IEP Update, Part 1 of 2

OK, I’ve been putting it off long enough. I have a tendency, when I am stressed about something, to try to pretend it doesn’t exist. Plus, I am lazy. But I wanted to talk through what is going on, and maybe it will help me feel better.

First, some history:

• Age 2: During Gege’s evaluation at the regional center, it was determined that he needed speech therapy, occupational therapy, and early intervention classes. He made a lot of progress during this time.
• Age 3: Services switched to the school district in the Bay area where we lived. Their evaluation determined that Gege is not autistic, does not need OT, but still needed speech therapy, and that he only has speech delay. Progress was slow, I think because his speech therapist was awful. We supplemented with private therapy for a while, but it got expensive.
• Age 4 1/2: We moved down to southern California, and the school district here basically just used the IEP from the Bay area. I was too stupid to know I could request a new assessment. During this time, he attended Newton Preschool (I’m using fake names for all the schools) , a private preschool that really cared about him and tried to do their best to help his development.
• September 2011 (age 5): Gege started kindergarten at Matador Elementary. After 5 days, the school basically said that while Gege was academically ready, he was not emotionally mature enough for kindergarten. They said it was our choice whether or not to leave him there, but we could tell that it wasn’t right for him. Unfortunately, at the time, we didn’t know what would be right for him, so we sent him back to preschool. At this time, the director at Newton Preschool recommended that we request a new assessment, so we did.
• October-November 2011: Gege went to Amazing Preschool, which was affiliated with the school district and shared a campus with the special education department. I thought that would help him, but it didn’t. The director/teachers were useless and were predisposed to seeing him as a problem child because of him being “kicked out”of kindergarten, and treated him accordingly. It still angers me when I think about him being there for 2 months. Didi stayed at Newton during this time.
• December 2011: We switched Gege to Oak Hills, a private preschool. By the end of Day 1 we could tell that it was a VASTLY better place for Gege and made plans to switch Didi over as well. We loved Newton Preschool, but it was a pain taking them to two different schools, and Oak Hills is a lot closer to our new house. Gege’s new teacher is awesome and spends a lot of time during pick-up telling us about his day and what she observed about him, and giving us advice on how to handle his behavior. Both boys love the new school.

I need to add that while at Amazing Preschool, Gege developed a lot of negative, aggressive behaviors. I don’t know why, perhaps he was frustrated at the way he was being treated, or frustrated with not being able to communicate in general. These included:

• Throwing/breaking toys
• Hitting the other kids, throwing toys at other kids
• Kicking the teachers – he did this 3-4 times towards the end of his stay at Amazing Preschool. Each time, I was asked to pick him up, which I felt reinforced the behavior.
• Yelling/Tantrums
• General disobedience/rebelliousness
• Saying “shut up” and “stupid”

Each time Amazing Preschool reported something to us, we would talk to Gege about it, but it continued. The behavior was carrying over at home as well. When I told the director at Newton, she was surprised because while he did sometimes throw tantrums while he was at her school, he was never aggressive. So it was definitely something about the environment at Amazing Preschool. After he started at Oak Hills, he tried kicking the teacher once, got reprimanded (and didn’t get sent home), and never did it again. The other behaviors also slowly began to decrease.

Damn this is getting long. To be continued tomorrow…

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