IEP meeting - done

malcivar

Definitely different than the EI environment - this one definitely felt like I was dealing with a gov't office but to be fair, the administrator wasn't rude or anything.  It just didn't feel as touchy feely as our EI meetings.  

So, Chris starts pre-school Sept 5th!  He'll be in a 10-1-2 which means 10 students, 1 teacher, 2 assistants.  I'm a little bummed that he's only approved for speech 2x/week for 30 minutes each when now he's getting it 5x week but I'm hoping that the non one-on-one approach will help his speaking skills.  He will get OT twice a week and PT twice a week.  I'm excited and scared - this will be a whole new environment for him.  I hope he's ok.

Something interesting - all his evals indicated mild to moderate autism but when the administrator and the school person were talking they referred to him as PDD.  When I asked about the discrepancy, they indicated that due to his CARS score  they were treating him as PDD.  not sure how I feel about that but we'll see. 

Anyway - yay preschool! 

Assembly_Reqd

Color me jealous about the speech 5 times a week! I am not looking forward to our IEP meeting.

Looks like a nice program! Good luck! 

malcivar

Assembly_Reqd:

Color me jealous about the speech 5 times a week! I am not looking forward to our IEP meeting.

Looks like a nice program! Good luck! 

Yeah nobody could believe it either when we got it.  At our first EI meeting when they approved 3x a week, the service coordinator was floored.  She said nobody was getting that much.  Then when Chris was re-evaluated and PDD-NOS was diagnosed they upped his speech to 5x a week, she said he must've been born under a lucky star or something because it was right around the time that they were reducing services.  I honestly feel it's because he made almost no progress for about 4 months.  When he started going to the center and getting speech 5x, he had a language 'explosion'.  

From today's meeting, all I can tell you is that they do seem to try to downplay our kids' delays a little.  I had to stress certain things because I was a little worried that he wouldn't get enough services.  

Good luck with your meeting.  Also, how is Nate's nose doing? 

malcivar

-auntie-:

The thing is, his class will likely be speech focused and more effective at deliverying the support in the setting he needs it most- school with peers. It's going to be great for him- the program sounds awesome.

Yep, that's what both the speech pathologist who evaluated him and his current ABA at home therapist have said - he's at a crucial point in his speech development and a bigger class will help him with both his speech and social delays.  They both cautioned me away from a smaller class indicating that in his case, smaller was not necessarily in his best interest. 

-auntie-:

 

This doesn't matter. CARS is a single snap shot taken on a single day. Does his IEP classify him under Autism or did they use some other classification like OHI? Their insistance of PDD is amusing given that come the new DSM, PDD-Nos and Aspergers will cease to be and everybody gets to be autistic. But it doesn't matter, need- rather than dx- is what drives services.

Do you feel better now that this is over?

OMG yes!  Such relief.  We went down to the wire here.  I was so worried he wouldn't be able to "graduate" from his current center with all the other kids - not that he'd notice but still.  And I did find myself thinking "auntie would get a kick out of this, isn't PDD going away soon anyway?" while they were talking about PDD.  

Now it's time to just get the logistics down and my little man will officially join the ranks of pre-schoolers.  Yay! 

Assembly_Reqd

malcivar:

Good luck with your meeting.  Also, how is Nate's nose doing? 

Thanks. Nose is good. Lip still a little swollen and some bloody boogers.