Odds and Ends

I just thought I would wrap up the week with an assortment of the stuff that is floating around in my brain. It has not been a good decluttering week, although I am getting better at only saving the important school papers instead of throwing everything in the file box. I have spent a lot of time this week on various appointments and meetings, as well as following up with several insurance issues that had come to my attention.

My Sleep Goal

So, I said yesterday that I was making a goal of getting 8 hours of sleep every night. I managed to get 7 last night — I stayed up a bit too late after finding out that my weekend plans were changing and thinking about how I was going to work everything out. But tonight, I should be able to get 8 hours, and maybe even a bit of a nap tomorrow since we aren’t planning to go out due to the snow.

Anti-Depressants

Did anyone else see the article in Newsweek about anti-depressants? They are saying that they have not actually been shown to be effective in treating depression and that it hasn’t really been proven that raising serotonin levels affects mood. I have not heard this before and thought both of those things were accepted truth, so I am interested to find out more about this situation.

The article did say, however, that there has been some positive effect in treating more serious or long-term cases, so I’m not sure where exactly I fall in that continuum. And, of course, you should not stop taking anti-depressants without your doctor’s help because you can experience withdrawal effects (I know from personal experience this can be pretty bad).

Michael’s Progress

Well, it has been a long week, but I have been able to cross a few projects off my list at work – thanks in part to two coworkers who have been able to help with some of it. I also went to Michael’s parent-teacher conference today and was pleasantly surprised to see both the Learning Support teacher and the SLP at the meeting. I was able to let them know that he is due for a re-evaluation this year and will be receiving a Permission to Evaluate form soon.

Michael has been making good progress with his IEP goals, especially now that he has such a good TSS with him, and he seems to be handling the ups and downs of the day much better. There have been a couple of days in the last month that were rough for him, but overall we are seeing improvement. I am hoping we will see some lessening of his anxiety and some other issues once we get his supplements back on track with his current nutritional levels (we are going to a new place in March).

My Cute Story for the Week

Sometimes after I turn out Michael’s light, he still wants another story, and so I try to make one up for him. This is NOT a strong point of mine! The other night when I was struggling to think of what to say, he was trying encourage me and said, “It’s okay, Mommy, it can be anything–fantasy, non-fiction, human interest…”

Well, my ears perked up at that and I turned to him and asked, “What’s human interest?” I couldn’t wait to hear what he was going to say; sometimes I get some very interesting responses when I ask him to define something he just said.

“Touches the heart,” he says to me.

“Where did you learn about that?” I ask nonchalantly.

“Skills group,” he tells me.

He is in a second-grade reading group! I can’t even tell you how old I was before I knew what a human interest story was, and I probably couldn’t have described it in less than two sentences even a couple of days ago. How funny is that!

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Tagged as: anti-depressants, human interest stories, not decluttering, parent-teacher conferences, re-evaluations, sleeping, Wordle