Meltdown at “Meet the Teacher” night! – welcoming a child with ASD / SPD / Autism / Aspergers

So, so that is Mikey. Every single time we go to Rudy's right. And we've got a video up on our Instagram feed. If you're on Instagram to take a look at search for finding Mikey podcast, it's there. Every single time we go there. And it's because there are Spanish speaking workers back behind the counter.

And he knows a song that's Spanish and English as well. Oh, Lacoma sauce. So it's spread like a a little virus to to join now, too. So she sees it all the time and then Mikey sings it too. And then grace will chime in on like, oh my God, we need a metal version of it just to mix things up. So anyway, just a little glimpse, like literally every time we go.

So a little bit of echolalia, a little or echolalia , echolalic echolalia a little bit of that. Definitely. You know, a pattern and a you know, kind of a schedule that Mikey has, Hey, I'm at Rudy's. I got to sing Allah, the Ola song to the people that work right. And elicit acute response. So just some little peak into our life with our little ASPE or Mikey.

So anyway, we wanted to take, this is kind of part two to the first. Where are we with Mikey with Heather and I'm joining. Well by Heather. Hello. So we're going to catch up a little bit from where we work. Cause I think where we left last was Mikey was just diagnosed and then you take him to meet the teacher night and.

That didn't go well at all. No, it didn't go ahead and talk about what happened at that night. Well, I walked him into the kindergarten room and the teacher was talking with other kids and other moms and stuff. And so I took them around the room showed them the classroom and then showed him his desk.

I had him find his desk because I wanted him to look for his name. We call him Mikey. Bye Mikey at preschool, but on his kindergarten information, they had re written Michael. And so I helped them out just a little bit. And he found it, he found all of his his desk and all that kind of stuff.

And I was walking him around. I can see him starting to get upset and I was like, what's wrong, Mikey? And he said, mom, I don't see any toys. And I was like, okay, that's his kindergarten buddy? Little bit different. Yeah. So, when it was my turn to talk to the teacher, I started introducing Mikey and then we we were trying to have a conversation, but it was hard too because Mikey was You know, like running around the room, trying to take it all in.

It was like a dog in a new house or a new environment just sniffing and peeing everywhere. I mean, he didn't care everywhere, but you know what I mean? The dogs just running frantic through the room, trying to sorta, Hey, what's this what's that? What's this what's that. So, yeah, I think that's, I wasn't there, but I think that's a good way to just.

Right, right. So, yeah, he was overseeing the classroom because it wasn't stimulating enough for him. So he was attempting to leave the classroom while I was in the middle of conversation with the teacher. And then I had to excuse myself and bring him back into the classroom. And then he started getting tense with me because, you know, he felt like he was into.

So I was having another conversation with the teacher about the placement of our epi pen. And he went over to another child's desk and grabbed their Elmer's glue bottle and squeezed it really hard. And it started exploding all over his hands. And I was just like, oh my gosh, like, this is not the way. You know, meet the teacher night was supposed to go.

And so I, you know, I excused myself from my conversation with her and I walked over to him and I was like, Mike, you can't do that. And then instantly he was like, oh, I must be in trouble. You know, I just exploded this glue. So I'm just going to run away again. He ran out of the classroom again. And so I excused myself from the teacher and I went and, you know, like, you know, got back control of Mikey.

So, so anyway, we went over to the nurse's office because I needed to talk to the nurse about where we were going to place Mikey's EpiPen, maybe already left the room anyway. And he had already left the room anyway. So I'm like, wow, we'll just head to the nurse's office. So we were at the nurse's office for no more than five seconds and he goes, and he turns on the water faucet in the nurse's office.

And he put his hand up to the spout where the water comes out. And when he pressed his hand up there, water just sprayed all over the nurse's office, all over the counter. So now there was no more discussion with the nurse. It was like, okay, grab a bunch of paper towels and clean it up. So of course, I'm trying to look like the mom that makes her kid do clean up the mess that you made and having Mikey clean it up on his own because he had made the mess, but the mess was so big that.

