Yes keep him home til he's 6.

In my district students do not qualify for ESE services and headstart is ESE or Title 1, unless there is at least a 25% lag in a developmental field. It seems as if in many areas he does not meet that sort of criteria but that the OT may think she is "helping" by labeling him with the sensory issues. We know sensory integration is directly tied to a student's ability to master higher level concepts. At the Title 1 schools in my district all K student sare given 30 minutes of sensory integration activities daily. Of course it's fun and the kids love it.

In my district parents have right of refusal of services even after testing. However refusal is all or nothing. So here if you refuse OT the speech disappears too.

I'm not able to speak from a non-biased place on these issues. I was an early interventionist for 8 years. I am also the mother of a child with disabilities. Albeit many less disabilities than he had initially thanks in part to the services we took part in when he was very young.

Currently we are continually asking our children to do things they are not developmentally ready for. Schools know it, and teachers know it and everywhere we go we tell everyone that it's wrong. However we do not have the power to change it. Parents do. The last PTA meeting I went to there were 12 teachers and 4 parents. If parents don't put a stop to all this it will continue.

In my district students who get into preschool on ESE or Title 1 are usually labeled DD with no specifics. The once in school at 6 their label has to be reviewed to see if any further diagnosis is needed or have they simply caught up.

Not sure any of it helped but I understand where you are coming from.

thanks for the input lil.

Putting off school is something we are obviously considering because as you point out, he will be expected to keep up with the standards, no matter how stupid I and many others may think some of those standards are. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, but I can definitely say we will at least let him try. There is a no harm/no foul option here after one month.

It's at school-age (aka five) here that they must notify schools of any developmental deficiencies. At least that's what they tell me. We can get also get speech and no OT, or vice versa if we want it – again, this is what they tell me. He will get re-evaled every 6 months to one year, depending on recommendations. I totally agree that therapy helps - his speech therapy certainly hasn't hurt his speech so far, but what I've consented to is dragging us into muddy waters.

wanted to add that becasue of the points you raise, i'll be talking to the IU to double check on these standards. thanks again

In the 8 years I worked with very young children I found that many many boys in particular were much better off for having given them another year of playful development.

At my school in K they are expected to have 60 sight words and write 4 sentences on topic about a given prompt by the end of K. Crazy.

I like how we challenge kids to do more and give them more credit than we ever used to, but what I do find crazy is the way they make child (and parent for that matter) feel less than acceptable when they can't meet all the criteria. When I worked with K kids in the kid writing program last year, there were plenty who had most of it down, but not all, and yet they were not judged on their own individual accomplishments. It was all or nothing.

This is the same gripe I have with the CCIU here, and much of the standardization of acceptable behavior that the creation of these programs has spawned. They find out that our boy exhibits some of the symptoms for SPD, (and show me one kid who doesn’t have a few, and I’ll show you the child with abnormal behavior) and he’s labeled as having severe sensory problems. Thankfully, I’m not ignorant of the symptoms or the treatments. If I had been, they’d have us in fits about our “deficient” child, and enrolling him in every program or therapy they suggested, constantly worried that he’d never measure up to his peers.

I’m not trying to downplay the need for therapy for kids who need it or the great strides in early education that head start and similar programs have accomplished. But they are doing him no good by lumping him in with kids who have such severe SPD that they cannot function in day to day life. I’m sure our boy would have even more issues if we always coddled to his unusual quirks and never challenged him to do things he was uncomfortable with, but he has always been very funtional. When I talk to therapists about it, I am the one who gets coddled. They think I am only protesting because I do not want to accept that my child has a disorder.

Perhaps we just need different therapists, lil?

