About two weeks ago, we got notification for the Monster’s IEP review meeting.
For those of you who follow my tweet feed, you’ve heard me whining about how the paperwork was all late. Maryland state law requires paperwork to be delivered five business days before the meeting to be admissible for discussion, and none of it arrived on time. Still, we had enough time to review the IEP with the Monster’s advocate, and felt adequately prepared for today’s meeting. Continue reading
Normal families have Super Bowl parties.
We’re more fortunate than a lot of families that are dealing with an ASD, in that the Monster really is not sensory adverse. We’ve taken him to plenty of places – amusement parks, fireworks displays, bowling alleys and the like – where other children with Autism have trouble coping with all of the sensory overload. Continue reading
The Monster’s IEP meeting is on Tuesday. Yesterday’s meeting with his advocate was very effective – it’s always nice having someone who isn’t directly involved like we are to have a second-set of eyes on the paperwork, more so to look at things that really are quite out of whack. Continue reading
This afternoon, we’re meeting with the advocate who joined us last year for the Monster’s first IEP meeting.
I think these prep sessions that we do with her annual are very good for us – it reminds us to distill down the laundry list of the goals we want to see him getting to, into something that fulfills those SMART criteria that make sense for the school to concentrate on. This year’s list was alright, I think, in retrospect, but we can do better next year. Continue reading
The bus saga. Ah, the bus saga. Continue reading
I was going to write a follow-up to yesterday’s post. I’m going to wait till tomorrow now to do that, since I have a meeting scheduled with the city regarding the abject failure of the bus on a performance basis.
Instead, I’m going to dive back into the whole IEP thing, since that meeting’s a week from today. Continue reading
Every so often, the Monster’s bus is seriously late picking him up.
Most of the time, the bus is here within about ten minutes on either side of their designated pick-up/drop-off times, which I think is fairly normal. Traffic varies day by day, accidents along the route, how fast parents can get their kids on the bus… and never mind that the children on this bus are, as far as I know, all special-needs. Continue reading
As the parent of a child with Autism, the most important thing I say to any parent I run across, who has concerns about their child, is err on the side of caution. If you think your child shows signs of anything, it’s better to go for early screening and intervention than to assume it’s just you. Continue reading
As we’re building up towards the Monster’s IEP meeting in a week and a half, we’re starting to discuss at home the things that we want to see included on next year’s plan.
Aside from the verbal issues – that’ll be a blog post on its own after I’ve had some time to collect my thoughts – this morning’s breakfast table discussion centered on handwriting. Continue reading
The Monster, like a lot of children with Autism, operates better with a schedule. Continue reading