Me again with more confusion and problems with the school district. I received a reevaluation report from the district a few weeks ago which included lots of negative crap about how awful my son has been over the last 2 years of IU services and results for all of his evaluations/cognitive testing.
Since I covered the cognitive testing in an earlier thread I'm not going to go over that again. Today we had the meeting to discuss all of this and plan for our IEP meeting. I had my sons mobile therapist and behavioral specialist through wrap around there with me. They are very helpful with knowing what to ask and helping me be more bitc... er, assertive.
First off the invitation letter I received had stated there would be a "teacher of the gifted" there today. He or she was notably absent. And I had been all excited that the giftedness was finally being recognized and addressed. The behaviorist who wrote about my son during his testing was there though, I do not like her and she has been consistently unfriendly and negative.
First order of business for me was that I was concerned that the FBA being referenced throughout the document is over a year old and done when my son was 3 (he is now 5). I feel that it is much too out of date. The behaviorist said she did a new FBA and it's in the document. I explained that I can't believe I missed an FBA as carefully as I have read this thing over (multiple times). She told me the new FBA was conducted by her during the cognitive testing. I said that was just a paragraph describing his behaviors in one setting and was hardly something I would consider to be indicative of his behavior in a natural environment or to qualify as an FBA. I asked why she hadn't instead chosen to see my son in his IU play group he attends weekly. She responded that district FBA's aren't the same as IU FBA's and that a paragraph based on one viewing is appropriate for their purposes. It did not contain any data, just a running description of what she saw during the IQ test.
We went through the document, starting with why my son won't get OT (it will be integrated and the school has a sensory room he can go to if he gets upset). He has no fine motor delay by their testing. I brought up the fact that he was tested at a local OT provider and tested from a high of age 7.5 on fine motor integration to a low of below age 2 on upper limb coordination on the BOT-2. I mentioned that clearly there is a significant problem with fine motor, just not the area they tested. They went with the we are only concerned about school performance line. I mentioned that it is an area very important for his participation in phys. ed. and that my son isn't able to open doorknobs or the car door due to this particular problem. They told me that a lot of 5 year olds can't open car doors? They also said I must be confused, that I am talking about gross motor. There was no OT at the meeting, but I am pretty sure it is fine motor because it was part of an OT evaluation of fine motor.
This does not even take into account sensory difficulties, which of course are much harder to prove with numbers. All of the IU OT's so far (2) have attributed his sensory behaviors to attention seeking thus far. We do not see any attention seeking behaviors at home, but we see tons of sensory stuff. The report itself mentions heavy crayon pressure, distracted by visual stimuli, does not like to be touched, does not realize when his face is dirty, and chews on non-food items. That was all from teacher reports. The sensory processing measure I filled out shows differences from age level peers in the areas of social participation, hearing, touch, balance and motion, and planning and ideas. Later the document mentions that he responds negatively to loud noises and gets distressed in a crowded room and that he is fearful of excessive movement such as swings and slides and does not like tilting his head backward.
It says: In summery DS presents with age appropriate fine motor and visual motor skills needed for tasks required in school. He could benefit from an OT consultation to the educational team. He does not qualify for continuing OT services.
When we got to the cognitive testing portion of the report the lady going over it all looked and me and asked who had requested this testing. I told her I had. She said "There is a reason we don't do cognitive testing on children at this age, it doesn't yield useful results, as we are seeing here." I responded that I felt that the result was quite useful as they could no longer claim my son isn't gifted. She didn't seem impressed with my argument. She pretty much glossed over the whole cognitive section and said his IQ was 12 points lower than his WPSSI GAI as she said the WPSSI wasn't completed anyway and they don't use the WPSSI at his age, so she used the KBIT 2 score instead (which he was even less interested in completing than the WPSSI as he was playing with the piles of interesting junk on the lady's desk).
