Feeling like part of the team

Well we finally had it....the dreaded IEP meeting.  I went in with low expectations, and was happily surprised with the way the meeting went and what decisions were made for Will.

Since we were transitioning from pre-school age to school age there was MANY people at this meeting.  Seven school personnel to our two parents.  Despite being outnumbered my husband and I felt like we were listened to and included on decisions for Will next year.  We were told he would go from "a child with a disability" label (which all pre-school IEP kids get) to "speech and language impairment" label.  The chairperson said decisions on Will's schooling would be made through that label's lens.  We were very happy with this label and even more happy we didn't have to fight off an undesirable one.  

The review of Will's progress by his teacher was very even sided.  Reports on his speech testing (still VERY behind) balanced nicely with his progress socially.  Often times I find these meetings are about what is wrong with these kids, not on also where their growth or strengths lie.

So it looks like next year its 1/2 Kindergarten with speech/OT/special ed push-ins.  Now we are just waffling on whether or not we should let him go for the whole day, or wait until next year for a full day experience. 

Oh and I did manage to get the "input" goal from Will's OT removed easily enough.  After a open and frank conversation, the OT gave no resistance to removing the goal and put in an addendum the next day.  I don't think she had anything invested in Will so removing a goal was a "no brainer" for her "no brain".

Special thanks to fellow blogger Pia and her Crack in the Light blog for the IEP alert level pic.

Cruising along not letting bumps in the road derail progress

Been a little while since I've posted.  Wills IEP meeting is in a few weeks and until then I'm holding my breath that all the promises from the school district will hold up at the meeting.  For the most part things have been going along well.  We spent our Spring Break at our family Camp and Will had the best time.  Got to hold his first fish.  He loved it so much I just bought him his first fishing pole.  The new surroundings always seem to bring out more language and interaction with Will.  Well I guess the place is only 800sq.ft. so togetherness of the family is sort of inevitable!

Had Will's meeting with his teacher and all that was reported went right along with what I knew from Will.  Still testing with a moderate delay with receptive language and a severe delay in his expressive language, which I knew without formal testing.  The teacher who is wonderful made nice comments on the progress Will has made trying to be more social at school, which is nice for her to note.  She also has asked for Summer services for Will which will be the same class he took last summer, but this time the school district will pay for it (at $120/week I'm relieved.)  She also told me she intends to bring up the idea of having an aid for Will next year, or at least an evaluation in Oct/Nov. to see if he needs one.  So all in all a good meeting.

We did not however go over the OT report, since she isn't his OT.  I got that report the following week of Spring Break.  Well that was......hmmmm well surprising.  The report on his progress was good he is at about 85% of the majority of his goals.  What wasn't so nice was the formal re-evaluation he received from another new OT.  It seems Will didn't want to comply with the new OT, surprising?, I think not.  Well the report states that testing was very difficult and not all tests were finished.  This didn't seem to stop the tester from giving final test results and giving some "wonderful" observations and hearsay in the rest of the report.  It seems Will is a child that needs to "grow-up", and has outbursts and "temper tantrums".  Okay, did she observe these things during the whole 1/2 hour she was there?  If not, is it professional to put these descriptions of Will in her report?  Funny his teacher has never told me of these temper tantrums, nor have a witnessed said outbursts at home.  Will is a fall apart crying kid, not the laying on the floor meltdown screaming kid.  I do not consider crying temper tantrums, but what the hell do I know, I'm just his mother.  The best part was at the end of the report where its reported that a Sensory Profile was given to me and his teacher (I think it was his regular OT).  Evidently Will has Moderate to Severe Sensory issues in regards to distractions.  Now this is all from the schools profile, NOT mine.  There is one sentence reference that "it should be noted the home profile was less".  The interesting thing at the end of the report they say he has Mild to Moderate sensory issues. (It makes me wonder if she just copy and pastes the childs name on the report and changes a few things.)

I have decided to take a deep breath and just ingore this ignorant women and her testing.  I am very proud of myself that until writing this I have not obsessed over it.  I talked to Will's diagnosing doctor and her advice was just what I had planned on.....ignore it.  Next year Will will be back to his first OT who also had me fill out a Sensory Profile as well and said "I just don't see any sensory issues with Will"  So this Mom is just going to run right over this bump in the road and look forward to forgetting this woman ever had the fortune of meeting my son.

PS 95% potty trained - YES!!!

Update 5/7/10:  After writing this post I decided to reread the evaluation to see if it was as bad as I remembered.  It was worse actually.  What I did find was the new goals the OT wrote for Will for next year.  Most were completely fine until the last set of goals stating Will should receive "input" then comply to a predetermined activity for different time limits.  

I decided I would have to have these goals formally removed from Will's IEP during the May meeting, shouldn't be a big deal as he does not have a diagnosis of Sensory issues from either of his doctors, so there should be no need for sensory "input".

The funny thing is I mentioned his OT report to his teacher with my concerns.  It seems as I am not the only parent to complain and there were A LOT of complaining parents about the testing and lack of professional reporting by the examiner.  The teacher expressed sincere disappointment with company that conducted the OT tests.  It seems that there may be something that can be done since more than just this little ol' mom expressed her concerns.

Well at least I'm not alone.

Wow can this be real?

Okay so I am completely flabergasted!  I am happy that I did go into my meeting with the school district open minded. 

