Defeated

 Feeling very defeated today.

This is the third bad day this week, for Bert, at school.  He's being defiant, not doing his work, not listening.  The teacher is writing a referral for him.  I'm not sure what that is, but I'm sure it's not good.  I give him pep talks on the way to school, we're taking away stuff after school.  Today, in addition to having no screens, he had to write lines.  The worse part, is, I ask him how his day was: did you listen, did you follow directions, did you do your work, did you get sent outside today? He tells me he had a pretty good day.  I'm not sure if it's some sort of cognitive dissonance, he's lying, or he legitimately thinks his day is pretty good.  I don't know what else to try.

We lost another BT for Bronwyn, after one freakin' session. So the supervisor is doing once weekly ABA sessions, on the computer, where we lead the session, and she (the supervisor) advises me what to do, or ask.  It wasn't too bad.  It makes me wonder if I'm a bad parent though.  The session is mostly playing with her.  And it made me realize I don't actually play with her much.  She plays so well on her own, it just doesn't occur to me. 
At the end of the session, we worked on "non-preferred foods".  I chose turkey lunch meat, the really thin kind.  We got her to lick the turkey a couple times without too much fight.  When she licked it, she declared it "yummy".  Then we spent 20-25 minutes convincing(wrestling, fighting) her to either take a small bite, or simply put it in her mouth.  She did a pretty good job of trying to wrestle out of my lap, but I held her.  In the end, I put it in her mouth, when she had it open.  I made sure to put it near the front, so she wouldn't choke.  She immediately started gagging.  I really do not understand the food aversion stuff.  It doesn't have a pattern, like squishy foods, or crunchy foods.  The food she likes has a variety of textures and tastes.  Like she likes sour cream and onion chips, that's a pretty strong favour.  

So yeah, not a great day overall.  At least they both did well at speech. 

Frustrated

 I am frustrated.  Bertram's teacher had a (another) talk with me about his behaviour. 

I asked him how his day was, he said pretty good.  Then the teacher caught me before we left.  He talked back, didn't do his work, and spent the day breaking crayons.  She asked if anything was happening at home.  The only thing I can think of is he hasn't had ABA in a while (because she's been sick, and we were sick).  

So now he has no screens.  We decided that any work he doesn't do in class is coming home for homework.  And if work comes home, he'll have no screens.

I don't know what else to do.  I'm not sure Special Ed is where he should be.  And his school doesn't have special ed anyway.  He'd have to go from our neighbourhood, very highly ranked, school, across the city to a very low ranking school.  (Our school is 9 or 10/10, the other school is 2/10). It would probably take 30-40 minutes to get him there in the morning, because it's downtown.

The other issue, in terms of special ed, is that he's fairly advanced academically.  I sort of wonder if he's bored.  When he brings home work, it seems to be the right level of challenging (not easy, not too hard).

 I think I'm going to end up having to home school him.  I don't really want to do that.  I don't feel equipped for that.  I think the school district gives you all the materials for "independent study".  

Nothing has to happen, or be decided now.  But I wish I could motivate him to be better in class.  ASD is frustrating, and hard.

Anyway, I'm just venting.