Looking over my sons subtest scores she went through them and said he did well with a 19 on block design and got a 17 out of 21 on information, but that the rest of his scores were only average with "only an 11 on picture memory". Does information go up to 21? I just figured they all went to 19? Our mobile therapist shot her quite a look when she put only in front of 11. I mean, its actually slightly above average? If it involves memory I can't see how he didn't do better. I do know that for speech he had some sentence memory test (recalling sentences) and got a super high score. And he remembers new words and integrates them in his own speech after just one introduction. Of course, I don't know that the picture memory test actually tests memory... but it sure sounds like it might! The report makes it very clear he was not trying at all when he did the 3 "average" sections. Clearly he might potentially have done better if he had tried. Or he might not have, either way I hardly think the test was useless.
They also mentioned that he doesn't know all of his letters because he "got some wrong" on some test. Yeah, he has known his letters since 18 months, upper and lower. If he got some wrong, it certainly wasn't because he doesn't know them. When they said he showed some phoneme awareness our MT snorted and said "He can read." I was thankful for that
They said that he didn't show that he could read for the test. I said that my son reads when and what he wants to and I'm sorry he didn't want to read just then. They asked me to come in sometime with a book and have him read for them. I let them know that it wasn't that important to me and that his IU coordinator was over once and heard him read, they could ask her. They apparently don't trust myself or our wraparound staff?
Later in the document they recommend against speech, but mention he has pragmatic deficits and awful scores on pragmatics and social skills. They intend to address these in the classroom. In fact, they said it's a "pragmatics based classroom."
I learned that the class will be a level 1 autistic support classroom at a nearby school in the district. After the meeting our MT and BSC mentioned that they both work in that classroom and unless there are big changes in next years kids they don't see it being a good fit. Apparently most of the students have mild to moderate cognitive deficits and are much more "autistic" than my son. Plus they report that the program isn't great. No ABA, no visual schedules. In fact they both said they didn't even know it was classified as autism support because it's a very unstructured program with none of the usual supports expected. They also know I'm a clean freak and that my son has many allergies (oddly listed as sensitivities by the district) and let me know if is a very old and very dirty building.
Overall I'm left confused and upset after the meeting. We scheduled an IEP meeting 2 weeks hence. I felt like they were very negative towards me, dismissive of my sons cognitive scores, and very negative about his behaviors. There were 2 ladies there who seemed very nice. The lady running the meeting and the behaviorist were the ones we heard the most from and they were far from nice. I'm getting really tired of all of the meetings and work on my end and the total lack of results the past 2 years. The one lady there apologized on behalf of the IU that they hadn't been able to meet my sons needs in the past due to budget issues (no preschool classroom placement available for him).
My first question is, should I be moving to a better district ASAP or should I fool around with asking for an out of district placement? Should I take what they are offering and see how it works? Wait for it to fail and then request an out of district placement? There is a district about 20 minutes away that is considered one of the best in the area for autism. I'm not sure if that applies to the whole spectrum though, I know that they are great for low functioning. It's a very pricey area to live in, but a very rich district. We are in a very poor area right now. The room we had our meeting in today was so hot, no AC in the school and they can't open any windows due to the prison bars
I can't imagine what an older and more run down building would look like.
My other option is to stay where we are and just homeschool. I have to say homeschooling is just OK for us at this point. I get easily frustrated on bad days and I'd really love to get back to work again. I have been the only one able to take care of my son/deal with him for over 5 years now. I've honestly had about enough. Not even one night away from him ever. We are very much suffering from too much time together! I will homeschool though if I need to, but I'd love to get him in a great program that he loves outside of the home. I've had about enough of it being all me :\
Well, at any rate, I'd really appreciate any advice. Everyone here is always so helpful. I hope to someday be able to use this board for the happier aspects of having a 2E child, but for now I feel like a big complainer.
And on a happy note, today my son picked some flowering weeds and brought them to me. He whispered in my ear "Here mommy, an early mother's day present, because I know you like flowers and I know it's nice to give you things you like and I love you." One of them was one of my pansies, but I didn't even complain
