General big picture updates
Once again, it’s all a little dispiriting so I haven’t wanted to talk about it, but that’s not really helpful. Also, I’m not really clear on what line of privacy vs openness is best to maintain.
-- In the week before winter break, Daffodil had a placement meeting, and then an IEP meeting. Players at both meetings felt that a residential educational placement would be best for her. DCF and schools both hedged on the cost aspect.
-- 2 school systems (the one where her closing program is located, where she currently attends school, and the one where the DCF office is located) along with various social workers, are still in slow-motion email discussions about placement; sometimes I’m copied on emails and mostly I’m not. Rose and I are still her educational surrogates. We have yet to see an IEP draft. I sent out an email two days ago that we would not sign an IEP that did not stipulate residential placement. It felt like an incompetent arrow sent out into the darkness, because it’s very unclear what the rules are and who is supposed to do what.
-- Daffodil had her neuropsych evaluation this week. I’m fairly sure that she’s been counting on this somehow “proving” that she doesn’t have to go to residential. The preliminary diagnosis is “social communication disorder,” which sounds very vague. I guess it’s often associated with ASD, which the evaluator did not feel she had. It also seems like exactly what you see on childhood development charts as the consequences of low caregiver interaction in the first years of life. She did not make any mental health evaluations, “because of her age,” but seemed to feel that some diagnosis may be made in the coming years. The evaluator recommended a specific residential school.
-- We haven’t actually seen Daffodil since New Year’s Eve, mostly because we were away last weekend.
--Away last weekend = glorious yearly trip with a group of friends to a cabin in a beautiful, snowy place, where we were in not one but two single-car accidents. Only one was in our own car. Have yet to get to a body shop. We were the only people on the trip with children (Clover stayed home with a wonderful babysitter), and that is an interesting dynamic.
-- We got a new cat for Christmas, and she’s fun and funny and patient with Clover’s forced cuddles. She also makes big messes all over the house. We are all in love. Our older cat was too mad at us to speak to us for several days, but she’s come around somewhat. The cats have been chasing each other around in a way that I interpret as fun.
-- Clover is so running at turbo-speed these days-- her teacher asked us to please speak to her about constantly running in the classroom, we’ve made new rules about what furniture is okay for jumping off, and she wants to be told STORIES 100% of the time we have down time. She is so fun and affectionate and wonderful, and quickly forgives all my grouchiness. I feel a mixture of low-grade exhaustion, overwhelming gratitude, guilt and not being a perfect parent for her, and a sort of fear: there is a wholly rational fear of how Clover will feel about us when she develops a more mature view of her removal from her family*, and an irrational, fairy-tale like fear that I have always had for her, that she is is so wonderful that some tragedy will befall her.
* Of course I will not try to keep her from feeling anger and sadness at her removal from her family, and of course I understand that she WILL feel these things, and rightfully so. And I do not expect to escape that anger. But I still, emotionally, fear it.
