So we’re about a month into the Monster’s first school year.  It’s time for us to start thinking about how things are going.

Certainly, the potty training seems to be going well – we’re still not up to the point that I’d think we can go without pull-ups (or diapers overnight), but according to his teacher, he’s almost never wetting himself in class.  It’s been a few days since we’ve had wet clothes come home for the washer.  We’ll see how it goes this weekend, but I’m hopeful that we might be to a point where we can start working on either #2 in the potty or to weaning him off the disposables by New Years.

His teacher’s also working with him on beginning handwriting.  This is a spot where we’re not sure we’re seeing as much progress, but that might also be our biased take on the fact that he’s not really too psyched about doing homework with us.  His grip on any writing implement is still quite immature, and he’s more content to scribble with pens and crayons than actually tracing within lines, etc.  I think that might be more of a work in progress.  His teacher was also kind enough to send us home a copy of Handwriting Without Tears, which bears looking into…

One place where we feel things are seriously lacking, though, is in communication.  The Monster’s IEP was quite explicit that we were to get near-daily updates from his teacher and specialists.  If I’ve gotten one email this week besides the copy of the curriculum from the teacher, that’s a lot… and neither his speech therapist nor his OT have bothered to email us.  I’m not quite at the point of feeling like this is grounds to demand reopening the IEP for evaluation, but I’m still debating the best way to go about changing the problem and correcting it.  With his teacher, I can always nudge via email (though I shouldn’t have to), and I’m going to send a missive to the speech therapist this evening on a similar regard, since I have her address.  I don’t have any contact information for the OT, however, and that really bothers me.

The wife’s suggesting that we insist on a team meeting to get real reports from them since they’ve not bothered to follow through on the IEP.  I’m almost inclined to agree with her at this point.