Hi, all, and thanks. Just wanted to provide an update.
Just finished what I am thinking has been one of the busiest weeks in my life: juggling work, several deadlines for projects, a move into a new residence, cleaning and prep of the old location prior to turning that over, a parent-teacher meeting for S9, an AS screening and educational eval for S5, cub scout activities including the Bear award ceremony, a 7:45 AM soccer game ( ) on Saturday, and lots and lots of unpacking. This all in addition to all the many other day-to-day stuff.
I am tired, needless to say.
S5 was cleared during his screening. He appears to have no learning disabilities, is extremely bright and imaginative, and shows to have now indication of Asperger's Syndrome. His behavioral issues are most likely emotional. The counselors figure that S5 has been acting both internally and externally to a couple of likely issues.
First, they noted that S5 has had to put up with quite a large degree of changes in his life in the last year. His parents' D, his mother openly dating another person and then eventually M'ing him, the changes in households, etc.
Second, they have taken what I and S5's mother had said about his older brother, S9, and recognize that S5 is behaving very much in accordance with being the neuro-typical sibling of an AS child. S9 is very controlling (wonder where he gets that from?), domineering and is always attempting to set the "agenda" for how his poor little brother plays and behaves. S5 loves his brother but he suffers a great deal of frustration at S9's seeming callous treatment of his rights and individuality. S9 has a difficult time understanding that S5 is his own person.
I can greatly identify with S5 in how it feels to not be shown respect for being a separate, thinking person, to have one's thoughts, goals and aspirations constantly trampled or commandeered.
There is no real malice in S9 -- it's just his AS. S9 is just naturally oblivious to the degree he affects his little brother's struggle to be his self.
This has led to S5 venting himself in the classroom. He has become emotional, crying when he thinks he isn't getting what he wants or sometimes going off to a corner to sulk. And sometimes S5 blows up and acts out by doing something harmful, such as using a marker on furniture.
As time passes, I hope things will settle down as far as all the constant change S5 (and all of us) have had to put up with (xW has more in store however, I am certain.) I am hoping that with some additional counseling we can train S5 to better able to cope with the stress from his older brother. And we can train S9 to respect his younger brother.
One aside: I inwardly laughed when the counselors told us that exW and I were "obviously" doing so very well by cooperating together for our S's sakes. If they only knew how little that really was or how much effort even that little really took!
xW is still being her typical self. More of her shenanigans. For example, last evening, during her pre-bedtime nightly call to our S's, she again had S9 ask me a question. Aside from the fact she should never put our kids in the middle of communications between us, she took this time and method to relay to me about kindergarten orientation she had signed up for S5 the next day (today). Then she asked if I was going to go as well, because she had "just happened" to have the particular morning off already.
11th hour. Again. Uuuugh.
I had to tell her no. I needed much more lead time than the day before -- I would have needed to have cleared it with work first. She knows this already.
So after all the effort I took this past week, busy as I was already, to remind her well in advance of the appointments we had for S5 and for S9, including repeating the reminders the day before each as well as at the start of the week, she neglected to include me in one for this week. Nice.
Regarding S9's parent-teacher conference, his mother sent I and the teacher a message that morning (last Tuesday) that she would not be able to make it. It was fine by me, as it turned out. In fact, I rather enjoyed being able to talk directly with S9's teacher for a change, without exW always trying to demonstrate her "superior understanding" of S9's activities and needs. And the fact that S9's teacher just glowed about his progress over this year was a major boost to my week. S9 has shown tremendous growth in his academics, including his writing -- and Writing has been a serious bug-a-boo for S9. Despite a love of reading and literature, and a fine command of verbal language, S9 has always expressed a great aversion to the mechanics of Writing -- it's again due to his AS and the difficulty he tends to have with fine-motor skills. As such, historically, S9's writing has been very rudimentary and far, far below his reading comprehension. We're talking barely first grade level here.
Well, the teacher shared with me S9's sudden recent growth in his ability to use more fleshed-out sentence structures, along with the proper use of adverbs and adjectives. It was almost poetic! And I noted that he had shown in the examples she presented a minimum of verbs of the form of Be (is, was, are, etc.) -- that is, "lazy" and weak forms of exposition.
I reported all this back to exW in an email. She never acknowledged it to me. But she did mention it to S5's screening counselor later in the week on Friday. (Typical.)
I am proud of S9 and very pleased with his teacher. She has managed to get so much out of him that his previous teachers had struggled with. That, I know, takes tons of patience. And she makes it look so easy too.
We just need to work on S9's behavioral issues -- if we can lick those he will have relatively no problems going forward.
The other ticking time bomb, one that is going to really cause a war, is that exW continues to talk to S9 about changing schools no later than when he enters middle school. To repeat what I have posted before, exW is apparently making plans to move our sons to a lesser school system closer to where OM's home is, more than an hour away. The schools there are barely of average rating -- when the schools they are in now are some of the best public schools in the entire state. Plus S9's IEP and all his friends are here, not there -- and S9 would no longer be eligible for UNC's TEEACH services (for Asperger's) since that would be in another county where they do not offer this service.
exW is again not talking with me about this, let alone seeking my clearance. She continues to think and act as if she alone makes all the decisions for our children. And she is further demonstrating that she only has concerns for her own interests, before those of our S's, yet she still wants to claim she is doing all this for them. B-S.
I continue to pray about this and other matters. I have been praying for close to three years now that exW would wake up and see what she is doing to our S's and their lives. I pray that she would finally recognize the destruction she has been causing, erasing all the hard-won advantages, resources and values we had garnered for our two children. I don't get it. I just don't understand her or how she can think and act in this way. She is so utterly different a person than she ever was before. Such foolishness.
Oh, well, whatever. I am and will do whatever I am led to do and must do, regardless of where my kids' mother wants to be.
) on Saturday, and lots and lots of unpacking. This all in addition to all the many other day-to-day stuff. 
