Monday, April 30, 2007

The Meeting

Bubba's IEP meeting was today. I get all worked up about these things...at this point I don't know why. Lots of great ideas are talked about, but the IEP is watered down in the end. I've learned that the follow up letter, documenting all of the "great ideas" and other topics in writing, is more important than the IEP. Not how it should be, but for us that's how it is.

Today they suggested that since Bubba's behavior has drastically improved in the educational setting, that we no longer need a behavior intervention plan. (Only a year ago they felt he was so out of control they were throwing him in a seclusion room!) I guess that means we should just take him off the medication that corresponds to his behavior change then, huh? I mean since his behavior is better and all? (For those of you who didn't know, we made the difficult decision to put him on medication, which I will post about some day.)

Anyhow, I pushed my issue of developing self-regulation and self-determination skills. He'll have a behavior intervention plan. We are in that pickle that many families seem to get into...child doing well at school, child flipping out at home. At least we figured out why he's flipping out about some of the homework they send home...apparently he struggles during 'morning work' and then the work is sent home for him to complete. Already feeling like a failure, he certainly doesn't want to attempt the work again.

I tried to stress that when Bubba is home, he is not on medication, so all is not well. We chose to use medication to keep him regulated enough to allow the self-regulation strategies to be absorbed and learned. It is working, but there is much more to be taught. It was never about gaining compliance and then leaving it at that. Well at least not for us, his parents.

He also does very well with modeling from peers so he doesn't need the at-home strategies like listing steps of homework--he just looks to see what other kids are doing and runs with that visual prompt.

I'm pretty wiped out now, thanks to the half of a Xanax I took before the meeting. Sorry for the jumbled post, but that's all you're getting tonight.
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Ange,

I find your situation very interesting. My Aunt and Uncle have 2 boys with developmental disabitlities. One has Asperger's and the other has ACC and was born without a corpus collosum (he is actually my godchild). I know ACC is rare and your reference to your family on Mom-nos's blog stood out in my mind. My son is also autistic. Just thought its an interesting connection. No real comment here other than "hello". I'll be a new fan to your site!!

10:00 AM
Ange said...

Well, hello! Thank you for sharing your story. I strongly believe that my experience with my older son shaped my feelings about autism in general. I have a lot of conflict with 'autism' itself because we could not get assistance or understanding with our son with ACC because he didn't have "autism" even though we were experiencing many of the same struggles and needs for intervention and support. So now he has a diagnosis of PDD-NOS and doors are opening. It really frustrates me that he had to have the ASD diagnosis to get assistance. Then you have my little one who is also diagnosed PDD-NOS, but received his diagnosis before his brother and who doesn't have any structural brain differences noted. They are as different as they are alike!

12:01 PM

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