We finally had our parent teacher conference today and I was surprisingly shocked to see the improvement that my child has made this quarter. For about 60% of the day she is in a learning support class and has an IEP. She is in the mainstream class for handwriting and specials. She receives speech therapy twice a week and occupational therapy once every two weeks. The OT is mainly to help her improve on her handwriting. She tends to rush through assignments and can be sloppy. She has to work hard to write neatly but does a great job when she gives the extra effort.
The school district has given her a diagnosis of autism which helps her get the services she needs. I’m fine with it as long as the label does not follow her around for life. The Watson Institute was unable to give her this diagnosis when I took her for an evaluation when she was about four. They said that socially she did not fall anywhere on the spectrum because she was able to go up to people and attempt to have a conversation. Plus she is very “hands on” with people, always wanting to give hugs. It’s possible that she might be slightly autistic but the symptoms have decreased greatly as she”s gotten older.
During the conference I was amazed to find out that she’s doing well in math. That was one of my weaknesses at her age. She was able to go beyond her goal on one of the skills even though it was just recently introduced to her.
Her reading is still a challenge but she is at about 92% on the first grade sight word list and 95% on the second grade list. Last quarter she was around 82% on both. Her teacher is a little stumped on how my daughter puts sounds together. When you break it down to her and ask her to repeat it back to you she will totally hack it up and put sounds where they don’t belong, etc. There is no actual medical reason for her speech problems besides the chronic ear infections since birth to around three. We are still fighting the ear infection battle though. We’re on the third set of tubes. She is being phased out of private speech at the end of May. This means that the major issues have been resolved.
At home and at school we are having problems with her attitude. She is doing a lot of eye rolling. So much to the point that one of her classmates is really offended by it. So he’ll bring it to her attention teacher’s every time she does it now. I had to laugh when I heard that because it’s usually an adult who would be offended not a peer. She can be rude at times because she’ll yell at you when you ask her to do something and be overly sarcastic. I’m thinking it’s just another one of those behavioral phases that she’s going through. We tend to run in to behavior difficulties with her in the middle of the school year.
I was happy to hear that her rocking in her seat during class has decreased. She gets to use this neat little “bumpy seat” that I guess gives her the sensory stimulation she needs. I think it was a nifty little invention for jittery kids. She gets frequent breaks to help allow her to play with putty or another fidget toy to give her the deep pressure sensations she needs.
Sensory issues with children interest me. I read portions of the book “The Out of Sync Child” and found many of the situations mentioned in this book pertain to my daughter. She craves deep pressure which is why she’ll squeeze me till my eyes pop out and will bump in to people for fun. I’m not like that. I can’t stand to have people too close to me and get uncomfortable during hugs from people other than my husband.
I am glad she is progressing well. We’re still tossing up the idea of summer school. They are only doing it for three weeks this year at the end of summer. Personally, I don’t know if she’ll gain much. I think she’ll get the same experiences during the summer day camps.
Because I have a little bit of experience being a parent of a “special needs” child I may do more postings on this subject. For a long time, I didn’t believe we would ever get as far as we have. I used to hate the fact that there was something wrong with my child but no exact diagnosis. I couldn’t make any excuses for her odd behaviors such as biting, hitting, hugging too much, and speech delays, etc. I am happy to know that these things are not permanent and she can make improvements.
