High School Grad Photos

This photo was taken after the grad dinner.

Here's the grad photo.

This is when he got his diploma.

High School

Once Jon's elementary school years were done he moved on to high school.

There he joined another special needs class. After being there for 4 months we found that funding for him at the developement centre directed by enVision, was in place. Although we would have wanted him to stay at the high school a little longer as he seemed to enjoy it there we knew we couldn't let this funding slip by and knew that he would be needing it in a few years anyway. So he moved to the centre. That June he graduated with the rest of the Grade 12 students at the high school:) We tease our daughters about this..wondering why they didn't graduate that quickly! While in high school Jon learned more of the basic life skills, a continuation of what he had learned in elementary school. Jon's grad went really well, he actually sat down for the meal with the rest of the high school grads, the regular classes as well as the special ed class; the school gym filled with grads and parents. He looked really good in his black dress pants with a black vest, a mustard colored shirt and new shoes that didn't have velcro closures:) He knew it was his special day and smiled a lot. The gym where the meal was held was filled with a lot of helium balloons and that being a favorite of his, held his attention for most of the meal time, surprising his teachers and his parents!! His sister was his escort and Jon was thrilled to have her at his beck and call:) After grad we took Jon to our place of business where we sold chainsaws, another favorite of Jon's, and had pictures taken of him and his Dad with the chainsaws.

Note to self..locate and scan some of these grad photos so I can post them.

Kindergarten and Elementary School

When Jon reached the age of 5 we wanted to send him to kindergarten but our school division didn't accept special needs children at that age as there was no program in place and we were told he would have to wait till the following year. Together with two other parents we decided that our boys could not wait and so a kindergarten class was started. EnVision (read about them in the sidebar) stepped in, hired teaching staff, and found a room at a local daycare where the classes could be held. Although that meant that we would have to pay for daycare costs even with our own room and teachers. Approx $ 800.00 was our cost for Jon's kindergarten that year. The following year our school division had kindergarten classes in place for everyone. A special education wing had been added to a local elementary school and Jon boarded the bus every morning with his sisters to attend classes. I felt so relieved knowing that his sisters would see him safely to his class. He had some difficult years at school but also some better ones. He connected well with some of the teachers and challenging as it was for them, they made school more enjoyable for him. There were many times throughout the years when I needed to pick Jon up at school because of behaviour problems. I think Jon grew wise to this, knowing Mom would be called to get him if he misbehaved and home is where he wanted to be.

Communicating

When Jon was around the age of 2 he was saying a few words and started to string some words together. Then followed that period of many seizures that I mentioned in the post on finding the right medications. During this time he lost all his speech and has not regained it. We tried various ways of trying to teach him communication skills, first of all sign language but with being autistic as well he had a lot of hand waving and fluttering happening so it was confusing for all of us. We then tried the 'picture book', a book that he should carry on him, take it out and point to the pictures to say what he wanted. This was not successful either and very frustrating for him and he let us know it! The book was thrown across the room many times. In hindsight I wish we had perservered longer but we did the best we could at the time.

Jon has not learned to speak and he communicates by pointing and showing us what he wants. This is often very frustrating for him as we don't always

understand what he wants. He doesn't handle this very well and will throw things and bang his head on the walls. I can only imagine how hard this must be for him.

Crawling and Walking

We were told by our doctor that we should not expect Jon to crawl or walk at an early age. The right side of his body did not function properly. When he started to crawl which he did before he was a year old, his right leg would drag and his right arm would drop. But he didn't give up, he would get up on all fours and try again, although he just couldn't master it. And so it became a 'get up on all fours, drop and slide' kind of crawl.

Then at the age of 18 months he started to walk, at a much earlier age than we had expected. And once he could walk he would sometimes revert back to crawling which he now could do much better. His right arm continued to hang limp and he couldn't use it properly. We were told that we needed to do therapy. It was suggested that we should try to encourage the use of the right hand by getting him to do things with it. Oh how we tried and oh how frustrated he was! Eventually he did start to use his right hand although his left hand has always been his dominant one.

I couldn't locate a photo of Jon learning to crawl or walk, this one is of him 'fluttering grass'.

Toilet Training

As Jon's young years went by I often wondered if he would ever be toilet trained. Would the day ever come that I wouldn't be hanging diapers out on the washline? As much as I enjoyed the sight of diapers flapping in the wind I really was looking forward to the day when it would end.

We did the same with toilet training as we had done with the others tasks, following the Portage program. This seemed rather daunting as Jon needed to be taken to the bathroom every 30 min. I hadn't ever thought about how many 'half hours' there are in a day; my life revolved around bathrooms:) Jon resisted and week after week went by without success. Then one day he either realized what I wanted of him or it happened by mistake, our first success! I praised him over and over..I'm sure I was more excited than he was. He seemed to understand what was expected of him and rarely had an accident after that. He was nine years old at the time.