Every now and then

Every now and then, I will pull out old journals from Zach's different teachers, they are our everyday communication books. I have managed to save every one of them as well as every behavior plan, (which is updated every 3-4 months) and every IEP (individual education plan).
I have been tempted many times to throw them away. If you ever saw the size of an IEP, or read a behavior plan, you would know exactly why. The behavioral plans all include the entire history of my pregnancy, demographics, etc etc. Even thought we all know this history does not change, for some reason (beaurocratic red tape perhaps) it is included in EVERY plan. So every three months for the last 14 years I have had to go to a meeting and discuss history and current levels of functioning and progress. Reading these old plans are very interesting sometimes. I just can't believe all of the things that we went through. All of the unexplained behaviors that made absolutely no sense to any of us whatsoever. Behaviors that we thought would never go away or would get worse and worse or more and more and more unusual.

Looking back on them sometimes I can't believe how the hell we managed to get through them. I will give some examples for everyone's amusement. There was the stage where Zach would not walk. He simply would not put both feet on the ground. There was no rhyme or reason for this other than some kind of Obsessive Compulsive need not to place both feet on the ground. This lasted for a few months and he was crawling around when he got home from school, or I was dragging him to get on the bus. He went through this stage while he was getting surgery for dental problems, so there I was dragging him downthelong corridor of the General Hospital, trying to get him to walk. It's actually quite funny now when I picture it, but at the time it was quite a nuisance. The nurses were not having it at all and making him walk. Zach is a stubborn fella when it comes to his OCD so they he'd their work cut out for them. I day he was about 7 years old at the time and it was hysterical to see him crawling around. By this time, I was getting used to his strange stages so although I was put out, I was not really concerned. His teacher on the other hand, who um, now let me find a way to put this so you can understand, HAD NO FRIGGEN CLUE about autism, she was calling me constantly and oh so concerned that he had something neurological going on, well as a matter of fact he did, it was called autism. When I say she was clueless, that is the understatement of the year. I promised I will address those early school issues in a post of it's own because some of the things that happened are just too unbelievable to gloss over. I promise it is coming, and the part of me that needs to forgive and put that all behind me, is emerging, but I need to get it out before I can do that with any degree of success. So anyway once the stage that prevented Zach from putting both feet on the floor was over, ( one day he just woke up and started to walk again) it was quickly replaced by his refusal to walk up or down steps of any kind. Thank the lord he was tiny back then. So he would stand at the top of the steps waiting for someone to carry him down, or make me push and prod him to walk up a flight of steps. Why? I never found out, but I am sure his little brain was telling him not to for some reason or another. Again, one day I woke up and he was downstairs playing in the living room and the problem was solved, only to be replaced by others that were stirring in his brain. This is why it is so neat to read over those old behavior plans, they give me a timeline of events, and to this day,I still don't know how Ron and I got through them. By this time Ron and I were a couple for a few years and he was just starting to get to know Zach's unusual ways. These little phases seem funny but writing them on paper does not do them justice. You can't imagine how many times a child of seven needs to walk or walk up stairs. I just don't know how we managed. This stage was minor compared to stages to come. Reliving them is actually a gift to myself, because I would never believe that I could be so resilient, especially with an uniformed teacher nagging at me constantly, a full time job, a fairly new romantic relationship and a household to run.