How to get a 6th grader to orientation day

Well, it’s been kind of a frustrating morning around here. I’ve spent the last few hours fixing a couple of errors on my hosting account that caused this blog and a few of my other sites to disappear. I think it’s all fixed for now, at least here. One of the other sites is still down but I’m not going to worry about it at the moment. It’s a pretty low traffic site anyway and I do have a backup of all the data so when I have time in the next few days, I’ll it get sorted out.

So, if you came here sometime between about 8pm (pacific time) last night and 10 this morning, you might have seen a blank hosting access page or gotten nothing. I apologize. I am trying to change my primary domain to another account and things got kinda wonky. No worries, though – everything on AA|Blog is back to normal! (Though, if you do find anything out of sorts, please let me know.)

We’re spending the next few days getting last minute stuff finished for school, which starts next Tuesday in our neck of the woods. I think the kids are kinda excited about a new school year but wishing summer wasn’t quite over yet. I know how they feel!

Yesterday was my 12 year old son’s orientation for 6th grade. Well, the actual orientation was Wednesday but as is typical of autistic kids, he doesn’t do crowds very well, mostly due to the noise level and stuff, so the counselor made special arrangements for him to visit the school yesterday when everything would be quiet.

Now, I’ll admit – I had to bribe him to get him to go but I’m happy to report – it went very well! I am so glad for that. He is not a very verbally communicative person – he mostly “talks” through body language – and I was worried that the teachers wouldn’t “get” him. We’ve had serious issues all through elementary school with teachers not understanding his needs and disciplining him for “not listening or answering” when the REAL problem was that the teacher didn’t pay attention to his non-verbal queues.

The cool thing is, by the end of the tour, he was actually talking – in words – to the counselor! That was exciting. All of his classes are in the same corridor so he won’t have to travel too far between classes and even though he’ll have 6 classes plus a special advisory period with the counselor, he will actually only have 3 teachers (plus the counselor). They start the day off with the advisory period which is 20 minutes long and then he’ll have 1st and 2nd with the one teacher, 3rd period with one teacher, lunch and then 4th, 5th and 6th periods with one teacher.

Even he is getting excited about the new school year. After we left the school, he told me he thinks it’s a good school and he thinks he will like it a lot. He’s never said that before. In fact, for the last 2 years, I’ve practically (and sometimes literally) had to drag him out of bed, to the car, out of the car at school and to his classroom to get him there. It’s been very stressful for both of us. So far, it seems like perhaps this year will be a lot less stressful! (Finally) Yay!

The end result is that bribing a 6th grader with a cheeseburger from Burger King is how you get him to orientation day. That, and taking him to pick out a new lego set. But that was a surprise he got for doing so well and an incentive to get him to go on the first day. Especially after the counselor mentioned to him that they’re starting a new Lego club at school this year. I think he’s excited about that too.

Anyway, enough rambling for today. I’ll be back soon with more interesting posts. I hope those of you in the US have a happy and safe Labor Day weekend!

Until next time . . . keep blazin’!