Moving right along....

Mr 7 had his follow up appointment with his paediatrician and he has grown 3 cms and put on 1kg ..so much for the growth stunting side affect Ritalin is supposed to induce. We discussed his speech pathologists re testing for research purposes and his paediatrician was all for a paper being written on the effects of ADHD meds on children with auditory/expressive/ receptive delays...especially since Mr 7 had all the required interventions and tests prior to commencing formal education and his improvements in the areas can be attributed to the medication and not external factors. Try and convince someone who is being paid nicely and works their own hours to co author such a paper....snowballs chance in hell. Anyhow, his aide ( read guardian angel) and I spoke tongue in cheek about her coming with us to his next speech appointment, as it turns out, this is a very common occurrence as R, the speechie; has little to no time for school visits because of her increased and high demand workload. She even has a waiting list that he feels personally responsible for. So next appointment, Mr 7's guardian angel comes along too.

Mr 5 attended a session at school yesterday, for just over an hour he drew and did I don't know what in a classroom with 5 other newbies and the rest of this years preps whilst the parents were given a run down on the "You Can Do It" program and other things programs the school.. Here I was hoping to by pass that and sit in the yard and read...but no chance.

Now there is a study that shows that children diagnosed with ADHD catch up academically to their peers in about Yr 5...roll on then, He's turning into a whiz now with his nmemoinc skills what would he be like when he can retrieve and use all that stuff....bit like Supamum, socially inept and able to spout useless facts in a single sentence.

The school start money given to Victorian students commencing in Prep or Yr 7 by the State Government looks to be a fiasco in 2008. Instead of mailing out cheques from the Education Dept. they have opted for vouchers issued by the schools and able to be cashed after January 14,2008 at the POST OFFICE. Nice to let the schools know that DET have cited the initial contact if a problem arises to be the school..talk about passing the buck. And apparently the PO staff knew nothing of this....they do NOW!! And there is the little issue of DET "paying" schools and initial fee of $35 and a pro rata fee of $2 per voucher processed to cover the administration costs. Apparently this $$$ is not being passed on to the individual Catholic schools by the Catholic Education Office...nice little earner there for the CEO whilst our schools suffer.