The Wonderful World of Special Education

I met today with Garrett's teacher, the school's Occupational Therapist, Speech Pathologist, and Principal. We were filing to modify his current IEP (Individualized Education Plan). They noticed while reviewing his IEP from Virginia, that although Garrett's scores for motor skills were extremely low, there were no services for OT or PT. There was one OT goal in his IEP, but no services. We're going to correct that.

They are going to observe and see what kind of help he needs. If further evaluations are needed, they'll create and assessment plan.

One of the biggest modifications to his IEP is that he went from a self-contained Special Education classroom to an inclusion setting. So far, he seems to be doing well. His teacher said that he's been doing well with eye contact, and is even starting to give eye contact with some other students. He even tried to join some other students while playing on Friday. I'm very excited to see how he does the rest of the year.

Wanna see what a change in routine does?

No ABA and no school has taken it's toll on Garrett. His nap schedule is all over the place and I'm not sure what to do about it. Trying to keep him occupied while trying to unpack and take care of Bronson is nearly impossible.

His school registration has to be signed by our Sponsor (Daddy), and since Daddy isn't available right now, the paperwork is just sitting on my desk. Sigh.

We notified Tricare ECHO that we've moved, but they can't assign us a new ABA provider until we have a new ABA referral. So we went to Garrett's well child visit today and got a referral for the developmental pediatrician, and now we have to wait for an appointment with them to get the ABA referral.

I'm really not sure how much more of this I can take. At least we know that we'll be here for two years. But I'm pretty sure that we're looking at getting out after that. These moves are horrible for Garrett. The break in therapy and the break in routine almost destroys any progress that we've made.

School and ABA

Garrett has ABA for two hours, four days a week. We drive the 35 minutes home, feed him some lunch and send him off on the bus. When he gets home, he usually doesn't wake up as I get him off the bus.

He gets up at 6:45 and is going non-stop until 3pm. This poor kid is exhausted.

I don't know how well he's doing in preschool because he can't tell me. There's a notebook that comes home every day to tell me what they did in class but I don't actually know how HE is doing.

I still feel like he's making some progress developmentally, but his behaviors have gotten worse. The spitting has returned. The headbanging has come back, too. He actually kicked himself in the head today while we were in the car.

I know that this is going to take a long time, but it's hard to watch.

First day of school

We had a very busy day today. We rushed out the door at 6:45am to take Daddy to work and head across town to ABA. Got out of ABA at 10, home at 10:40, packed his big backpack and ran outside to wait for the bus at 11. He didn't get home until after 3 this afternoon and he was exhausted.

I'm assuming that he had a good day because I didn't get a call from his teacher. But since he can't tell me how his day went, I have no clue. His bus aide said that he spit the whole way home, which doesn't surprise me, considering how tired he was.

Hopefully the week continues without any problems.

Preschool!

Garrett will start special ed preschool next Tuesday. We went to the school to meet his teaching team tonight. He loved the classroom. He went straight for the trampoline.

Garrett will be taking the bus to school after ABA and will be at school for three hours, five days a week. He'll be getting speech at school. They didn't include Occupational Therapy in his IEP, but his teacher said that they do work on fine and gross motor skills and if she sees something that needs attention, she'll make sure that they put it in for him.

Updates and such

We are working on eating with utensils now. He's doing pretty good, we just have to keep an eye on him and make sure he doesn't try to use his other hand to grab the food.



He really likes to draw, but he started chomping on crayons again, so we're sticking with a magnadoodle for now.

His ABA team is concerned that he is prompt dependent. He knows the sign for drink. He has used it independently on occasion. He knows when he is expected to use it, but will not sign it unless he is being prompted. We have slowly started to use less hand over hand, but I still need to touch his elbow for him to sign. This isn't good.

We thought that he knew what his signs meant, but now we're not sure. We tried to teach him "please" at his OT session on Friday. As soon as we took his hand, he started to sign drink eventhough there were no cups in sight.

So many new things!

Finally, at 31 months... Garrett draws with crayons (instead of eating them).



He also eats spanish rice and plays peek-a-boo.