I'm starting on the appeal to the SENDIST tribunal regarding the LEA's failure to provide a statuatory assessment for my son. Phew, that was a mouthful! In fact that is how I am feeling about this entire thing, its so much paperwork- and energy that I'm convinced it really must be to discourage people from going up against them. If they can wear you out without giving you any help, then so much the better I guess. Mid-September is when we have our meeting the multi-displinary team that have been assessing my son for ASD (an autistic spectrum disorder, possibly Asperger's) and once they make (or not, as the case may be) a diagnosis, that 'evidence' will be presented for the appeal. The fact is though, it could still be up to 6 months before any actual help is forthcoming for him in school, which means he'll be well into year 4. Considering that we are not located in a big metropolitan area, you'd think that they could sort this stuff out a lot quicker. In the meantime, my son has come off the medication. We stopped the Equasym (methalphenidate) as it seemed to be making him worse, high-strung, sleepless, aggressive, no appetite, etc. And it now feels like we have our son back.. he just wasn't himself on that med and it wasn't for him and I feel better about it.
But it doesn't end there, oh no.. my daughter has had a referral to a speech therapist and apparently she is delayed by 6 months. While I am now accepting of this fact, as I was aware that if one sibling has ASD, the other is more likely to as well, I never ever imagined that I'd have two children with some sort of learning/neurological impairment, but then as Joseph Campbell has said, "We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us."
2 comments:
my name is abigail parkinson and my ten year old son has ben diagnosed with adhd and is currently on equasym.he has become hyper sensetive to almost everything,gets uncontrolably violent and doesnt sleep till 2 in the morn hence i am writting this at stupid o'clock in the morn.im am considering taking him off it as the side effects are so servere.
Hi Abbey, many thanks for reading, and sharing. I completely feel for you, and your son and while some people have had success with ritalin-type meds, I just don't agree with the idea of giving young children speed, basically. I thought about taking one of the pills myself, but I didn't want to, and that to me made it clear that I didn't want my son to either. I was willing to give it a try, relying on my son to tell me if it was actually making him feel any better about things, but really, he couldn't express that, and he also was becoming more moody and depressed, not normal at all for an normally happy 8 year old! I'm happy to live with the cantankerous Asperger 8 year old, rather than that!!
Good luck with whatever choice you make.
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