IEP Update, Part 2 of 2

Continued from Part 1. The IEP meeting was scheduled for mid-December. I was expecting it to take half an hour like the ones in the Bay area, but I ended up being in there for 2 hours and it made me very, very happy that we moved to this school district.

The attendees were: Gege’s speech therapist, an occupational therapist, the school psychologist, a special education teacher, a general ed teacher, and the special ed coordinator. All except the general ed teacher and the coordinator had evaluated Gege, both by observing him in his class at Amazing Preschool, and by taking him out for one-on-one evaluations. Each of the evaluators discussed what they wrote on their reports. This took up most of the 2 hours. The condensed version:

• He has autistic-like behaviors, but they are not consistent and seem to be under his control. They do not feel Gege is autistic because if he were, he would not be able to control it and they would occur all the time.
• Gege has social-emotional issues that could be due to living in an orphanage during his first year of life.
• His newly acquired aggressive behavior is preventing additional development.
• He does seem to have some sensory issues.

Towards the end, the school psychologist mentioned that Gege “seems to have made himself OK with being alone.” I almost started crying at that point, because I knew what she meant. In fact, I was pushing hard against the tears the whole time, and was mostly successful. But basically, Gege can be quite social, and loves other kids, but they tend to reject him because they can’t understand what he is saying. Eventually, he stops trying to talk to them and will just go off and play by himself, but in a way like he doesn’t care and it is his choice to play alone.

After that, the coordinator discussed their recommendations and what Gege qualifies for. Firstly, they felt he did not belong in pre-K where he is almost 1.5 years older than everyone else. Instead, the team recommended that he return to kindergarten, but in a special ed program. There are two programs that they think he qualifies for: one for kids with speech/language delay, and one for kids with behavioral issues. Unfortunately, there isn’t a program that does both. The team recommended the latter program, because they feel that his behavioral issues are getting in the way of his speech and language development. In the end, this is what we as a team agreed to:

• Speech therapy will increase from 60 to 90 minutes per week
• Gege will get an OT consultation
• We will enroll him in the program for students with behavioral issues. This is a program where there is one teacher assigned per kid, and there is currently only 4 kids. The program is for K-2 and at this time Gege will be the only kindergartner. The others are 1st and 2nd graders. The idea is to eventually move the kids to general ed classes. They will assign Gege to one of the general ed kindergarten classes, and he’ll spend an increasingly longer time each week with that class (the special ed teacher assigned to him will be with him the whole time).
• We will apply for him to get ISES (Intensive Social-Emotional Services) – the coordinator was confident that Gege will be accepted. This is a therapist who meets with the children one-on-one several times a week.

All of the above will be provided by the district (i.e., free). At the time, I felt relieved and that the behavioral program was the best thing for him. But that was in mid-December, and since then the aggressiveness has decreased dramatically. I have not heard him say “shut up” or “stupid” in a long time and his teachers have not reported it either. Ever since we came back from holiday break, his teacher has been telling me how well he has been doing and what an improvement he’s made.

I started to feel doubts about sending him to a behavioral program and that maybe he should be going to the program for kids with speech and language delay. I mean, the behavior is probably due to frustration at not being able to communicate. So why not work on that, instead? And he’s been moved around so much in the last few months…what if we send him to the behavioral program, realize it’s not right for him, and then have to move him AGAIN?

So I went to Newton Preschool and talked to the director, because she knows Gege really well, and this is her field of expertise. She said that it might be good to send him to the behavioral program for now, where they can teach him ways to cope with his frustration rather than lashing out, and have him finish out the kindergarten year there, which is still a good 5 months of being in one place. And then for 1st grade, maybe he can move over to the speech and language program. In the meantime, he will still be getting speech therapy 3 times a week. Talking to her made me feel a lot better.

So Gege is scheduled to start the new program next Tuesday, after Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

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