I was looking around for a mop and I knew it was just way too much to expect Mikey, the clean it up on his own. So I started grabbing paper towels and helping him. And after that, I went back to the teacher's room to, you know, let her know what we had decided with the nurse about the EpiPen. And at that point I kind of got a little emotional with the teachers.

And I told her, I'm like, you know what I'm like, my son was, we just got back from a doctor's office where, you know he was diagnosed with with a high functioning autism. And we're, it's going to be a couple of days to process this, you know? So I'm sorry. He, you know, he's having some behavior problems right now and she was so compassionate.

She was like, Just let me know, you know, like keep me posted. I'm here to help you with whatever you guys need. And it was just really nice. And so I just, I told her I would put together an email for her that would just let her know about Mikey and how he was. Able to be successful in preschool so that hopefully some of those things could be used in his kindergarten classroom to help him be successful in kindergarten.

And so she was like, yeah, that's great. You know, send me the email. And I wrote it up and it was like two pages long. Yeah. It was like two pages long. And it covered all different areas from discipline to safety, to, you know, his sensory sensitivities and. And then the funny stuff that he does, the cute stuff that he does too.

You had a good long section there too on like, okay. So I've highlighted all the things that could be an issue, but here's some things that, where Mikey really shines too. Right. You know, he loves to, you know, help with the routine. He likes to do this things. He likes to do that thing. He's a very big helper, like all those other bits.

So I think you gave a really good well-rounded. You know, kind of preview of Mikey. Yeah. Yeah, I did. And she responded to the email and said, you know, thank you for taking the time to, you know, give us all this good information. So that's how make the teacher night went. Was it was pretty rough. Yeah, it was pretty rough.

I mean, granted too. I mean, it was 7:00 PM. No, it was 5 30, 30 or six. So really Mikey has bio rhythm is one where it's like about four 30. I'd say six, he's a nut job. Yeah. He's pretty tired. He was pretty tired at that point. Cause he's an early riser. He's up between five 30 and six 15 in the morning.

And he doesn't take naps. No. He's never taken a nap since he was able to climb out of his crib at 18 months old. He won't let me slip him any DayQuil or NyQuil, Robitussin, sleeping pills, nothing. We've yeah, we have, we've had a hard time keeping him well, he hasn't had. Maybe ever, or like 18 months, two years, maybe unless we took them for a nap drive.

And that ended around three and a half drives. Didn't work anymore around three. Yeah. So, so that was a me to teach her night. You know, so I think we got through that. It was pretty emotional for you, which made it pretty emotional for me here as well. And I thought, all right, well, that's isolated.

It was end of the day. It was kind of tough. We'll see how Sue goes. And you know, I remember walking in with him to kind of go into school and he's immediately greeted by, you know, it seemed like everybody, right. Four or five. Teachers are like, Hey Mikey, what's going on? And I was just sort of amazed that they all knew of Mikey already.

And I thought, well, all right. It's probably because, you know, grace has gone to school here already. That kind of a thing. Well, it wasn't really like the case. It seemed that there were, you know, the first week or two of school, that there are extra teachers that are around before they get assigned to I don't know, assist in specific areas and some of them being children with special needs as well.

So Mikey got a good bit of I wouldn't say one-on-one attention, but he did get a lot of extra attention from other other teachers or too. So, as first week was exciting for us and that, Hey cool. He's in kindergarten and we're excited about that. And I'm not going to say like all of a sudden, but it wasn't very short after him starting school that we started getting some bad, well, negative news, right?

I mean, was it first day or day two or, I mean, what let's talk about, let's talk about, I mean, maybe we can condense it because I don't have the full timeline, but like, Maybe it wasn't the first day, maybe it was the second day, but it was like the first thing we kind of got on like, okay. How to get had a day with my he, and here's what happened?

You want to talk about like, kind of that first little? Yeah, I'm sure that the the kindergarten teacher knew that we were anxious and bringing him to school and everything because of everything we were going. And so the first day she sent me an email and just said, Hey, just want to let you know that Mike has settled in and he's doing great and gave me like a thumbs up email.

