run away from me with her bloody, meat smelling prize. I finally managed to catch her and toss it (not the cat) in the garbage can with the lid.

It made me laugh and now Teddy is deciding to take a nap on my lap so the day seems to be perking up.