Thursday, April 14, 2011

Progress is Good

Benjamin turns three years old on April 24.

On April 25, he starts school.

*sniff*

He will attend a local primary school that has a wonderful special education preschool program, Monday through Thursday, 8 to 11. (Really more like 7:30 to 11:30, depending on when the bus picks him up and drops him off.) He will attend school for five weeks and then it will be summer break.

Then in August, he will go back with the same exact schedule. And Andrew will start kindergarten. All day. Five days a week.

Wow.

We had B's first (of many in his lifetime) IEP meeting. For those of you not in education or not in this special-needs world, an IEP is an Individualized Education Program. Basically every child in special education has one; it is a written statement that describes a child's special education and related services.

The results of his evaluation were given to us during this meeting.

I'm sure many of you who have been there before know.

It's one thing to know your chid is delayed, but to see it in front of you in black and white is sobering. It wasn't quite the slap in the face that I expected it to be, but it was still no fun. But it was necessary.

There were 11 areas, and he was "significantly delayed" in 8 of those 11 areas, including cognitive thinking, expressive language skills, social/emotional, self-help skills, adaptive behavior, social-emotional, cognitive, and communication. He scored "moderately delayed" in small muscle skills and "low average" in large muscle skills and physical development.

He is 35 months old and scored about 14 months verbally.

His score on the cognitive development area was so low it couldn't be computed so it was just <50. Yikes.

Well, I guess we have nowhere to go but up.

In all reality, since he was evaluated (in late February/early March), he has already made quite a bit of progress verbally and otherwise.

He says a few words now, and it blows my mind to hear them. They're not horribly consistent and don't really sound much like what they're supposed to.

But they are words.

ball

shoes

red

bye-bye

Connections are starting to be made.

The lightbulb wasn't switched on like it would be in a typical child, but someone is slowwwwwly moving that dimmer switch up.

Two things he struggles with in OT is feeding himself with a spoon and stacking blocks.

But we're making progress.

And progress is good.





Have I mentioned how much I love this boy? Cuz I do.

5 comments:

Sofia's Angels Foundation said...

As a wise English women says "He is truly splendid"...<3

The other me said...

I know I say it all the time but I really love this little man and watching him from afar is such a treat. I love that you let me know when you have blogged about him. I think he is spectacular, my sister is older and way back when she was a baby, downs was such a 'put them away and forget about them' syndrome, Jenny was nearly Benjamin's age when we went to pick her up from the childrens' home. She couldn't even sit up, she was a bendy, floppy little doll that didn't move or react at all. She has done so beautifully even with her terrible start in life. Benjamin is flying in comparison to Jenny. I am so excited to watch him as he learns more and more. He is perfectly splendid. Thank you for sharing him with us.

FourMartins said...

that last picture is beyond adorable :)

tarynddavidson said...

I love this because it shows me what I have to look forward to. Celebrate the little things!!
Life is like a box of chocolates, right? And I love my little almond joy too!

JILL said...

I could have sworn I commented. I am so sorry Matthew wasn't home to go to the IEP meeting with you. They can be so negative sometimes. You will run into people trying to act like they know your child better than you do. Usually it is the ones who met him once.
Just keeping fighting for all you know he needs and for all you know he can do!!
I think you need to brace yourself for a language explosion very soon, too.