And I was like, oh my gosh, thank you so much for that. I really needed it. And the second day, instead of getting an email, I got a phone call. And I had this, you know, this unidentified call, you know, coming up in my phone and I was driving. So I pulled over and it was her, she was calling me on her conference hour to let me know that the newness had already worn off on day two.

And basically, you know, he was just being overstimulated in the classroom anytime, you know, like he was. He was eloping bolting running away wherever you want to call it. From the classroom, from PE, from music, anywhere that he felt overstimulated or not interested in what was going on, he would just run out.

And at this time, you know, we didn't know why that I'm not even the teachers could tell us why. And so, that was a big concern. I mean, it's very unsafe for him to just take off like that. And then he was also being non-compliant when it came time to do table work and also needing a lot of redirection.

Right. Which is typical. I mean, he does need a fair amount of redirection anyhow, but yeah. And in school there. Yeah, it was a ton of redirection, even with a second helper, right. There was a ton of redirection and, you know, walking down the halls or waiting to go to library or anything like this, I mean, just break out of line and go off and do this.

I think all told in the couple of weeks that we had him there, he, I think he made a break toward like, he started to break away and run. Okay. Near the entrance exit twice. Right. So, I mean, he could have literally like gotten out of school and, you know, Mike, he hasn't run away like this. He hasn't bolted.

I don't know since he was like three or four, maybe. I mean, we kind of nip that in the bud when we lived around the corner, but he has done it before. And the only thing I kept thinking of and bringing up was. He isn't given, like we're not trans, he's not transitioning well to the next thing, the expectations aren't being set and you know, how do we do that night?

We can't just drop him off at school and say, okay, listen, the law of the land is listen to your teacher. Right? Although week two, we did sort of focus and say, all right, here's what we're focusing on today is like, don't run away. Don't run out of class. Don't right. And we kind of had him thinking about that.

And that was his measure of success for the day. Each day that second week. So, but it started getting started getting difficult because, you know, we were asking for IEP and we started getting that process started, you know, we had very long, you know, meeting with I don't know the official title of the person because there's so many acronyms out there, but, you know, we had a representative from the school that was there to help us with the IEP process.

And we sat down with her and. Got that whole ball rolling. You know, meanwhile Mikey's behavior wasn't improving and, you know, he was being transported from time to time into kind of a chill out spot. A quiet down room was sort of a sensory, you know, room, which You know, when we first heard that, we're like, okay, we understand.

And the second time we're like, all right, what is this a little bit more about it? And then kind of the third time we're like, all right, we're not really sure we're cool with this. You know, how do we, how to, you know, so we had a few conversations with the principal and, you know, I just want to state this.

Th there was never a point at which we felt unsupported. You know, we have a, we had a great school here, have a great school here. You know, I trust them completely with the safety and, you know, the interest of our children's learning and happiness the whole time. But, you know, we were just dealing with a serious challenge.

And to compound it, you know, we were looking at 90 days or so before the IEP would be done for 60 days, it feels like forever to me. No, I mean, it definitely feels like forever. When you know, when you have a child that starts kindergarten and they're not doing well as a parent, it's tough. Because you want your kids to be successful in kindergarten, they're in a new environment.

And when you're getting a behavior report home every day, that's letting you know. How your child's doing on these three different things that they're grading them on. And for Mikey, they picked three goals for him. One was the redirection. The other one was the respecting of personal space of peers and adults.

And the third one was the the running away of from different, you know, rooms that he would be in. And so, every day, you know, there was a lot of room for improvement. And as parent, when you're getting those every day, three weeks can feel like three months. Yeah. And so when we were getting the IEP process started, Mike and I were also looking into you know, how to help kids that are on the autism spectrum and what do we need to do as parents?

What kind of help do these kids need? And we started learning about what ABA therapy was. And so I started contacting places in the area that had to do with ABA therapy to say, okay, well, our child's in school all day long. When are they supposed to get ABA therapy? And they were like, oh, okay, well, we can do like two or three hours after school.

