Last week, we finally had our feedback meeting to discuss the findings and recommendations that came out of Marshmallows ASD evaluation we had back in December. This was the first time C was able to hear all of this first hand, instead of second hand from me. It was good for both of us to have it all discussed in detail and to hear what some more next steps will be in this process. Overall, it was a very good meeting and I am very happy to be one more step along in this journey.
Basically, Marshmallow falls mildly on the spectrum for ASD. Under the old terms of diagnosing, Marshmallow has moderately low autism. So what does this all mean? Honestly, we are still figuring this all out ourselves. For now, it just means that the way Marshmallow processes things is different than the way his peers process the same things. Things will impact and effect him differently. Our goal is that with intense early intervention, we can help Marshmallow to learn how to process these things and get to a place where they no longer effect him in an extreme way. So he can be a well adjusted child, just like any of his peers, hopefully by the time he enters kindergarten. He will just have to be taught things, that otherwise would come naturally to his peers. In the same way, we are teaching him to talk and communicate.
Right now, we have the draft of his assessment. She does not want to finalize the paperwork until after she sees the evaluations from the preschool. As she may want to include some of their findings in the assessment as well. But everything else is moving forward while we wait for her to finalize the assessment.
We also had the second part of the evaluation for the ABA therapy last week. She came out and spent some time with Marshmallow to get a feel for where all his skill levels fall and where he is developmentally. She worked on his plan for therapy this past weekend and got that submitted to her supervisor for review. We should hear back soon from her to go over the plan and learn what ABA therapy will exactly look like for Marshmallow. She told me that they already had a therapist paired for Marshmallow. So just waiting for the green light.
The next steps will be to do a few meet and greets with the therapist to make sure Marshmallow responds well to him. Yes, as of right now they have a male therapist lined up for him. I am very excited about this, as Marshmallow has yet to work with a male therapist for anything, but he has always preferred men to women in everyday interactions. So hoping this pairing will work out well and curious to see if he will respond better to a male. They will meet and see if this is a good match, over a couple meetings. We want to make sure Marshmallow connects with him, that he responds well to him and that he is comfortable with him. If it is not a good match, they will try again with a different therapist, until a good match is found. So this process is moving along nice and quick. We will hopefully get this all in place and started by the beginning of March.
Today, I had was the follow-up meeting with the preschool to go over the findings in each of the several evaluations that they did on Marshmallow. I got a call from the speech therapist that did his evaluation this morning, as she was not going to be at the school today for our meeting. She still wanted to go over her part with me, so I knew what she had to add. Basically she told me that on a scale where 90-110 is average, Marshmallow scored a 62 for expressive communication, 53 for auditory comprehension and 54 for his total language. He is severely delayed for speech. Again. this is no surprise to me. She told me that for her IEP recommendation she is requesting for Marshmallow to receive 45 minutes of speech therapy each week, with the goals being for him to be able to follow one step directions 80% of the time and for him to be able to use one word phrases 80% of the time in identifying needs/wants/ect and to begin working towards 2 word combinations. Which are two of his goals in his current speech therapy. So she her finding are pretty much right in line with where we are in speech therapy currently. She told me we will have one more meeting to go over his entire IEP, but wanted to share her part with me now, as she is only at the school one day a week and most likely will not be at that meeting as well.
The meeting at the school went as expected. Both of the other evaluators were present, along with the head of the school and the lead for special education. The Occupational Therapist (OT) had nothing but great things to share about Marshmallow. She was very impressed with his ability in using age appropriate tools, such as scissors. Something we have never even let him touch, and he was able to use with no issues after being shown how to do it. She does want to continue to follow him in the years to come, to make sure that he does not begin to show a delay at any point in time as the skill level progresses. Just as a precaution. All things we knew, as he is our little engineer. The psychologist who evaluated Marshmallow said that in addition to speech, he also showed severe delays in the social, self-help/adaptive and cognitive areas. Again, nothing we were not already aware of. So they will be working on various things with him in the preschool setting to help in each of these areas.
The next step is meeting for the IEP review. I have that set for next Friday. This will be the breakdown of what exact services that will be provided for Marshmallow while he is at school. After that he will be done this crazy long process and able to start preschool! So the hope is that he will begin preschool on March 2nd. Which will give him just over 10 weeks of school, before the end of the school year. Not quite as many weeks as long as the process took to get him enrolled, which will be 11.5 week from when he had his first evaluation in December.
But yes, all fingers and toes are crossed his first day of school will be March 2nd. I am both super excited and absolutely terrified. This will be the first time my baby will not be at home with me, all day, everyday. He also has the opportunity to ride the bus to and from school, which I am very nervous about as well. Not sure yet, if we are ready to take that leap yet, or not. We will have to decide what we want to do. It is scary, my little Marshmallow is growing up and I am nervous about not being there every step of the way. But it is time. Whether I am ready or not.
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