We visited his PPCD classroom yesterday, which left me with mixed feelings. It was encouraging to see how well everything was run, and the total of three adults had what seemed to me to be a large number of kids completely under control. I was left feeling confident about putting him in their class next August. At the same time, it was awkward for me to see his classmates--mostly the discomfort of having to mentally group him in with kids who were obviously worse-off than he is, even though most of them clearly had other disabilities besides autism. But of the kids that I was guessing were autistic, some of them were more proficient at certain things than he is, so I can't claim he doesn't need to be there. (And yet, I still feel the need to remind myself that it's not a fair comparison because they are all older than he is, some by a full year or more, and they are all accustomed to the classroom routine already. It's hard to stop that "precious snowflake" mentality even in the face of direct evidence to the contrary... like my kid is
totally going to be the best student in his remedial class, you know?
)
The other good news is there are 3 or 4 other kids in the class who are all on the GFCF diet, so I don't need to worry about explaining how to do it or why it's important for him; they know all about it. And here's another stupid little thing that made me happy: it was plain that 100% of these kids have issues getting their hair cut just like Minifob does. Every single one of them had either a "Hair By Mommy" cut, or the "Just Pin Him Down and Buzzcut It Every Ten Weeks" style. In all objectivity, Minifob had the best-looking hair of any kid in the class, hands-down. I've developed quite a talent, if I do say so myself.
I have to constantly remind myself to take the stress items in chronological order: 1.) getting the stepkids set up for summer vacation, 2.) Minifob's birthday, 3.) Family reunion wherein I am expected to host and plan most activities/food and at least two relatives will be staying at my house, 4.) actual occurrence of summer vacation with the stepkids, and only
then 5.) Minifob's first day of (screaming at his abandonment in) school. Oh, and somewhere between steps 2 and 5 there will be a formal evaluation of Minifobette, and I will probably not be thrilled with the results.