And you know what, when I pick up my son from school and even like when my daughter grace went to kindergarten and I would pick her up from school, there's not much left of them. You know, they need to decompress. They need to play outside, you know, So, you know, send them to two or three hours of ABA therapy.

You know, after he's been in kindergarten for seven hours a day. And when I started learning about all the benefits that kids can get from ABA therapy you know, I started really, you know, talking to Mike and talking to therapists about, well, you know, what if he got this kind of therapy in the morning, Oh, if he got that kind of therapy in the morning, then, you know, we could work with him on self-regulation skills.

We could work with them on his social skills. We could work with him on, you know, non-compliance and you know how to get over that. And you know, Just help him be a better citizen in the classroom, you know, going forward, like in future. But I think it was pretty evident. Well, I think it was pretty evident that we wanted ABA therapy.

Right. It was just a matter of like, how do we fit it into the schedule, right. And just he's burnt out an afternoon. So meltdowns are probably going to happen and it's going to be a little bit tougher for him, but we also saw. You know the importance of kindergarten, right. You know? Sure. He's going to, he's going to be able to develop some more things that he needs later in life, you know, like actual skills, like, you know, fine motor skills and interpersonal skills, fine motor skills and interpersonal skills and you know, things that he's just going to learn in a community.

But we also, I think we're just, I think looking at it, we were just like, all right, why don't we do this in the morning somehow? You know, how can we do the second? We do ABA therapy in the morning and then kindergarten in the afternoon. And we started looking, we started noticing that there were schools in our, and.

School district that actually do integrated, they call it integrated learning, I guess, integrated classes where, you know, a part of the day is in sort of an ABA type of a setting. So we started exploring that too. And that became a bit of a, I mean, we couldn't just flip a switch and go, now that was the thing.

And that's where we kind of quickly got to that point. You know, just because we were like, at least I was saying. You know, maybe this just isn't the right environment, you know, and it's not that these people are bad by no means are they bad. These, you know, the public school system isn't at all.

And I just kept equating it to maybe they're just not equipped the way an ABA therapist would be to handle things the same way. Right. I get it. They've got 20 kids that they need to corral and keep moving in one direction. And, you know, having someone who's dysregulated could really. Throw things out of whack, especially if it's constant, not just like once a day or twice a day, but like once every 15 minutes or 10 minutes kind of a thing, it could be very hard and distracting.

So I was looking for, I was looking for a quick fix, honestly, and you know, so I think that's where, you know, our next step was all right. Well, we're trying to find ABA therapy for them. We're looking at schools where we can take him during the day and. We haven't approached this, but what, what is homeschooling.

Right. And we click quickly came to the, alright, this is the way to be the best advocate for our child. We're going to homeschool. And while we get him into ABA therapy and homeschool, and while he's in ABA therapy with the ultimate goal of having him jump back in and first grade worst case second grade, but you know, you were telling me early on, and even today, you know, that there are a lot of studies that show that the earlier the intervention for therapy.

The better the results are. And I mean, I could see it. I would have hated to see us flash forward another year of just struggling through kindergarten. And then what could that have done to Mikey's like self-esteem and personality and, you know, being brought to a cool-down room or being, you know, having conversations regularly with us about his behavior.

I mean, I know how that would affect them. I saw how having those conversations with Jordan affected Jordan. It closes them off after a certain amount of time and it's like, he can do no good. He feels worthless. He feels like, you know, people don't like him, he could start getting bullied, he could start lashing out physically.

And those are things we just want it to not happen at all. So, you know, fortunately we were, you know, I don't know if it's like this everywhere, but it seems like once the world, you know, like the. I don't know the community around autism and parents with autistic children. Once we were diagnosed and even a little bit before it's like this community is way bigger than I ever thought it was.

I know. I feel like every time I take the kids on a play date, I meet a parent that has a kid that's on the spectrum. I don't know. I mean, it's probably because you know, like I'm talking about Mikey and just, you know, saying little things here and there. And then they open up to me and I'm like, oh my goodness.

You know, from anywhere from speech delays to eat eating problems, to, you know, kids that got a high fever. And then all of a sudden, you know, they get diagnosed with autism. I mean, I just hear stories like all the time. Like I feel like every time I have a play date with someone, I meet someone in the group that has a child that's on the spectrum somehow.

