Hi eco,
I've also been following your thread but haven't had a chance to respond. Please don't feel like you're taking up "too much space" on the forum - that's what's great about posting here, there are other 2e parents who understand. If you searched through old posts you'd most likely find that most of us who respond have had our own periods of uber-posting when our kids were facing a tough situation at school or in life
Re everything, ita with DeeDee and Geofizz on everything they've replied/posted.
I'm also curious about the teacher who filled out the sensory eval - was that the art teacher or a different teacher? Any type of behavior-related assessment should be completed by more than one person, and by adults who are observing the child in more than one "domain" - i.e., a parent should have input in addition to school personnel, and the professional who is evaluating the combined evals should be able to have a sense of how behavior differs from home to school. I would also be vary wary of having just one teacher fill out the form, especially a teacher who appears to not like your ds and who's had issues with other kids at school.
A comment made by the principal somewhere upthread leaves me with the gut feeling the principal isn't going to let your ds get kicked out of this program, and it's possible he's had other parents who've had issues with this same teacher. You should be having a team meeting in the very near future at school to update your ds' 504 plan - when you do, request that the sensory eval, if it's used, is completed by ds' other teachers and any other school staff that works closely with him, as well as by *you* and your spouse or ds' dad or any other adult who spends a considerable amount of time with your ds.
Re sensory issues, I do believe that sensory interventions can help, but strongly feel (really strongly!) that most often what appears to be a sensory issue has an underlying root cause. One of my dds was diagnosed with sensory processing issues when she was young, and she went through around a year of sensory OT, and it really did help - a lot. It gave her coping mechanisms that worked to reduce anxiety and that was very significant. She'd been unable to sit still while working at school, and she had difficulty with audio-overload, couldn't hear the person talking directly to her because she heard other classroom background noises so loudly. The sensory OT really did help with that... but... and this is a huge "but"... the root issue wasn't an audio issue or an anxiety issue or anything that the sensory therapy addressed - all it did was give her ways to cope with things that were bi-products of the real issue - she couldn't see and we didn't realize it. Once we had the real issue figured out and treated/accommodated, the "sensory" issues disappeared.
I believe that sensory challenges are very real, just firmly believe that it's important to understand the whole functioning of a child first, and make a forward plan from there, rather than tackling things piecemeal and trying to apply a sensory "bandage" to what is an underlying challenge.
You have a 504 plan now, but have you considered requesting an IEP evaluation?
I am going to look upthread, then return and make a suggestion if you haven't.
Best wishes,
polarbear
