IEP meeting tomorrow
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| Mon, 10-09-2006 - 8:48am |
I have Weston's IEP meeting tomorrow. They want to "graduate" him from speech. The speech therapist thinks he's now totally caught up to where he needs to be and has no problems whatsoever and he's ready to graduate. I don't agree. He still has stilted stuttery speech. She doesn't see this in therapy (he's been getting one on one so he doesn't have any distractions or competition). I guess I think she needs to go observe him during recess and his math and language arts classes. When I spoke with her on the phone, I suggested that maybe we could continue speech on a consult basis, when Weston and his teachers would make a list of areas of difficulty during a 2 week or month period and then the ST would help him work through these. I just hate to dismiss him from speech when I believe we're still in the honeymoon period of the year (this happened last year-- things were going just peachy into October then he started having lots more difficulties into October and November). The teachers this year keep saying, "oh, he's just fine everyone accepts him just fine" "oh, the special areas teachers don't even notice that he's different" BULL! how can you not notice a kid that yells, "HEY, don't touch me" when someone bumps him in the line or that runs with covered ears in PE 'cause the running feet are too loud? a child that makes very strange faces when asked questions or that can't ever look you in the eye. Just because the kid talks like a rocket scientist to teachers doesn't mean he can converse with kids his own age-- cause he can't!
His gifted teacher doesn't get him at all! I have a parent teacher conference with her this morning-- she's having a very hard time understanding why he doesn't always bring his things to class. Why sometimes he melts or shuts down at the start or end of class. Why he sometimes doesn't do his homework. Why he won't read during their 30 min silent reading time. I need to have the autism consultant come in and observe him in that class and make suggestions for her. Weston is such an anomoly to her. She's even told me that she's never had a child w/ autism in her class before. Even though they talk about gifted kids being any child even those w/ learning disabilities and autism-- he's the first and therefore he must conform to her idea of "gifted". oh, and she's big into extra make work-- he's had lots of extra math project worksheets (lots of problems and then something to color or a message to decode with the answers) which are torture for him.
wish me luck, I'll need it. they're absolutely sure they've "cured" him, they're miracle workers! LOL! he's come a long way but you don't just "cure" what is inately him, he's autistic and they might as well accept that!
Betsy

Good Luck Betsy!!!! Dear lord I hate going into meetings feeling like that. I have Mike's IEP today and for the most part (other than the OT) I think it is going to be the polar opposite.
HOwever, I couldn't sleep last night because of Cait's IEP stuff so I know where you are coming from.
Remember, if you don't agree don't sign.
You may want to pick up Michelle Garcia Winners books (particularly "THinking About You, Thinking About Me" if it is a big problem. The last chapter is all about evaluating kids with "social cognitive deficits" for speech. It also has some good activities. I hear the 3rd book is even better. You have to order it online so you won't get it before your meeting, however, if you don't sign at the meeting it may be good to get.
I don't think you are asking for too much for consultation. I bet they agree. But I bet he needs more than consult. I am back to trying to convince Mike's speech teacher he needs it again and he scored low on some of his language assessments and his teacher notes conversational problems. I think it is just that what our kids need for speech is much more difficult so they don't want to if they don't have too. Particularly if they don't have the training. Conversely, Dave is getting speech 2x a week to learn to say L and R. Go figure.
Renee
Well, that wasn't so bad!
Gotta LOVE Weston's OT! that woman is a keeper! She had brought him in for a consult a week ago. When he came into her room she could tell he was really angry, but he couldn't tell her why. anyway, she finally had him draw out what was wrong. Then she couldn't understand his picture and he couldn't put that into oral words either so she had him write what it was... turns out, when he came in from recess his chair wasn't behind his desk. He got angry. When he tried to asked where his chair was the teacher didn't know and brushed him off. His friend (and the boy that sits next to him in all his classes), Nick, brought him another chair. It bothered him until the OT came to get him (which was over an hour later). Then it took so long to get through this problem and to address all the other needs he was having in class that he missed recess, so he was REALLY angry again. oh and his written words, 'my chair was moved when I came in from recess. I felt anger. I concealed it though. I concealed my anger and noone else knew I was angry". (concealed was a vocabulary word this week! LOL!)
After the speech therapist and I talked, she got with the special ed administrator and the resource teacher and they all decided that graduating him from the IEP was not what they should do but just reduce his services so that he could get more services if things started falling apart instead of making us go through the whole IEP process again. YEA! so he's still getting speech and social skills but they'll be moving away from the fluency difficulties and more toward the pragmatics. They'll work on conversations with peers instead of fluency. They will work on fewer social skills in the resource and more on organizational skills and more on study skills.
The new autism education/behavoiral specialist was at our meeting as well. She'd reviewed his case and observed him last week and then today she'd actually worked with him and his gifted teacher on some strategies for learning to write more appropriate paragraphs. YEA!!! this is something they just blew off last year and expected that if he understood language arts and reading and did so well at those that the regular classroom instruction in writing would be good enough-- he was falling far behind in that area because he just didn't get what should into writing a cohesive paragraph. Today was a little step in that direction-- he worked one on one w/ his teacher and wrote 2 good paragraphs (and she wasn't thrilled cause the assignment was for 4! she's got a long way to go!).
I really like the new autism specialist! she really gets autistic kids! She kept refering to them as "our kids" have difficulties doing X or "our kids" often do very well with that but don't do Y. She made great points about how these kinds of problems might not be hurting him now but they will eventually creep into the classroom esp if that's something that he's had problems with in the past. She liked my "honeymoon" comment-- cause I truly believe we're still in the "honeymoon" phase and that eventaully he'll get to the point where it spills over into school or where the stresses at school get beyond what he can control so he needs more help than it seems he needs now. She also said that if homework gets to be too much that he should work on the things for a set amount of time and then send a note-- the special ed administrator said that was ok, and she'd back me if it became a problem with any of the teachers.
She had a 2 sheets of ideas to use as helps for him to refocus in the classroom for the teachers and suggested that they might use the ideas for ALL the kids in the class instead of just singling him out.
It all looks good on paper!
Betsy