Declassified

Today I bundled two children into the car and drove to our local middle school. We signed in, got our visitor pass, and walked into the meeting room in the Pupil Services Office.

Our beloved Speech Therapist brought toys for the boys to play with during the meeting. Honestly, she's the best SLP EVER. And no, you can't have her. She's ours!

We talked about Matt's scores (articulation standard score of 94: 100 is average). He now scores in the "normal" range, with no delay.

We completed the exit form, signed several consent forms, and gathered our things.

Then Matt looked at the secretary, who was taking the notes, and said in a clear voice:

"I don't need therapy anymore. I just need to go to big boy school now."

Today was A Very Good Day.

CPSE Meeting Scheduled

The school district called, and I thought, "Aha! They're calling to schedule Nolan's CPSE meeting!"

It was the school district, and it was the Special Education Chairperson, but the meeting was for Matt. Sometimes I forget that he's still in speech therapy, too (even though I'm a participant in every therapy session)! Next Wednesday, we'll meet to discuss his progress.

Matt has come a long, long way since he entered the Early Intervention system. At the age of two, Matt had almost no words. "Go," and "Uh-oh," were the sum total of his communication. If we tried to get him to say, "Ball," he would strain out a "Fah-vah." Nothing even close to the word.

Now, at the age of four-and-a-half (because you must never forget the "and a half"), he speaks in paragraphs. He tells stories, he sings, he jokes. He even has those dratted /s/ blends. The only sound he still struggles with is the /r/ (weally wed fokes = really red forks). The /R/ sound is the latest developing sound, however, so this is a normal developmental variation.

Pending the results of his recent articulation test, we are planning to "declassify" him at the next CPSE meeting. He will leave the special education system, forever.

My heart sings.

CPSE Meeting

Matt signs himself in- backwards "a" and all

We had our annual CPSE meeting for the Matt. The short story is we are not going to have summer services and will resume in the fall, assessing to see if he still requires speech therapy. He is becoming more intelligible over time, though still has some inappropriate errors for his age (darn those missing consonants)!

Anyhow, I'm going into complete brag mode here. Matt is starting to read- he's been sight reading words for a while. Now he is starting to decode some basic phonics (simple three letter words). He floored the special education coordinator. The meeting went something like this:

Hi, let's all introduce ourselves!

[goes around the room, people introduce themselves]

Matt: "hi, I Matt. M-A-T-T Matt."

Special Ed coordinator: "he can spell his name? That's pretty good! He's not even four until December."

Us: "Yeah."

Matt: [writes his name on a piece of paper] "that how you spell it. M-A-T-T."

Special Ed coordinator: "he can WRITE his name?????!!!!"

Us: "Yeah."

Matt: "Your name start with "D." Cyndi name Start with "C." Cyndi is C-Y-N-"

Special Ed coordinator (named Dianne): "Wow. I can hear the artic delay, but my goodness."

SLP: "Yeah, he's the first three year old I've had that uses spelling and reading to correct his speech. His cognitive level is helping us achieve our goals"

Matt: "I like read. S-T-O-P stop. U-P up. Nolan start with N. Why there five people in here? No, there six people in here."

I'm glad we got him out of there before he started showing off his flair for addition!

Summer Decisions

We are coming to the end of the school year, which is irrelevant for Nolan. For Matthew, however, the end of the school year means that services are put on hiatus. He follows the school calendar and thus receives no speech on school holidays or over school breaks.

We had a choice to make. Choice 1 is to press for summer services, because we think with a few more months he might actually declassify and no longer need speech by fall. The problem here is that we would have to prove that he would regress without services, and we haven't seen any evidence of regression. Choice 2 is to go without summer services and pick up speech therapy again in the fall.

We're going with Choice 2, since we don't think he'll regress. Our speech language pathologist isn't quite ready to let him go, either. He's about 60% intelligible to strangers, but should be at 80% or greater intelligibility. Those darn consonant deletions really make his speech difficult to understand!

A typical sentence might be, "I ree wah gee one I ree don' wah blue one I gah abou it." Very run on, and I'm sure most would need a translation:

"I really want [the] green one. I really don't want [the] blue one. I forgot about it."

He's almost 3 1/2, so most of these consonant deletions should be gone by now. We also still have a few sound substitutions, but they're not severe enough to impact intelligibility. Even if he still has some delay, he'll declassify from services because he doesn't have any other issue (like hearing loss) that guarantees the right to therapy. Once he hits the "moderate delay" category, he declassifies. We'll seek private speech therapy if his speech is still "off," of course. I do hope that his speech hits the normal range prior to kindergarten!

IEP Meeting

We had our IEP meeting for Matthew today, which I considered great practice for when we have Nolan's in a year and a half or so. Matt only qualifies on the basis of articulation at this point in time, so we weren't too worried about the quantity of therapy sessions when we went in. On the other hand, we wanted to see exactly what we could get, since we'll be going through this again in a while and will be requesting expensive equipment (no, a sound field is not enough. We want that expensive FM system, thank you very much)!

IEP meetings are quite different than the cozy IFSP meetings we've had through early intervention. First off, the meeting is held at the middle school of our school district. Walking through the cafeteria-scented hallways with my little ones gave me a glimpse of our future- slouching adolescent boys with mullets. Yes, mullets. Have those become cool again? I shudder to think so.

There were about seven people in the room, including the school secretary. Everything was recorded and there were several forms to fill out. They had all of Matt's paperwork and his cognitive evaluation set out on the table. They say he has "superior" intelligence. Really? I mean, he does this and this . I'm just sayin'.

After talking about his history and test results, we had to come up with therapy recommendations. Once children transition to the school district, they typically get less speech therapy time (the typical is 30 minutes per week). We asked for 2 days per week, 45 minutes per session. They didn't blink an eye and granted our request- I think Nolan's recently soiled diaper may have persuaded them to make a quick decision.

He will stay in EI until December 31, then transition to the school district for services. We will have a lapse in service because the school board doesn't meet until January 13, but a 2 week break will be good for all of us. Except our wonderful speech therapist, of course- who doesn't get paid when she's not working.

Most things will stay the same as when we were in EI, but there are some important differences:

• Matt now follows the school calendar. That means if therapy falls on a holiday, he gets no services. This also means no services over the summer, during winter break, or spring break.
• Our speech therapist now gets paid less, even though she's doing the same thing.
• We have annual reviews rather than semi-annual.

Matt will probably graduate from CPSE services in the spring, just in time for us to start the process with Nolan.

Testing, Testing

We have a very busy week ahead of us. In addition to Nolan's hearing test on Thursday (my inward mantra is "please be stable, please be stable") he has his annual EI evaluation today. I thought those two tests would be it for the week. Silly me.

I forgot about Matt! He's transitioning from EI to the school district, so he has to have a full psychological evaluation (translate this as IQ, not "my parents traumatized me as a child" psychology). The center called today and they're going to test him tonight.

Hey, at least we have a few hours between tests!