For those who don't know, IEP is a big fat meeting for parents and everyone involved in your special needs child's education and therapy plan through the school district. We review plans and set goal for the upcoming year. As parents, we can call a meeting any time if we feel things aren't going well, but please, once a year is enough. Though, this one did go so well maybe we should call one just to get the compliments!
Dylan's PT Michael also came to help set her PT goals and the school PT was so glad that he was there because Dylan flew through all her walking goals during the summer. We set a goal for transitioning from different surfaces and also a stairs goal. The problem is that the only stairs that are at the school are in the playground and there was a lot of talk about how protective she is with herself around other kids. (Siblings much?) Mike chimed In and said they have a stair thing that he can have donated to the school, it's three stairs, a platform and three stairs and it's apparently very large. (I have seen them in therapy rooms in magazines and Make A Wish pictures.) But man, you should have seen the room light up after he mentioned it! There are lots of kids that can use it! (Mike had a walker donated to the school for Dylan last year and he will be able to get Dylan's home walker back to donate to someone else.) He actually said that they will be quite happy to see it gone since it's big and has been hanging out for a long time!
Mike said he can't wait for her to get to the point when the playground and stairs are fun rather than us having to use toys and things to convince her to do her climbing. That will be a big deal.
We also told the Speech Therapist that when she feels it would be beneficial for Dylan to get therapy outside of school let us know and we will pursue it on our own. She thought that was great, she will let us know when that time comes.
Some of the other goals are peg in pegboard, stacking blocks, handing things over when asked, looking for items or people, responding to her name, using toys properly and less putting things in the mouth. She is already getting better at the mouthing toys thing, we have all noticed great improvement here in the last few weeks, we just need to take the toy out and replace it with a chew toy that is clipped on to her.
Everyone was very impressed with her and excited about her progress and potential. It was a great meeting and we felt really good about where things are what's to come. It really was a great meeting and I could tell she is surrounded by people who genuinely care about her while she is at school.
The other day Matthew asked Duncan if the other kids played with Dylan or if they left her alone and he said they played with her. I mentioned this to Shelley and she said the kids in the four year old class that were in her class last year know she's in the orange room and actually stop by to say hi to her. Doesn't that just warm your heart? Last week Traci came over to play and Abbi took a break from Duncan and was all cutesy playing with Dylan for a while, handing her babies and talking to her and everything. It was pretty awesome.
I was able to take the kids in to school on Wednesday and Shelley asked how I felt that meeting went and I told her it was great, we were very happy with it. Then I mentioned what I posted here the other day. I like the goals that will help her communicate her needs but I basically just want her her to be involved and happy. Shelley was actually really funny about this. Yea, that's not good enough for her! She was going on about how much potential Dylan has and how she has this great communicative potential. She said she Is ready to do the augmentative communication stuff (like choices via iPad and such) but the Speech Therapist said she isn't there yet. She just said she wanted to make sure that we knew that she was an advocate for Dylan in the school. (Which we gathered after the feeding issue.) She is very kind and she just loves Dylan a ton.
And Dylan loves her too. One of the things that The Speech Therapist said is that they were trying to figure out if Dylan responds to her name or the person's voice because she is so much more responsive to Shelley and Ms. Connie, Dylan's teacher. Ms. Connie is great, I didn't know she was so involved with Dylan until I watched Dylan light up when we were saying goodbye to her once. She knows who she likes that's for sure.
I just recently posted so I don't have any new pics... Well, a few of Asher. but none of Dylan and this post is all about her. So I threw this one in for fun. Talk about an outtake! (From the family pictures I posted a couple weeks ago!)
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