Oh happy day!!!

This morning I had Matthew's IEP meeting. For those not familiar with the term it stands for Individual Educational Plan. Students receiving Special Education services are required to have one and they are updated every year before the child's birthday. Matthew's birthday is next Tuesday so this meeting discussed the goals he had last year and how well he accomplished them and what goals they want to have in place for next year. It gets kind of confusing when the plan covers two different school years but after a while you get used to it. Last year he was in the Early Childhood program at a different school with different teachers and the IEP was amended slightly when he transitioned into Kindergarten. A special meeting was held last April for that purpose. I was in the hospital recovering from appendix surgery so I was unable to make that meeting but thankfully the loving husband stepped in and took over. Matthew has been making steady progress over the past three years and during the time over in the EC program he really started to develop needed skills. It was still a pretty rocky few years behavior wise. Some of the first meetings that I attended both for IEP and when he underwent the Autism testing were not very positive in terms of what was going on with Matthew. This is not to say he was a bad student or difficult behavior problem. As a parent I see my child in a whole different enviroment and have my own expectations and opinions of him. The school looks at him in terms of goals and academic standards. When he started school at 3 (three days after his 3rd b-day) he had a limited vocabulary and language skills, poor gross motor skills, poor fine motor skills, and poor social/behavioral skills. He had made a lot of improvement in the 6 months we used the Birth to 3 program and had a speech therapist and early childhood teacher come to the house and work with him. It was actually the early ed teacher who pointed out to me that Matthew should have a full evaluation and not just a language evaluation by the school district when he aged out of the Birth to 3 program. I still remember the feelings of dismay and disappointment I felt as I sat there through those meetings and saw in writing and heard from the professionals all the things Matthew was not able to do or could do with great difficulty. There was never a shortage of goals to work on. I won't even go into the really horrible meeting two years ago just before Matthew turned 4 when I got the results of the Autism testing. I was seeing improvement but there was still so much this kid needed to do. I was very worried that he might not get to mainstream into Kindergarten. Even last year was difficult in the beginning. The teacher was very concerned that Matthew's classroom behaviors were so out of control that even with an aid he would not really do well in a mainstream classroom. After putting him on medication (yes, it does work if used correctly and for the right reasons) and investing time and money into extra therapy we saw a big turn around in Matthew. He started this year with a few small problems and conferences didn't go too badly. We received glowing reports from his teachers and his behavior at home also improved. Last week I got a call from Matthew's Physical Therapist telling me that Matthew had met all of the goals on the IEP and had been doing so well that she didn't feel the need to continue the therapy after this year. She would still act as a consultant if needed and he still gets adaptive PE . This morning I sat there and the teachers and professionals at the table just couldn't say enough nice things about Matthew. His teacher really liked having him in class and the aid said she hardly needed to do much with him in terms of behavior or getting work done. Everyone reported that Matthew got along very well with his classmates and interacted appropriately in class and at recess. He was able to have conversations back and forth with them and even had a "girlfriend". They actually had to struggle to come up with a social skills goal. There were still things that Matthew needed to work on so he still has speech and occupational therapy goals. He will still get the Autism consultant. The difference will be that next year she will come into the classroom and work with him instead of me taking him to her office. We decided to try next year without the aid to see if Matthew could handle the classroom by himself and he will ride the bus instead of having transportation provided by the district. I left the meeting felling better than I had in years. Part of me still can't believe that Matthew has made so much progress. It will probably hit me next fall as I try and get Mr. Crabby out of bed and off to meet the bus that I will have a "normal" elementary child. I'm so happy!!!!