Yay!

Much to my surprise, they went ahead and did the IEP today and it went really, really well. As long as the discussions make it on to the final IEP, I think we are good! This is soooooooooooo great because we really did not want to move! :)

Oops

So Rejeanne's preschool teacher called today to confirm the meeting tomorrow. When she did that she says "we'll be talking about the diagnosis and then we'll have the IEP in May". Um, WHAT!??! I told her May wasn't acceptable for us. We've been waiting coming on two years now for a diagnosis. What is the point of a diagnosis if no one is going to do anything? She kept sticking to May, I kept sticking to as early as possible. This is already approaching ridiculous!

Anyways, I told her my understanding was that this meeting was to go over the "recommendations" from the autism evaluation, which I (wrongly) assumed meant we'd be changing the IEP at the same time. Then the teacher says "Well, we can talk as a team about adding some goals if you'd like, but Rejeanne has not made any progress so far towards her current goals". No kidding? What a shocker. Who can believe an autistic child isn't making progress with 10 minutes of unspecified "direct services" per day in a preschool setting? I guess that explains why they haven't sent home the every 9 week progress reports we are supposed to be receiving.

I'm just wondering how far this will have to go for them to wake up and realize they have an obligation here and that I'm not the type to just sit around and let them do as they please without at least explaining the reasons behind it. I'm gonna try really hard to bring nothing but honey and sugar to this meeting but if that doesn't work, there is still some other options.

Grrrrrrr.

IEP ICK

I think Dante would have written about IEPs if they had been around back then. For those of you who haven't experienced this special kind of torture, an IEP is an Individualized Educational Plan. Basically, you get summoned to the school and you sit at a table with 4-8 people who are far more educated than you. They all stare at you while one of them explains to you in educator lingo what services they plan on providing your kid and then they tell you to sign it.


Well, that's how they hope it will go anyways. Frankly, that is exactly how the first one went. I was like a deer caught in the headlights and put a little too much trust in them on many levels. The end result of that was they said a few things that didn't happen and didn't make it into the final version of the IEP.


I happen to be one of those people who learn from their mistakes fairly quickly and have a knack for negotiating the murky depths of bureaucratic uselessness. I've spent the last couple weeks fine tuning the plan of action for this next IEP meeting and I still have a bunch left to do but I have to admit, this whole thing is looking good! Now, I'm still about 90% certain they are going to say "no friggin way! Have you taken your meds today?" when I tell them what I'm expecting them to do but I have such a ginormous stack of evidence to back my position that they may just cave.

My meeting is on St Paddy's day. It's a shame I don't still have my green pimp shirt. I'm sure that would have made a lasting impression on the IEP people.