So that's true. It's just really interesting. So with that being said, There, I wouldn't say there are an abundance, but it's like we didn't have to drive a hundred miles to find a place to go, try to take Mikey for ABA therapy. Yeah. I think it was an absolute blessing when we started, you know, Googling, you know, ABA therapy centers.

And one of the couple of the centers that came up that were in our city. Actually yeah, in our city, like even have to, you know, you know, go on the freeway to get to this school. We're not in a major metropolitan area. We're not in LA. And you know, I mean, I would be shocked if you couldn't find, you know, five or, you know, 5, 10, 15 within LA kind of a thing.

Right. But it's like, I expected it to be a little bit harder to be like, well, maybe there's some stuff down in Houston or maybe there's something up in Dallas, but no, boom, just like to really close by within like 10 minutes. Right. Right. Which it, which is awesome. I mean, you know how it is driving cars to school in the morning, I've got three kids.

I'm going to be driving them to three different schools. And so now it's like when I go to do the drop off and the pickup, if you know, everyone's schools are, you know, 10 minutes away that really cuts down on the time that everyone's in the car and. What I have driven him to a school that was a half an hour away.

Yes, I would have, but it was just nice that I didn't have to make that decision. Right. So, I think what I'm hoping is that no matter where you're listening to this is that you can find the resources in your own backyard. You know that, I mean, autism affects so many. It's affected, you know, a lot of adults as well that the resources are out there.

And it's, I think once you start getting, you know, once you become a part of this community that you start peeling back the layers and realizing that there's a huge support group, like who knew that just by having play dates with other families whose children are autistic, like, I mean, that's a huge, like emotional and mental, you know, uplift for you.

I know. And for me too, to just see, it's like, oh, wow, Mike, he's, you know, he's not the odd. He's not an oddball. He hasn't changed. He's just ping Mikey. And some of this is age appropriate and some of it is due to, you know, autism and Asperger's, but you know, to put them in a group of people that are like him, it's just, it's it makes me feel happy because we're not alone, you know, and he's not alone.

Ultimately he's not alone. And you know, these kids, we've seen some of these kids improve and we're seeing Mikey improve as well. So. Yeah it's been pretty cool. So do you want to talk a little bit about, you know, the place where we've gotten them? Into right now we're dating. We're actually.

Oh gosh. Yeah, he just today's day two of the school that we have them in. And their goal the first week is to build a rapport with him, get to know him, show him what the, all the, you know, incentives he has. Fund that he has there at the school. So that way, when they start making demands of him if he's non-compliant or if he's having, you know, tantrums, you know, they have positive reinforcers that they can remind of remind them of, you know, like when you do this, then you get to play with the train drags.

Or when you do this, then you get to go in that special room and go on about his house, you know? Yeah, that sounds housed at the school a little bit jealous. We'll talk about that, but yeah. It helps them build a relationship with him and get him positive experiences about going to the school. And so, you know, definitely yesterday when we dropped him off, he was like, can you guys please leave?

And we were like, oh, that's such a good sign. He said twice, but yeah. And then when we picked him up yesterday, it was it was hard to get them to leave because he kept. To show us all the stuff he had done that day. And it was, you know, taking them quite a while don't, you know, unplug. So that's another good sign.

He was very excited and his siblings were there. So he was able to show his siblings what he had done at school. Right. Well, and what's neat about it too, is that there's just seeing the people that he's working with and assigned to You know, treat him with a firm response when necessary, but also, you know, allow him to, you know, be a certain way.

Like for example, he started to kind of melt down and he was getting upset because we were trying to leave and you know, so he's starting to whine cry, whine, cry, whatever you want to call it. And I'm his therapist. She's like, okay, Mikey what's going on. Use your words. And he like, immediately was like, well, I'm frustrated because I don't want to go.

