One of the main reasons I have not written much in the past few weeks is that things with Avi have been getting worse. mkm has an almost impossible task when she tries to get him to school in the am. And when he gets to school he is not really doing anything. His Hebrew teacher has basically given up and just lets him color in class. While he does ok in english, he refuses to do any of his homework and when asked about it he goes into one of his fits.
In the past week Avi has also gotten violent a few times, and he also has moments where he cries to me saying that he does not want to live with us, he just wants to be alone, he wishes he was never born, etc. Just writing that past sentence was so hard, so you can imagine why I have not written much. Avi’s therapist suggested that we go back to the neurologist who has been prescribing his meds. She strongly suggests that we seek psychiatric help for Avi. She has also taken him off all meds as there is a chance that his current behavior is due to the meds. We are now in the process of finding a good psychiatrist and we are hopeful that we are now walking down the right path for Avi in terms of medical help.
We had basically decided a few weeks back that we were not going to send him to the Jewish day school next year as the public school will be able to offer him and us services that the private school just cannot afford. On Monday is was so difficult to get him going in the morning that we have decided that we are taking Avi out of Schechter now, and start him in Public School. We have a very good school system in Highland Park. Many people connected to Rutgers live in Highland Park and as such demand a high level from the public school, and the schools deliver. So we know that Avi will be able to get the help that he needs there.
mkm took him to the public school to enroll him. He had a episode there and luckily (we believe) the principal of the school witnessed it all. She called the social worker to come over (who we dealt with when Avi was in preschool a few years ago). They decided that before Avi comes to the school we should have a meeting with the child study team to determine the best way to go when Avi starts. We hope to have him starting there on Monday. Even though there are only 6 weeks left of school this year, we feel that this will give the school time to evaluate Avi so that next year we may have a good IEP in place for when he starts 2nd grade.
That is where we are with Avi currently. He is getting this week off from school as we work this all out. God willing we are on the right road even though we know it is a very long one.