just some cute pictures!

Hi everyone!

I've been so wordy, so have some cute kid pictures!  1st, Iain slurping down a mango lassi, the worlds best drink, in his mind!  Soccer (aka football) is on the screen.

 And here's Ria, enjoying a good read!

see you!

Contemplations

We're in a phase of contemplations for Ria, again.  As usual.

Iain is at a fabulous "choice" school in our public school system...parent participation, developmentally focused, etc., etc.  We have been excited about the idea of Ria being at school with Iain for months, years!

So....since finishing the IEP excitement, we've been thinking about actual Kindergarten, and realizing that Iain's school might not be the ideal place for Ria.  There is just so much stuff going on in the classroom at Iain's school, and with Ria's tendency to lose focus in noisy/exciting environments, that might just not work for her.  So, we're considering whether the regular, normal, neighborhood school might be better for her.

I've been feeling pretty odd about this idea that it might be better for her at the regular school.  Tonight, William realized that my odd feelings are stemming from the fact that, if we figure that the neighborhood school would be better for Ria, it will be the first time that the right thing for my kids will be the thing that is EASIER FOR ME.

How very odd.  Good for the kids, AND easier for me.  Is that allowed?

We're not fully decided.  We're scheduling visits for Ria at both schools so we and the teachers can watch her in the 2 environments and compare and contrast.  However, we're thinking its more likely she'll be at the neighborhood school.

*Phew*!!! What a relief.

What a lovely day.....have a picture!  This is Ria's Valentines picture from her Social Thinking class....just too darn cute!

So, we had the initial IEP meeting on Wednesday.  This is the one where they decide if she's a difficult enough case to spend any time on, if she gets services, if she gets put in a special classroom, if she speaks well enough, everything, just everything.  We've been a bit spazzy this last few weeks, months.

It ended up GREAT!  Not the ideal I'd hoped for, but definitely, I think, the best we could have managed.  Ria qualified for an IEP (Individualized Education Plan) under the autism clause, and was determined to be able to benefit from being schooled in a "general education classroom".  I.e., no "special day class" (SDC), which is what we all think of as a special education classroom from our childhoods, and no "inclusion classroom" which is kind of higher performing SDC (not sure if California terms them "inclusion classrooms", but other states do).  We were worried a bit about that, since Ria's ability to focus declines precipitously when a room gets noisy/lively, even in her 11 child preschool.  Based on reading the reports, we felt like we would either not get an IEP at all, or they'd swing way the other way and want to stick her in an SDC.

Admittedly, we only got the IEP by the skin of our teeth.  Ria was too borderline to clearly match the federal definition of who MUST be given special education services, so even though we all agreed on her strengths and weaknesses, she couldn't be definitively given an IEP.  They didn't even come to the meeting with draft IEP goals, which says a lot.  The director of special education was at the meeting, and she basically had to make the call at the meeting based on what we were discussing.  Luckliy, through working with the IEP advocate, we had developed a better understanding of the very basic minimum meaning of having an IEP, which is having a child who needs to be tracked against goals that are different from what the general population need to be tracked against.  Notice the lack of the word "services" in that definition.  We pushed on the "how are we going to track her progress", and "how will we measure if she is not progressing and needs more assistance" type of questions, and apparently that really resonated with the director of special ed.  Initially she's going to be assigned to one of the autism inclusion specialist for our district, who will work with the teacher to set up techniques to work with Ria, and will be in the classroom 30 minutes a month to take metrics (to measure progress against goals) and fine tune classroom approaches.

You've come so far!  Have a picture!  This one was taken by Alastair and Bev when they bravely took 3 kids, on their own, to a place they'd never been before back in January.  This is Ria, Rowan, and Iain having fun with bubbles at the Children's Discovery Museum.

The next step is to talk to the teachers at Iain's school to decide how to best place her.  The district wants her at a typical school (Iain's school is a parent participation school that is project based...a FABULOUS school, but with a tendency towards more movement and chaos, since there's often 2 or 3 different groups working on different things in the room.) and advises against Iain's school....but then they advise EVERYONE who is slightly atypical to avoid that school, so I take their advice there with a grain of salt.  We're going to see if the calmest of our 3 classrooms, possibly with a reduced day length (Kindergarten is "full day" here), would be sufficient for her.  If the teachers at Iain's school feel strongly that Ria wouldn't do well there, then we will put her in the regular school for our neighborhood-- which is also a great school, just not Iain's school.

So, we're still waiting for the draft IEP to review and comment on, but once we've done that, and decided about the placement for next year, then we are DONE with this issue until school starts in the fall!  Whee!

I cannot describe how much more relaxed I feel now that this horrific part of the process has been done.  They've been convinced, not only that Ria needs help, but also that she is WAY too close to "typical" to be stuck in a special classroom.  They see how smart she is, and her huge potential (and as is typical for her, she's charmed the socks off them all!).

We'll let you know how the school decision goes ;-).