And I want to show these things and I want to build more on the train. And then, you know, she'll reason with him a little bit more. And then if he's, you know, like starting to walk his way out the door, she's following them there because she knows that he's going to turn around and sure enough, he turns around to try to go back in and she's there to block him and firmly just say, no, Mikey are, you know, we're moving out.

We're heading out right now. To just kind of take that to compare and contrast and not in a bad way, but just to be honest about it, public school systems, don't have the time to take that extra few. Per interaction, you know, I mean, it's extra overhead, you know, I kinda, I kind of get it right there.

They're able to have a different pace, you know, where he's receiving this therapy here as well. It's not that he's on a strict schedule. Like, okay, we go to art now and then we go to lunch and then we go to this and we go to that. Right. It's not on a particular time schedule. I'll be at lunches scheduled.

There's just a little bit more sort of, I don't know, floaty time and there's time to help. Him work out the conflict and, you know, come up with his own reasons for, you know, doing the thing that he's supposed to do next. I guess. I dunno if I'm putting the right words around it, but it was really, it's really kind of neat to see a train.

You know, it's like a horse whisper, right. You know, you've got this crazy horse. You're trying to put a saddle on. I don't know if you've ever seen the movie or not, but anyway, there's a dude out there who is a horse whisperer who had just has this uncanny ability to relate with horses. And some of them are, you know, maybe they were abused or whatever but point is they actually, these horses actually have psychological problems and he'll slowly work his way into the corral with them.

And within a short amount of time, he's got a compliant, calm. Docile horse that is just connected with him. And it's a lot like that with these people that Mikey whispers, I swear they are, you know, they're definitely fun. And they just, they have a way to, it's not magic. They're using the same words that we use or just putting them in a different order.

You know, they're just like, Mikey, this is actually how we're doing it. And this is what we're doing. And I mean, It's just, it's really cool. Like I said, it's kind of a neat thing to see when someone, you know, just sort of gets it and can get on their level and your child responds to it. And they as just awesome.

That's all I got to say. Right. Right. And I can't wait to get some of the parent training that they offer. That's going to be awesome. And we're going to be able to be trained by the some of the ABA therapists that work with Mikey, so that. It's we'll be able to get that kind of benefit and how we can learn to, you know, to talk to him and correct him and guide him and things like that.

So that, right. Right. Well, we're fortunate enough, you know, the company that I worked for has, you know, a very good insurance plan which is really good. So, we're able to leverage that thankfully. And but like you, I'm excited, the parent training. You know, they can do some ABA therapy here at home too, which would be very interesting to see, you know, it's like, Hey, here's a day in the life of, you know, of us afterschool.

And you know, the backyard is what it is and the, in the house is what it is. And here he is with his friends on the street and his brother and his sister, and, you know, it would be good to. Heather and I kind of level set on what's what should be expected behavior. And, you know, maybe I'm being too much of a tyrant when it comes to like schedule or, you know, the amount of leash I give him, you know, maybe I should, he has six after all.

I mean, it's not too much to expect him to be able to, you know, independently ride his bicycle, you know, six houses down to hang out with his buddy or eight to eight houses down the other way. Right. 'cause Mikey is Mikey. You know, I think that there needs to be a little bit more of a offense sometimes, but, you know, I'm open to learning how to deal with that.

And I'm open to, you know, seeing how we can be the best, you know, communication. Ah, what am I trying to say? The best parents, as far as communicating with Mike? I mean, that's the biggest thing. It's just communicating with them, you know? So I'm excited for this. So it's been kind of cool. He didn't hug me today.

When I dropped him off at school, he did not hug me at all. He just was, he was marching on in with his therapist and I hadn't down the hallway, walking with her, by the way, not running ahead of her own thing, but I'm walking with her and they said, well, what about that? And he kind of looked back and sort of stutter, stepped a little and he goes, bye daddy.

I mean, he looked like he was thinking about coming back and hugging me, but he's like, ah, I got this gravity of other stuff pulling away from you. So it was really cool. That's good. Cause he was starting to get negative at school. So about going into school and you know, the night before about going back to the elementary school and things like that and just.

