Picked up the Busy Little B from school and had a nice long talk with his teacher about his progress and behavior. He's come a long way from the beginning of the year!  Now that they've identified the learning disabilities, working with him is more targeted and those concepts he really struggled to learn are coming easier. He's coping well :)  The twice a week OT is really helping his ability to multi-task and coordinate his thoughts.  And the social skills group is working!  He's interacting more with his peers and able to participate better in group work.  He starts speech again next week :)

He had OT and another good report from Miss A.  She's so pleased with his hard work, even when he's frustrated and struggling.  They have a LOT of goals for him so she rotates through what they work on and try to address the things that will help the most if we are having any current problems.  He has really connected with her :)

Parent Teacher Conferences

The Super Kid had his parent teacher conferences this week.  What a difference a few years can make!  The teacher we had the conference with told me what a great kid he is, how hard working, how smart, good at school, enjoys his classes, has so many good things to add to discussions, etc etc.  Getting those learning disabilities diagnosed and then getting a school who was committed to getting him caught up was a huge turning point for him :)  He's caught up to his classmates (and passed them in some areas), he's in all gen ed classes now, he's found ways that work for him to learn and process and apply what he's learning so those learning disabilities aren't slowing him down :)  The only issue we have is he is still distractible and unorganized and any dips in grades aren't academic because he knows the material, its usually losing homework, forgetting to turn stuff in, etc.  His pro-time teacher (homeroom) wants to followup with his teachers and keep me updated if he's missing stuff so we can address it before grades get turned in because he's had that followup support daily in the past and it appears he's not quite ready to do it solo ;)  She's aiming for a weekly or bi-weekly checkin so he's still got the daily responsibility of getting it down but if he's slipping, we catch it before report cards.

Iz had developmental clinic today.  We are checking in every six months to a year depending on how things are going and developmental takes a look at all therapies and things to see if we are missing anything.  At the moment we are doing all we can be doing but Miss E did give me a list of homeschooling resources (she has several homeschooled kids in her practice) and did do a referral to the new neuropsychologist to see about some educational testing if Iz is old enough for it.  With both older brothers diagnosed with the same learning disabilities and Iz struggling with some of the same things they did at this age, Miss E said it can't hurt to check into it early because if we can catch it now, we can work on it earlier.

Overall a good visit :)

School is back in session

The big boys went back to school on Wednesday so we are settling back into our "normal" routine.

Before break, my Busy Little B had full educational and psychological evaluations at school to update his IEP.  They identified learning disabilities (same ones as the Super Kid)--he had already been receiving extra help in those areas but now its "official" and his time is upped a bit.  His twice weekly OT sessions are helping with some executive functioning issues as he has been improving!  His OT has been doing some therapeutic listening with him as well to help desensitize him to all the noise in the classroom because he's been finding all the noise and movement in the mainstream classroom overwhelming sometimes.  Slow progress is still progress :)

Let's celebrate!

Today was S's IEP meeting and this year we did a full evaluation because I just wouldn't leave them alone about it :p  Back when he had his first eval three years ago, the school psychologist ruled out learning disabilities.  One of his private therapists did some evaluations with him that showed him with a probable learning disability and the therapist also had some questions about the evals the school psych did since the results did not seem consistent with no learning disabilities.  The therapist recommended we try to get another set of academic evaluations through the school but they were not very willing to do it and stated that he was already receiving the top level of services so an LD diagnosis wouldn't change that.  That particular year, there was a new school psychologist and she kept saying she'd reviewed the previous psych's testing and it was very thorough blah blah blah.

Well, I don't give up easily and we had yet another private evaluation with the neuropsychologist which showed, wait for it, learning disabilities.  So I brought yet another set of results to them this year and hey, whattya know, yet another new school psychologist this year.  However, he listened, took my concerns seriously, did full and thorough evaluations, and now S has an official school diagnosis of multiple learning disabilities and his services at school are increasing to help him develop learning strategies and skills.  He tests extremely high in intelligence so he has the capability, he just has problems getting his abilities there because he's just not processing the new material very well.

LET'S CELEBRATE!!!!!!

