Diagnostics

Things are rolling along on the journey to the boy child's IEP. The school has been conducting diagnostics on him for the past few weeks now. Yesterday, DH and I met with the diagnostician, two school district psychologists who are part of the autism "team" and the speech pathologist and had what we felt was a very positive, productive two-hour discussion about the boy. They had given us several parent surveys to fill out, so we went over those and then were interviewed for another one. I'm pretty pleased with how things are going so far.

We tried to impress upon them that we realize this is a long and very thorough process and that we WELCOME it, and also that we realize their findings may be very different from what the psychologist found, and that they may in fact find that the boy does not qualify for services. I'll be very surprised if things go that way, but we wanted to impress upon them that we do understand the process and that our expectations are realistic. They actually seemed relieved to hear this!

I flat-out told them that I got the impression from some of the things that were said at the first meeting that a lot of parents go in there with a doctor's note, expecting to start services right away, and balking at the idea of a lengthy diagnostic workup and the possibility that the school may find nothing significant from an educational standpoint. They told me I was absolutely right, that that happens quite a lot, and so I think we came to an understanding that DH and I are not approaching things that way. Anyway, DH and I both felt good about this meeting and I'm happy to report that the diagnostician is now off The List.

The boy seems to be taking all this testing in stride. Most of it is play-based anyway, so he enjoys that sort of thing. He wasn't thrilled about missing recess yesterday because he was in testing, but he got over it. I think they're doing the IQ tests this week along with the academic tests. He's already seen the speech pathologist and had his vision/hearing screenings done. I'll be VERY interested to see the results of all these tests once they're done. We've been assured that whether he ends up qualifying for an IEP or not, we will get copies of the test results.

I'm pretty sure they said that as of right now, the ARD was tentatively scheduled for the beginning of November. It could be sooner if they finish testing before then, though. I'm feeling pretty good about it right now, but we shall see!