Tuck him in at night and say some positive things and talk about school. And he says like, no, mom, I just don't want to go. And yeah, that was, you know, that was hard. I mean, it's hard for even, you know, with grace sometimes, but with Mikey, it was hard in a different way because I didn't really understand.

Why his behaviors were what they were. And so it's hard, you know, for me to say, Hey, just behave or don't run out of the classroom. Like I have no idea how much of that you can control. So it was just kind of hard. Yeah. There was tough. Like we would drop him off. You know, we go through the drop-off line and sorry, every time I say drop-off, I think about finding an email.

So we take them to the drop-off and you know, when grace has a hard time going to school, she'll still get out of the car and she'll go to class, like she'll walk in and go Mikey. When he was having a tough time, he's like, Literally like shuffle stepping. That's like half a foot. He wouldn't bring a foot up off the floor.

He would just like, bring the foot, like just kind of baby step his way. And it would take him for an hour and two days in a row, I dropped him off and then I circled back around. So I could park in the little parking lot, right by our off so I could get out and escort him in because he would inevitably not make the door before it got locked.

We'd have to go through the front. So, it's good to see you. You know, want to go in and being in squads, just hope that continues, you know? Yeah. So good. That's where we're at right there. We had a topic of kind of diet and health and supplements that we wanted to talk about, but we're pushed up over a half an hour right now.

We want to keep these these episodes long enough to be interesting and engaging, but short enough to not not take up your whole day, hopefully just long enough for your commute to work or from work or whatever. So, anyhow, do you have any last thoughts you'd like to add? No. And I mean, I mean, I guess just, I'm just excited that this ABA program is finally getting started.

I was homeschooling him there for about six weeks and that was interesting. And challenging and. I enjoyed it a lot. It was interestingly rewarding, you know, just seeing him learn and seeing him practice when we were in different settings or, you know, reading a story to him and having him point out sight words to me that I had taught him.

That was, it was really what re not rewarding in that aspect, but he was missing friends. He was missing even promised to me that he would have better behavior if I've let them go back and go back to the elementary school and I wouldn't miss my friends. Right. And I would've done, you know, different, you know, social groups, you know, had I had the goal in mind of homeschooling being our new level of education.

It's just that it does take a while sometimes to get into ABA programs because of the evaluations that they do, the insurance needs to do their. And so that just, that process just took way longer than I was expecting it to. So, yeah, I'm just really excited that it's finally starting and I can't wait to see how they're able to help him and how they're able to help us.

I do too, because we have, you have a friend whose daughter goes there, who joy got to meet and hang out with yesterday, who I got to give a high five on the way out from, you know, as I was leaving and she was coming in You know, they've seen a lot of benefit. I have friends who have their two children at the other you know, facility that's available, you know, to our community here within round rock also.

And they've seen a great benefit also from their kids too. So, really high hopes and great expectations here as well. So, I would still love to invite you guys all to connect with us over Instagram. Or Facebook where, you know, if you just search for finding Mikey podcast on either one of those, you're going to find us there as well.

So that's a great way to, to get together and contact or stay in touch with us here as well, and see some of the goofy stuff, our little monkey does and also the rest of the family here too. Also, it'd be great if you share this podcast with other folks that, that, you know, are in the community that are just looking for.

You know, just stories and thoughts and interviews of another family that's in their similar position. Right. We get it. You know, our heart goes out to all of those who have, you know, this type of life now. It's not what we thought we would encounter when we started having children.

But, you know, it's what we've been given and we love our kids to death. So let's, you know, let's come together and be the best parents that we can for all of our kids. So, just share us here. We're on iTunes, you can. On iTunes, just search her for the finding Mikey podcast. And it'd be awesome if you'd leave us a review.

You can also email me, mike@findingmikey.com. If you have any suggestions for topics that you'd like us to talk about, we'd love to hear from you. Heck I just gave you my email address. Let me, if you want to even talk. You know, reach out. We'll be happy to chat that does it for today. Thank you guys for for listening in again.

It's always fun. It's really a neat thing to, to sit across the table with my wife, both of us with a mic in our face and you know, talking about this year. So for the forward to a recording of the next episode, take care.