Then came first grade!?!

This school year OLA was off to first grade. The first two months seemed to fly by with only a few minor problems. He was in remedial reading and responding well. He wasn't fighting us on too many things - except doing his homework - but even that was hit and miss. He did burn through two boxes of 24 count crayons in those first two months and you could rarely find a sharpened pencil in his desk. But we had hit kind of a lull. His behavior at home was a little bit more intense - but nothing to write home about. But we knew it was only a matter of time until things bubbled over again.
Towards the end of September I was getting my daily fill of news via the Internet when I came across a story of a family in Illinois, who had to make the heart wrenching decision to sign away guardianship of their daughter.  As I watched there interview with a national news agency I was stunned to hear her describing my child in some of the behaviors of her daughter. My mind was reeling. Our son's birth mother hadn't drank - at least not according to the paperwork we had. Yet there was this seed of doubt - centered around a remembrance of a vague conversation that had taken place some six and a half years earlier -twenty-four hours after he was born.  Had she drank?
I began to look up information on FAS and FASD. What I found left me both stunned and saddened. The commonalities these sights listed described my son far better than anything else I had ever read about.  I called my husband and ask him if he could remember anything that was mentioned about the birth mother drinking. He too only had hazy recollections of that time. I asked him to look up information that day on FAS and FASD if he got some time at lunch or break.  When he walked in the door that night the first thing he said was "that's describes OLA". I nodded
For the first time in four and a half years we had something to go on. But little did we realize how much of a battle we would still face over the next eight months. ( The rest of that story in another post)

While we waited to fight our way through the medical field we also continued the battle at school.  By Christmas break things at school were starting to really take a down hill slide. We were fighting homework battles almost nightly.  Although most days we sent back the homework completed it looked like the dog really had gotten to it. The sheets were crumpled and torn. The handwriting at times was just barely legible. And holes and scribbles accompanied almost every sheet.
In late October I discovered his daily work piling up in his desk. None of it completed and some of it not even started. I wondered how long the teacher was going to wait to tell me he wasn't handing things in. What if I hadn't looked in his desk that day?? I started to look everyday. Rarely was his desk empty of unfinished work. I started to sit with him in the mornings to work on the uncompleted assignments. At first it was ten minutes then twenty, and often now it is forty-minutes or more. 
By December he was refusing to get out of bed  and I went from helping him dress to dressing him and dragging him to the breakfast table to eat. Arriving late was almost a daily occurrence. I knew we were getting dangerously close to  the dreaded district letter for number of tardies. But he didn't care. The only one stressing about being late in the mornings was me. At last I decided to talk with the principle. It was a good thing. She intervened in the district letter when it was sent and we set up a committee meeting for January after the break.
 At home his behaviors were escalating. He was now refusing most nights to bathe and brushing his teeth or hair was like beginning WWIII.  OLA became a "Klepto" of sorts for any object whose owner laid it down unattended.  Ownership seemed to eluded him. Then came the "stories".  Lies that most of the time were so transparent that you would of had to be naive to think they were the truth. Destruction of family members possessions also escalated. But he also became destructive of his own possessions. Something we really hadn't seen much of before. Six year old (thankfully) abusive language (stupid, fat, butt head etc.) increased markedly and was repeatedly directed at family members. At first mostly at Dad, then came Me and now BBA. He had few friends and no one really close. He was having more difficulty with social situations. His impulsive and hyper-active tendencies were increasing as well. And we were all reaping the repercussions of his almost daily temper tantrums and melt downs.  We were only half way through the school year. We knew we had to press harder for help. We were going to have to really learn to advocate. For him and for ourselves.