Saturday, February 03, 2007

Another Evaluation report....

A couple of weeks ago we had another evaluation done on Nicholas to determine his eligibility for special ed. services. The evaluation itself was pretty short,only lasting about an hour,as compared to his other eval at the peds office which was 3 hours. It is not surprising to us that Nick has significant delays in communication, cognitive, and social development; so I am not in the least bit shocked...but part of me still is. To see everything written down on paper is just emotional sometimes. I am usually just pretty numb when going over the results; it takes time to sink in that this is life for us, and more importantly for HIM. I guess it just reminds me that even though Nick has made huge progress in the last year, we still have a long road ahead of us. His total language score was the age equivalent to a 10 month old. In auditory comprehension he scored at a 7 month level. His expressive language was a bit better because he uses a lot of echolalia-and that was at a 14 month old level. I just feel so lost sometimes. The world of special ed. seems so daunting-we have to develop an education plan for him with goals of what we would like him to accomplish. Simple things such as being able to function in classroom activities,playing with toys appropriately, requesting food items, and cleaning up. I know he will accomplish this and so much more,but it just seems overwhelming.

They are sending copies of this report to Evergreen Preschool, and we are supposed to get a call from his team of teachers next week. We will set up yet another meeting to develop his IEP. He will attend half-day preschool, and I suppose the other half we will have to coordinate with home therapies. He is now on the waiting list to receive ABA and speech therapies in our home from the University of Wa. We have another evaluation on the 8th of Feb. with Dr. Flake at Developmental Ped. I am going to see if we can get Nick in with a feeding specialist to do something about all his issues with eating. It never ends!

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