Ben started at his new school yesterday. We had been talking about it over the weekend and reminding him of when we went to visit. We could tell he was nervous but he did really well waiting for the bus.

When it was ten minutes past his new pick-up time, we called transportation to make sure they weren’t lost. They were. I guess things are still kind of scattered as far as his new transportation goes because not only was the driver lost, they picked him up in a van instead of a school bus. It was a district van with two aides plus the driver, all wearing ID, but still not what we expected. The driver told us she’s a substitute so we don’t even know if he’s going to be in the van or a bus after they get it settled.

Anyway, he was excited to ride in the van, especially once he saw the male aide. Ben doesn’t have much contact with adult males so it’s always a novelty to him. So, off he went, and our worrying began. We just hoped his transition would be as easy as possible.

He got home from school and his aide said he’d had kind of a rough day but not too bad. When we asked Ben if he liked his new school he said “Yeah” so that’s good.

Today I let his mama get him ready on her own, keeping my ears perked for any trouble. She got him ready and out to the van on her own, he didn’t fight about going back to the new school.

We had an appointment with the psychiatrist that works at the school today at noon. She will be taking over his medications. She brought up ABA, and we explained again that we aren’t interested in it. They never like to hear that. She wanted to bring him in towards the end of the appointment, but we explained that if he saw us, he’d want to leave with us and we wanted him to ride the bus(van) to and from school, and the problems we’d had with him refusing to ride the bus home a few months ago. His teacher sat in on the meeting too so we got to tell her more about Ben.

He came home in the van. The aide said he’d had a better day today. It’s only been two days, but I’m feeling cautiously optimistic about this school. Ben isn’t showing any signs of distress. We’ll see how things are going in four weeks when we meet with the psychiatrist again.