All of us are wearing fruity whirl necklaces from Jia.
We had a lovely, relaxing day in the big city. Lunch at my favorite place, visit to Chinatown, afternoon walk with Mom, cousin Debbie and friend Leslie on the breakwater, a bit of shopping and then dinner at a family favorite Chinese place. Jia gobbled up dinner, announced she was tired and was asleep on my lap in seconds. We moved her to the floor and she was quite happy there.
Fei's autism team has been trying for months now to use a therapy plan we weren't very happy about. Seemed cruel to us, using a motivator (monitor on her waist that vibrates) to alert her every 15mins to go fill out her binder with any incident reports that occured during the interval, then do a flow chart showing what happened and then how it should have happened after discussing the incident with who ever it was. She's 10. Good lord, what child would ever actually do this. We thought Fei would be more likely to simply sit and not move so that she would only ever have to mark a check under 'proper behaviour'. Anyways, after months of back and forth, and meetings upon meetings to discuss it. I got more agreessive in our NO and wrote to them that after discussing it with a list of people we were not even considering the recommended therapy. The two child phycologists who are on her team have been taking it very personally and have really been pushing for us to use the method stating that she is a pre-teen and should be able to regulate the behaviours and this was how they wanted her to learn to self regulate. The behaviours mainly being that she antagonizes her sisters relentlessly at home. Yes, normal behaviour for siblings, but she is excessive and Lili and Jia are getting picked on by her at home. So, Saturday I got a long e-mail from the team leader letting us know that they are quitting us. I really feel these people should have been able to hear Eric and I clearly telling them all along that it's cruel what they were asking her to do. I'm ticked that we've had to fight them for months with the outcome being that they dropped us! It's a lot of work to set up a team. We did get a new assessment out of it but realistically it says the exact same thing the assessments said at age 3 and age 7. We've had our interventionist for two and a half years and we really like her but she is under an umbrella now so we lost her too. We're currently without a plan of any sort. Feels odd. I'm inclined to do nothing until after Fei is settled into school next year. We prefer a clear slate for summer and she only has a few weeks of school left. Any interventionists around looking for new clients?
We hear about the school decision tomorrow or Thursday. Will be nice to know where the kids will be going to school for next year.
I joined a site called Rainbowkids, they aren't an agency, just advocating for special needs kids. I put in our specifics and they sent me three files of little boys in China this weekend. We did inquire after one of them, he turns three this June and his file is with a specific agency in the States. They have his file for three months and if they can't match him, his file will go back on the shared list (available to all agencies). So, unfortunately they just got his file. I can check back for his status in a couple months. Seems like another long shot. I keep trying to micro manage who our son will be.
The much more exciting news is that we got an e-mail this morning letting us know that our application for Citizenship and Immigration was approved and our file is in Beijing! Yay. One more step done. Now, back to waiting for a match.
