Easter Dresses, Callapitters & Journey

Well we registered Nicky for Kindergarten Wednesday. They did some kind of evaluation, because they separate the kids based on the results. Not sure how I feel about that. Guess I will see how it goes (if we end up staying here).

Thursday we took the girls to their follow-up PT visit:

Gabi is now able to crawl on her hands and knees, using both legs, so that was great. But she is still only using her right leg to get up to standing. So we need to work on helping her get used to also using the other leg.

Lily CAN crawl on her hands and knees, but doesn't. So they want us to work on that by keeping our hand under her belly to remind her to keep it up. We'll also put her down in just a diaper. That's what we did with Gabi. That way they can't easily slide around, so they crawl on their knees instead. Lily is mostly crawling on her elbows and knees right now, but we'll work on that.

Then we noticed Lily might only be standing using her left leg. We need to watch her to see if she can use them both or not, and if needed we'll help her use the other too.

And finally, both girls are still rolling one of the feet in while standing. One is doing it on the right, and the other is doing it on the left. If we knew we were staying here they might wait till the next visit to see how they were progressing, but since we might move, she went ahead and measured them for shoe-inserts that should help support their foot better. That will give them more stability as they learn to stand independently and walk. We'll go back in 3 weeks.

Finding their Easter baskets (notice Gabi's crawling):


Standing in their Easter dresses:


Directly after the girls' PT appointment we had Nicky's ESE staffing. This was where we got the results from the evaluation in March.

His speech and language are fine. He did have several areas though where he was showing significant enough delays to qualify for ESE. They were all areas we anticipated, those that require focus and attention: personal responsibility, fine motor, and attention & memory skills. He also had some issues in personal/social interactions. They said the same thing as everyone else: he's very smart and creative, but he has a really hard time focusing and paying attention.

Anyway, it's enough to get him an IEP (Individualized Education Program) up until he's 6 years old (in Florida, they thought GA might actually accept Developmental Delay for more years). So we'll be meeting with the Kindergarten within the next month to set up an IEP with goals and accommodations. He would still be in the regular classroom though, and we're not planning to redshirt him for the year either. I had been considering that, but everyone agrees he would likely just get bored.

We've been sitting on the referral to a psychologist about getting him evaluated for ADD/ADHD. I wanted to see what the staffing showed first. Now I think we might pursue this and see if he really qualifies as ADD or ADHD. I don't plan to medicate him at this point regardless, but it would help ensure he gets the accommodations and support he needs beyond age 6 (because the developmental delay only covers till then).

So how do we feel about this? Well, it's never great to hear that there is an issue with your kid. But he's still the same sweetheart he was before we had the official label. I think everything he scored poorly on really have to do with his attention difficulties. Even the fine motor issues which were based on his holding scissors wrong, not being able to trace well, etc. That's because he's too busy doing his own thing in his head to notice how it's supposed to be done, or to practice. And with the social stuff too, it's hard to make friends when you can't pay attention to them or to the activity you're doing for more than a millisecond at a time.

So yeah, on the one hand not thrilled, kind of feel like a crappy parent because surely if I was a good parent he'd be excelling anyway (see, I know that's not true, but it feels that way anyway). But on the other hand, it's really good to feel validated that there IS an issue here. A measurable issue that isn't just in my head. And that issue will help us make sure he gets a teacher who will be structured, but tolerant and patient, and who will make the accommodations he needs to succeed.

Because really, my kid is super awesome.