I do find it so very sad, though, that getting a struggling student help is such a hard and long battle that when you finally get the confirmation of a learning disability, you want to celebrate instead of be sad about it.  I hate that this is one more hurdle he has in life, that it is another struggle he'll have, but at the same time, I'm so very happy that it is now recognized and it won't be just me trying to help him via trial and error--he'll have the professionally trained special education professionals working with him on all of his LD areas instead of just the reading help he's been getting.  He's already in fourth grade and has lost several years he could have been receiving extra services--I just hope we have enough time to get him caught up before middle school when things get a whole lot harder :/

A little bit of this, a little bit of that

The randomness of my mind, in bullet-point form!

• School got off to a rather harried beginning.  B's bus is supposed to come at the same time I have to be driving S to his school.  So I enlisted the help of my Dad who puts B on the morning bus for me.  I get B ready to go, take his first day of school pictures, and leave him waiting on the corner with my Dad while I take S to school.  S's school does not have bus service so all kids are dropped off.  Doors open ten minutes before class starts and let me tell you, that isn't enough time to get all the cars through the drop-off line so there are always kids getting dropped off after school has begun because we've been sitting in the line for ten minutes.  First day of school is even more insane because so many want to park in a very very very tiny lot and take the kids inside to do pictures and stuff.  I take the pictures at home and I drop my kid off at the door just as we do every other "normal" day because it is INSANITY.  People were parking in the drop off lane so it was really hard to get through.  Took about twenty minutes to get in and out of the lot. I go back home and B and my Dad are STILL at the corner.  *sigh*  Apparently they added B to the bus route too late and the driver didn't know to come get him so I drove him to school and was assured that all would go smoothly after school and the bus would be here at four.  Nope.  They put him on the wrong bus.  The driver didn't know what to do with him, didn't even have an address for him, and she didn't even have any stops in our neighborhood.  When his bus didn't show up by 4:10, I called transportation and by the time they figured out where he was and had the bus drive over to our house, it was 4:45.  You know, if that had happened to S, I wouldn't have thought too much of it because kids get on the wrong bus sometimes. But B is a special needs student in a special needs classroom riding a special needs bus.  He always has an adult with him--they take him off the bus and escort him to the classroom and then he's to be escorted from classroom to bus.  While his speech has improved, he is still limited in his communication abilities and the bus driver couldn't understand much beyond his name and asking the aide to sit with him.  This is most definitely a mistake that should never have happened :|  He is not supposed to be on a regular bus and gosh, it sure does scare me to think he could have gotten off at a regular bus stop as part of the crowd :(  The head of the special needs transportation section got involved and it has gone smoothly the rest of the week.
• S's personal goal for the last year or so has been to read a Magic Treehouse book himself.  He is finally at he point where his skills are high enough that he has begun reading one of the shorter ones to me for his nightly reading time.  He is so proud of himself and I'm so proud of him!  He has worked really hard to get better and it shows.  He is hoping maybe he can catch up to his classmates this year and be on grade level by the time school is out (he is behind several years and gets extra help at school one-on-one.  Part of his neuropsych testing shows two learning disabilities in reading and math).
• Izzy had her rescheduled neurology appointment (they had called me the day of her appointment last month because her doctor had a medical emergency--turns out it was for the birth of his daughter :)  And excellent reason to reschedule your patients!).  When she started the trileptal, the improvements were swift--she was more coordinated, her speech was better, her falling episodes were much further apart and sometimes not as severe.  She was still having some seizure activity but not even close to what it was before.  But the last month or so, she's been having some odd things happen that I wasn't sure was even connected to neurology but I told him about it anyway, just in case.  The major thing is that most of the time she speaks fairly clearly and then sometimes she sounds like she is speaking another language.  Repeating herself or asking her to slow down doesn't seem to help.  Other times, she will get "stuck" and repeat the same syllable (or two) over and over.  Neuro says that sometimes when you start seizure meds and you get the main seizures to stop or at least be less severe, you might find minor seizure activity spreading to nearby areas of the brain.  The unusual activity in Izzy's brain is very close to her speech centers and he believes that the episodes of incomprehensibility and getting "stuck" are minor seizures, especially since she is still having random absence/focal seizures.  So we upped her meds and will see if this new dose is high enough to bring them to a stop.  We are going to slowly up her dose until we hit a level where she is seizure free. 
• Izzy has fallen in love with Garfield--if I would let her, she would just watch Garfield cartoons all day long :p  I should track down some Garfield stuff for her upcoming birthday (four more days!!)
• We went to the zoo last weekend and now Izzy is convinced every time we leave the house that I am taking her to see the "namimals"