parent teacher meeting

Today was an important meeting at R2's school... I had rescheduled it twice, so I was so glad to be in town and available today. 

The way Special Ed works is, the student has to be in the school for 30+days before a diagnosis can be made that they qualify for Spec Ed classes. After meeting R2, they went ahead and made a temporary placement in the special class, planning on doing testings and evaluations and observations and such during the 30 day period. 

So, now that is over and today I sat down with a lot of people and discussed their findings.

I know my kid pretty well, so none of it was a surprise to me. Significant vision impairment? You don't say! and so on. So I tried really hard to show my appreciation for all of the work they've done in getting this understanding of R2, which is actually pretty darn accurate. 

So the diagnostician gave her results, and the speech therapists, and the physical and occupational therapists, and a variety of others. They all said something like, "Well, we started with this standardized test, but we weren't really getting anywhere, so we threw it out and tried testing this way. He didn't really want to cooperate, but he's such a nice kid." something along those lines. My boy had charmed every single one of those teachers. 

He ended up testing at a developmental level of about a 2 year old, which is a little younger than what I thought, but since I have what amounts to 2 2 year olds at home every day, I can see some truth in that.

A few of my favorite moments... 

•In one testing period, he started getting frustrated and wanting to be done, when the bell rang. This non-verbal little guy turned to the teacher and said, "The bell is ringing." 

•They were asking me about what signs he knows and I showed one he's been doing a lot that I didn't recognize. The speech therapist was laughing really hard and said it's the sign for "chocolate".

•They said he tears it up when they give him the microphone. I explained what his daddy does for a living and they thought it made a lot of sense. 

•At one point, the occupational therapist was reading a long list of "emerging" skills, or things that he is learning or trying but still not succeeding at. She said, "It's just so exciting. The world is about to break wide open for him..." I got a little choked up.

So overall it was so encouraging, and I hated to tell them we are probably moving in January. After a brief outburst of "Don't take my baby!" from a couple of them, they said the Individual Education Plan could be transferred to the new school in Texas, which made me feel better.

Overall, super encouraging meeting. YAY!