Update: 15 years old and still with autism

How long has it been when he was diagnosed? It seems like it is forever. The battle with the school system is also forever. I do not think we will let him stay beyond 18 years of age. He will graduate by age 17. It might be better that way.

He goes to a regular high school. He is in autism classroom for Language Arts and the rest with regular education kids who are low functioning for Social Studies, Math and Science. He goes with regular education students for encore subjects. He still has behavior issues cracking up his system in different times of the day. In fact, the case manager wanted him to see a psychiatrist. At first, the case manager told us over the phone that it would be good for Ax to to be seen by a neuro-psychologist. We talked to her face-to-face and she now claims the person to see Ax is a neuro-psychiatrist. Upon seeing the name of the person on paper, it states: Names of Person, Psychiatrist. It is hard if parents are not too aware of what the special education is doing to your child in order to augment their tasks. Still, they want us to sign for them to get the federal special education dollars for him. It is really so ironic. The school gets a big amount of money compared to regular education students but they would not spend much time, effort and patience to help the students with disabilities.

I do not like to plan anymore. It is too much frustration when things go south while your hands are tied up. I am taking things step by step and it is better that way. Less frustrations, as they say.

He still goes to private speech therapy 3x per week paid for by the school district. We asked for that specifically. We are now asking for a behaviorist but so far the school is giving us a run-around. I really do not know if this speech therapy helps but it keeps us busy going to another town 30 minutes away from our place so he can be seen by speech therapists. He is still unable to communicate spontaneously but he has so much knowledge inside his head that he is not using his words to communicate as normal kids of his age.

FBA was initiated by the school this January 2017 and up until this minute, nothing has resulted in the "study".IEP has not been updated even though we have sent changes in March 2017. Anyway, we requested for a change of case manager. This has to be granted because we need someone who is not an subtle attacker.

plucking eyebrows and eyelashes, licking, games, minecraft and autism

Since we arrived in the state with 4 seasons (hahaha), Ax has been putting out his tongue all over his mouth during the cold days. Also, he started plucking his eyebrows and eyelashes for being excited not due to stress. There were weeks that he almost removed his eyebrows and also months that his eyelashes are hardly visible. Of late, like 9 months now, he has been displaying a normal behavior - no plucking his eyebrows and eyelashes and no licking all over his mouth. At the moment it is so cold and he has been on his best behavior. He also began venturing to playing games again but many times did not like it and just left the console everywhere. He does not like the idea of losing in a game and that drove him to just leave playing games all together and just browse the internet. Minecraft was born and he first sat beside his father and watched the game intensely. He only became interested when his 2 siblings began playing and becoming so interested. Still, there are times that he skipped playing and just went to youtube.com. Toward the 4th quarter of 2014, he had been playing again just like when he was 2 or 3 years of age. There were also times and even until now that he could not accept getting killed in Minecraft. He would wail and be angry at the same time. He is asked sternly to go to bed because we might lose another laptop or computer this time around. He is not playing normally in Minecraft like his siblings. He just wants to kill the zombies, spiders or whatever enemies that come along his way. Sometimes, he also kills the Minecraft pets of his sister. Then, his sister cried and kept telling him not to kill her Minecraft pets. This time around, I think, he understood.