ps - another thought - re:
She actually states this "demonstrates sensory seeking behaviors that may inhibit his ability to access the curriculum". It goes onto state that he does not need OT. This has me puzzled. Shouldn't the school be providing services, especially when the OT says something like this in the report ?
Be sure the OT who wrote the report is present at the team meeting. If he/she isn't going to be there, request that the meeting be rescheduled so he/she can attend. Ask the OT this question at the meeting. Don't ask "shouldn't the school be providing services" but turn it into something stated matter-of-factly such as "The report states that ds demonstrates sensory seeking behaviors that may inhibit his ability to access the curriculum. How specifically do you see the behaviors inhibiting his ability to access the curriculum?" Then use that answer to restate "DS is exhibiting ....(fill in the blank) behaviors. These behaviors impact him in the classroom by (fill in the blank). How will those behaviors be addressed such that ds is receiving full access to the curriculum?" (or something like that).
I found when advocating that if you just keep calmly restating factual information you'll get the school staff to agree to obvious things that they should legally be agreeing to. They can't argue something that they've found and reported, but they can definitely write up reports in such a way that as a parent you'd look at it and think, ok, he doesn't qualify.
Another thing that might come out of that - the OT might feel that he doesn't need an actual OT pull-out, but there might be sensory accommodations that would help. You can research accommodations yourself prior to the meeting, things such as sitting on a ball instead of a chair, squishy seat cushions (don't know the technical name), chew erasers, whatever might be a sensory tool/accommodation that might help your ds. To be honest, I'd find it a bit of shooting in the dark to try to figure those things out *without* the help of an OT. My older dd had a lot of what looked like sensory issues as a young child - which we later realized were due to severe vision issues... but fwiw she went through private sensory OT and a lot of what the OT worked on with us was how to accommodate her sensory challenges in the classroom, which meant (for her), listening therapy, headphones, squishy seat cushion, wearing a tight leo under her clothes. Things I *never* would have been able to figure out on my own that worked really well. DD's school also eventually set up a sensory "break" room (SPED OT's office) that students could go to when they needed a break and could swing/etc.
And I'm rambling now but just made the connection, fwiw, and it might be totally meaningless - dd had handwriting that looked very "dysgraphic" when she was in K-2nd grade. She also had low scores on symbol search and one other WISC subtest, and she had the appearance of having sensory seeking behaviors in a large enough way we were taking her to OT for it. In the end, it all turned out to be related to a visual challenge.
polarbear
