School's not out in this house!

Just because school is out for Amy doesn't mean it is for Ian.  His school is here at home and it starts at 8am Monday to Friday.  His tutor arrives every morning just as he's eating breakfast and then will take him downstairs to the IBI room we had specifically built for that purpose.  It's just a small room with no windows, one big shelf up high out of his reach and a childs table and two chairs.  This is where he and his tutor do a lot of one on one activities like pointing to certain pictures or objects on command and labelling items.  Some days he does well other days I hear screams coming from the basement, trying to stay calm knowing that he's just protesting against something he doesn't want to do.  Even though it seems like it's easy since I have someone here with him, right now I have two other children at home wanting to go into that room and disrupt his sessions.  Actually, I'm usually at work when this is going on and my husband is at home because the government requires someone to be at the home during his tutoring sessions.  Even if we both were working we would have to pay someone else to just be here with the tutor.

After his 4 hour session in the morning his tutor will take him to daycare where she turns into his Special Needs Assistant for the next 4 hours.  This is not the case with most families, we're paying our tutor top up for her tutoring here plus top up for her 4 hours at the daycare just to make sure we can provide a full time job for her so she can stay and tutor Ian until he goes to school next year.  If Ian were a typical child he probably wouldn't be in daycare or at least not everyday because we'd be trying to save money on childcare.  For the past two years either me or Curtis has been home to take care of these kids and save childcare costs but since he's Autistic, every person we talk to says to put him in daycare so he gets the social interaction he needs.  Aside from those day to day things we also have to coordinate appointments with speech therapists, occupational therapists, pediatricians, and his preschool autism specialists as well as just other general appointments for his eyes, doctors appointments, dental, etc.  This is all just for one child, we have 3 to coordinate.

We're lucky enough to be able to provide this for our tutor and for Ian but I just wish there were some way to make our lives a little easier.