Awesome IEP Meeting!

We had Honeybunches' IEP meeting this morning.  When I arrived they was this Birds of Prey presentation, that the SPED director invited me to see.  Honeybunches' teacher was in there and could not really leave because 2 of her class aides were out today.  Honeybunches was sitting way in the back of the gym-cafe-torium against the wall with his aide.  I really enjoyed the show and was happy to be able to see it.  He walked up towards the front with me a few times to get a closer look at the birds when the man walked them around.  Then the bird landed a few feet away from where we were sitting, went on top of the basketball hoop and took a big poop lol.  Honeybunches thought that was hilarious as did most of the other children lol. He mentioned that "The bird should have took care of his business in privacy".  I had to tell him birds don't know about privacy lol.

Anyways, to his meeting which we began about 20 minutes late, but everything went perfectly.  Honeybunches will have tutoring the last week in June and the first 3 weeks in July with a male tutor Mr M who is teacher certified.  This tutor worked with him last Summer too and was a good fit.  Honeybunches is familiar with him, from when he used to be an aide in his old "Behavioral" class.  He won't have tutoring 1:1 though, it will be with one other student for the weeks in July.  The last week in June he'll be 1:1. Besides academics, the SPED director thought it would be a good idea to work on social skills again.  I agree.  Academically his teacher Mrs F said "He's made leaps and bounds"! He is reading just below 3rd grade level.  Next year she plans to work on comprehension instead of fluency.  In Math he's doing well with addition, subtraction, telling time and working with money (My boy loves $$$). He has a good relationship with the two other female class aides.  One of them has been switching off with Mr N some of the time.  He has begun to verbalize his feelings and trusts others besides Mr N and Mrs F.

They do have some concerns though.  His teacher said he's been talking to his pencil, which is something she's never seen him do before.  He is also doing tongue thrusting at school the past few days.  He has bouts of silliness that he can't seem to pull himself out of.  He doesn't seem to be in control of himself. He still refuses to talk about faces or emotions.  He's been having a very hard time with transitions.  When he's doing something he seems to get stuck and then can't let things go.  Next year there will be changes at his school, so I'm glad they are leaving his teacher and aide the same.  There will be a new principal and a new counselor, both of whom are female.  I said Honeybunches "Will probably test the counselor to begin with".  Everyone agreed he most likely will.  I told the SPED director that I had concerns about if he was to have a female aide in the Fall.  I mentioned the incident with his therapeutic mentor and how he got kicked out of that program.  I said "I'd fear for the safety of a female aide working with him if she had to take him alone somewhere".  That's when the SPED director asked Mrs F if Mr N would work with him next year.  He agreed he would.  :)

I got progress reports, which I am just looking over now from PT, OT and Speech (None of whom were at this meeting). 

Counseling Highlights:

• Engages in counseling services
• Tolerating full 30 minutes away from 1:1 aide and classroom
•  Has difficulty expressing his feelings to any significant degree
• Shows a lack of insight as to how his behaviors affect others
• Friendly and able to handle a much wider range of social settings then was previously tolerable
• Progressed nicely with identifying his feelings
• Continued to struggle with the comprehension of feelings, which in turn hindered successful peer interactions.)
•  Voiced needs/point of view and responded to counselor and classmate during small group sessions... continued to struggle in the larger group setting.)

Speech/Language Highlights:

• Shown improvements in all areas of communication
• Demonstrates increased perseverance to complete tasks
• Age appropriate articulation at the single word level
• Tends to mumble and his use of rapid rate impacts his intelligibility
• Recently completed formal assessment revealed expressive and receptive language to be below age level expectations
• Shown growth in his pragmatic language, improved his understanding of school rules and his ability to read social situations with adults and peers

PT Highlights:

• Made gains in all areas of sensory motor development
• Demonstrates decreased Kinesthetic awareness, has poor coordination and appears clumbsy (I don't like that choice of wording, but that's what is on the report lol)
• Tends to play same game over and over.  Has difficulty coming up with ideas for new games and activities
• Difficulty completing tasks with multiple steps
• Trunk flexor and extensor muscle weakness was appearant
• Difficulty imitating demonstrated actions 

OT Highlights:

• Made great strides in all domains, but especially in his ability to persevere with a difficult task requiring organizing, sequencing and timing of fine motor movements. 
• He met 2 of his 3 goals 100%

With the talking to the pencil issue, his continued signs of Tardive Dyskinesia, and Summer vacation coming I think we need to change his Abilify to another antipsychotic.  I called the pdoc and am waiting for a call back to see what meds she might consider in place of it so I can research them before our appointment next week.