So without having to drag out an advocate, attorney, or even asking for what I really wanted for Will's education, it has landed on my lap.  Today was a very nice meeting with the pre-school psychologist and principal. They offered an integrated classroom (5 IEP kids the rest "typical") for 1/2 day (they don't half day, he'll be the only one) with the confirmation that if I want him to (and I do) he WILL repeat next year!

Truthfully I am still a bit stunned that this all went down without me having to complain to the school district what I really wanted for Will.   Shocking to me that they came through for him.  His IEP meeting is May 21 and I think until then I will still be holding my breath for all this to work out.

Feeling blessed today.

It's just freakin' Kindergarten

Just when I think decisions on Will's school future for next year are all settled, the school district tosses in a money wrench. I got another call from the school's psychologist wanting to set up a meeting with me and the principal of our local elementary school.  She went to view Will last week with the elementary school psychologist (she is the one for pre-school services) and told me she understood my concerns for keeping Will back a year before entering Kindergarten.  So now she is proposing that we work out a situation where Will could maybe do a 1/2 day of school next year, but couldn't guarantee he could repeat.  O...K, but that is what I said I wanted for Will, so how is this going to help?

The best part was her saying that if he went to school next year his services could be done during the school day and this would be easier on me than having to drive him to them myself.  I felt like saying if I wanted easy I wouldn't have become a mother!  Really I drive him an hour everyday now just to go to the school I choose for him, I obviously am not interested in taking the easy route in regards to schooling decisions.

I am going to try and withhold anymore judgments and hear her and the principal out on Friday.  My main question is why, why is this so important to them?  I mean what is one freakin' year?  If I still lived in Michigan Will would go to young fives and I wouldn't have to go through all this crap. Ah well I did say I didn't want easy didn't I?

Check back on Friday for the meetings highlights and lowlights!

A Potty Mircle for Easter

I thought this time would never come.  I literally couldn't conceive of a time when my son would pee in a potty.  Theoretically I knew it would happen, but after 4.5 years of diaper changes it wasn't a strong feeling.

The best part was it happened on a lark.  This past weekend we got near 90 degress, which in April is VERY strange.  I had planned on starting the potty training for real in two weeks over Spring Break.  I had the rewards, potty doll, etc ready to go and we had talked about using the potty for the last few weeks.  On Sat.  I decided to drag out the kiddie pool since it would be months before we would be able to use it again.  For whatever reason I just put Will in his swim trunks no swimmy diapers.  After about 2 hours he asked to come inside to change the diaper.  Hmmmmm I gave it some thought and lied to my beautiful child.  "Mommy can't find the diapers, oh no!  Can you use the potty?"  At this point I ran down to the basement for his porta-potty and put it in the living room where we started playing Wii.  Will was still looking for the diapers "Where is it?  Where the diapers? I can't see them."

Now last week I volunteered at Will's school last week and told his aid, who has him sit on the potty everyday that I was starting potty training over the break.  I mentioned I was going to toss out the pull ups and go cold turkey.  She wondered if he understood that he should be his pee in the potty and suggested I put a pull up in the potty to help him make the connection.  At the time I thought she was grossly underestimating Will as I knew he has seen his mother and father pee varies times before.

At this point I start thinking maybe I'll try the pull up in the potty but know Will is no dummy and he would just pull that sucker out of the portable potty and put it on, so I had a thought of genius and cut the pull up up into sections and gave him one.  I told him to hold it to him and sit on the potty.  Within 5 minuets I had a full potty of pee!  We have now peed 7 or 8 times in the potty in the last 2 days!  I think this is a great start and I hope when we really go full throttle in 2 weeks it will go as well.  Cross your fingers!

Back into the light

Remember how I talked about the ups and downs?  How about Will doing his strange kid impersonation? Well we now are out of the strange kid stage again and have gotten some more language out of this LT. Today we has some nice progress.  We had to go and sign tax papers today so we all piled in the car and headed out to the accountant.  After doing our business we headed over to the nursery to look at some trees we want to add to the house etc.  On the way there we hear from the back seat "Where are we going?".  My husband and I were doing the "whaaaa whaaa, did he just ask what I think he asked?  It was the first time he asked a question like that.  Most of the time Will only asks questions to what he already knows the answers too.  He has asked where someone is and where his toys are, but not where are we going, so we were happy (although I did cry in the car- sue me!)

Later in the day we had a nice back and forth discussion that went like this.  (Will) McQueen and Ramone. . .(me) what? ... (Will) I want McQueen and Ramone. . .(me) where are they?. . .(Will) There are upstairs. . .(Will again) Mommy go get McQueen and Ramone. 

It was nice to have a back and forth interaction and for this I was a very happy mommy today.  Here's to more of these days in the future!

To be or not to be

Just another day in the life of.  Got a call from the local Elementary school asking if we were planning on enrolling Will in Kindergarten next year.  Gave a confident nope and that was the end of that.  I've found infinite peace with this decision.  Will will go to school, just preschool again.  Its not like the kids needs it for academics anyway!  Today I showed him a set of paints and I  asked him "what is this?" . .his response "ovals" ( I guess he knows his shapes).

On another note we are weeks away from trying in earnest potty training. I know I know "Will is almost 4.5 and he isn't trained?" is running through your head, but I'm telling you between the verbal delay and his lack of fine motor skills I didn't see the pressure to get him out of pull ups. . . .until now.  When your child can pee in his diaper take it off, toss it out and put another on without your help, well its time to get on the potty.  Unfortunately I still don't think this is going to go well.  We are going with the tossing the diapers out and going bare butt method.   Cross your fingers for me and say a prayer because in 3 weeks there will be no going back, ack!