Meeting 2: Progress, Regression

After meeting 1 came meeting 2. Imagine that!

The meeting opened with the fine motor and adaptive skills evaluation results. I wasn't surprised that there had been lack of progress, but I was surprised as to how he had regressed and not progressed in grasping, visual-motor, and self help. He was evaluated as "average" in the areas a year ago and now is two standard deviations below age level. Some skills have not moved forward or have stayed at "appear to be emerging" while other skills have regressed.

I won't go into it all because it's really not important to you what he can and cannot do. You love him anyways just like we do. This stuff shouldn't matter to you. I'm not even sure if it matters to me.

I have long believed that what impacts Moosie the most is his motor planning. Heck, it influenced why he wasn't verbal, why he didn't play, why he prefers to watch rather than do. It's a complicated process, that motor planning! And when it impacts your whole body, well, it impacts everything.

But here's the thing. He has made so much progress with language, speech and the resulting social participation. He is confident, excited, he has a repertoire of many things to pull from now. It makes a lot of sense that he would regress in other areas since he's using his energy and resources for other areas.

But now, because he is falling again and having difficulty navigating his travel path from one place to another, many of the team members were concerned that he regressed in gross motor as well. So we decided to do another evaluation in that area (get results in Meeting 4).

The sensory evaluation wasn't complete, so we got the results of that in Meeting 3.

The rest of Meeting 2 was updating Moosie's present level, which is the part of the IEP document that states his current level of functioning, parental concerns, and such. I made sure to have that Moosie regressed in fine motor even though these were skills he was exposed to and taught in the preschool environment four afternoons a week for the past year. Since I knew we were having another meeting, I decided to process everything over the weekend and be prepared with more concise thoughts for Meeting 3.

This meeting reminded me of the hardest job as a parent--being responsible for the shaping of your children. What do we address? What do we just let be? What is part of who he is? What part of him can he not get to because of a stumbling block we're not addressing? But my BIG BIG concern is that I don't want either of my children to have to fail over and over again to get the support they need. I am not talking about losing a game or realizing that they can't sing so they learn the lessons of perseverance or that they can't be great at everything. I'm talking about being allowed to fail in multiple areas again and again to the point of having no self worth. So with Moosie, with his motor planning difficulties so pronounced, what do we do? Or not do? How do we know the difference between whether it's a skill he doesn't want to know or do versus something he just hasn't been taught and can't do?