User:Woozle/blog/2009-05-13 0856 The Josh Report/var/$text.below

Josh was every bit as adamant this morning as he was on Monday (which I didn't post about due largely to exhaustion) in his refusal to get dressed. I started early (5:45) on him, and spent maybe 20-30 minutes playing a sort of passive-aggressive game back at him -- if he turned a light off, I turned it back on; if he put away his underwear, I took it back out and handed it to him again. When I was keeping him from closing the front door and turning off the lights, he hit me repeatedly (I held my temper and didn't hit back).

I finally got tired of it, and called the non-emergency number at the police station to ask if there was anything they could do; they sent an officer around pretty quickly, but "we can't force a kid to go to school" (a new one on me -- is this only because he is "Special Needs"?).

At this point I called the bus to let them know he wouldn't be ready in time for them to pick him up.

Soon after that I lost patience and started wrestling intensely with Josh as on Monday -- I got as far as putting on a fresh pair of underwear, but then my endurance gave out and I simply didn't have the strength to (a) keep him from running away while (b) trying to untangle his pants so I could (c) put my arm through the leg-hole so I could (d) grab his foot and pull it through, even with Sandy helping (she couldn't keep him from escaping, much less keep him from wriggling all over the place).

Finally, I grabbed his clothes, pushed him out to the car (he stopped actively resisting me once we were outside) in his underwear, and drove him to Jordan. He didn't fight me when I pulled his pants on in the car, and he even put on his shoes on verbal request, but he dug his heels into the floor and wouldn't get out of the car.

We hung out in the parking lot for maybe 10-15 minutes until I was reasonably sure the classroom would be open, and then I forced his legs out of the car -- at which point he totally stopped fighting me, and came along into the building and walked himself into class.

I spoke with his teacher, who said that Josh had been fine all last week and that the only notable problem they were having with him was his tendency to walk around the class. I mentioned that for the past few weeks he has been fascinated with a set of Play-Doh containers of different sizes with different-colored lids, and that he actually sits down to work with them -- and we came up with the idea of sending them to school with him.

We will try that tomorrow, if we can get him to go to school tomorrow, though he may now fight going out to the car since he knows where he will be going.

I've written his case manager (and a large handful of other people) to suggest strongly that we need to be getting him on group home waiting lists and looking into Therapeutic Foster Homes now, but I've said that before so I don't know if it will do any good. All I can really do is keep pestering them, I guess, because that's what everyone says we need to be doing.