Isaac art. The figure on the left is Isaac. He got frustrated by the mouth of "mama" he was drawing, declared it "poop," and stopped working on it. Couldn't find his other drawings, so this one will have to do.
Wednesday the 7th, Isaac had the formal preschool evaluation through the school district. Since he is from a "bilingual" household they had a French speaking interpreter there. The evaluation process was almost identical to the play-based pre-assessment. The speech pathologist, child psychologist, and an administrative official watched him play, spoke and tried to engage him in different activities, and made notes. The French interpreter not very useful though. After watching for a half hour, they wanted her to initiate play with him in French. She didn't know what to say or do and really didn't know how to speak to small children. Isaac basically ignored her and kept returning to the original assessors. And I know he understood, her, she just wasn't particularly interesting to him. Dommage!
At the end of their evaluation they had a brief meeting with me. In that meeting they said he definitely qualified for preschool, and in fact they were recommending the most intensive, 4 hours a day 5 days a week preschool. They have several preschool programs ranging from just speech therapy to social, cognitive, and physical therapy. Isaac has severe speech delays, some social delays (they noticed that he is very rigid in his play and doesn't take kindly to outside suggestions to change the play), and some gaps in his cognitive development.
It is hard to come to the terms that he does indeed fall under the "special needs" umbrella. I just see him as my little boy, my Isaac. Originally I thought he just had speech delays, then, as he got closer to 3 noticed the social problems. As far as gaps in his cognitive development, I think at least part of that stems from his inability to effectively communicate and interact with people. There is definitely a spark in that child, I know there is! He is very clever in some areas, such as problem solving and puzzles. He also has excellent control of his body, both fine and gross motor control. Jonathan is more practical about it, "If the label fits, so be it, as long as he is getting the help he needs." He is right.
The next step in the process will be the ARD meeting with the school district in which we will set some goals, determine the suitable program, and have him registered for school. Fortunately, we as parents have a lot of flexibility. We can alter the days and the length of time he is in school to what works best for Isaac. Before the meeting we'll check out the preschool, meet the teachers, submit paperwork. There is a lot still to learn before the ARD meeting which will influence our decisions...
The ARD meeting will likely take place at the end of January after the formal written evaluation is submitted. After that he can enroll in school. We'll see how things go!
2 comments:
Do they think Isaac may have a form of autism? I have a friend with an autistic six year old and I could just see the frustration in his face when he tried to communicate. He knew acting up would get attention and so he did. Now he has some communication skills and it's helping them a lot.
I was a bit slow as a preschooler and I'm ok. I was evaluated and they said to send me to a small school district. So my parents moved, and then I just blossomed in 1st or 2nd grade. It just took me awhile to get it.
Dunno. Autism kind of has that "whatever you want it to mean" fuzziness to me. To me it feels like he has a more severe form of what Matthew had, which was basically "cured" with speech therapy.
I think Melissa had a touch of the same thing but it was less noticeable since girls pick up speech significantly faster than boys. In other words, compared to other girls, Melissa was slow to speak in sentences etc, but she was even with boys her age.
Odd, since neither Rachel nor I have that running in our families. Luck of the genetic draw, I guess.
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