There was a specific time when the OT and ST brought him back after his screening at the school The ST starts telling me about the mid-line problem. She’s fascinated, telling me how they made him do it again and again, "It was wild! He just stops.” While the OT was explaining to her why it happens and how it means he’ll have trouble reading. I'm guessing form the way they're telling me the story that he was made to do this task while he was talked about as if he wasn’t even there. And then they bring him to me and start all over again. I told the OT that i though lots of kids don’t pick a dominant hand til 4 or 5. She said that was true. I also told her that I thought the way they made him perform and talked about it while he did it, skewed the results. I think he kept doing it because they kept saying he was doing it. I added I’ve noticed he does it at home, but he doesn’t do it all the time, and rarely with certain objects like crayons and pencils and utensils. Still, I was told it’s not normal. So even though we've just established that many kids have not picked a dominant hand at his age and he doesn't do it all the time, and at this point it's an issue that needs therapy. Would you say it's standard procedure for them to do this, or have I just gotten a bad lot?

I have family who work for th IU in other counties and they've said as long as he's enjoying it, keep him in and just pull him at 4 before they need to document for school. I am going to call my cousin and sister today and ask them what they think about this new assessment, too. But again, I’m just not sure that this is good for him. No matter how much he likes it, or how much fun he has doing it (i also have a little guilt about using services that other kids need way more than he does) or how helpful they think they’re being. Hubby also says not to worry so much. That we can balance out the extremes with what we do here at home.

I prolly sound so petty, considering there are kids out there way worse off, and i prolly am worrying too much but there it is.

In my area the protocol is individuals evaluations that are discussed at a meeting with the family once all the information is gathered. So peeps don't compare notes til the meeting. Makes for less bias.

((hugs)) He's your lovie so it is important. You worry cause you love him and want to make good choices for him til he can make his own.

update:
he performed really well for the developmental eval (as we knew he would) and the service coordinator has an approach that's closer to our own. turns out she's a neighbor, too, so we got to talk a little less formally than i have been able to do with the other therapists. we both agreed that the boy would not benefit from any of the classes (the ST was a little misinformed about the types of off-campus classes offered - there are speech and language classes but they're filled with kids who are much more delayed than our boy and are therefore less like preschool, more like therapy. and head start was never something we thought he needed). she also agreed she saw no SPD or hyper-activity in him, either. she told me (on the QT) that she's found that many of their contracted OT's tend to approach any quirks with some very strict interpretations and do exactly what i was moaning about. so the bottom line is that if the contracted OT's recommended therapy is too much, she'll send out the IU's OT, or relay what she saw to their OT, so they can come up with a more appropriate plan. or, more likely, not recommend therapy at all.

still waiting to se if he's still 25% delayed in speech - he finished up his test last week and we won't be hearing from the service coordinator for a few weeks yet. i wouldn't be surprised either way, though. i do like the half hour or so he gets with his ST every week - he really enjoys it and i think it builds up his confidence so much - he doesn't get nearly as frustrated as he used to when people couldn't understand him. then again, people couldn't understand him a lot more often. but i also wouldn't be too sorry to see it go.

on the off chance they recommend OT therapy i do not agree with, we'll either work together toward something we can all agree on. i can also decline OT therapy and still keep the speech if he qualifies

i did talk to one of my cousins who owns a company that works as a subcontractor for the IU where she lives and she agreed with me. my sister, who works directly for the IU, didn't. she still thinks i should fight to get him in this class and use the phone call from the OT telling me he has severe SPD as ammo. my sister's always been a bit uptight. :D

i worried for nothing.
as usual.

thanks again lil (((hugs)))

You didn't worry for nothing. You worried for the best reason ever created.

:) true dat. i do love that little guy to bits.

Hey, that sounds like me when I was little. It sounds even more like me today.


No effing clue.


Abso-freakin'-lutely correct.

that's reassuring. i know he'll be ok when he grows up.

er ... wait. what am i saying? you are so not normal.












































:p:D
((hugs))

well, i figured it's update time...baby girl is 7 mos old! She's a whopping 21lbs and 27" long. She's jumped quickly through the sizes of baby clothes and is getting into size 18 mos already! :eek: She can already feed herself small pieces of cereal, veggie dices, etc and is well on her way to crawling. :loveshowe

normal is over-rated :D


SD~ sounds like she'll be ready for pedicures and shopping at the mall in no time :D

Beautiful. My baby girl is 12 years old now, and I cannot believe how time is flying by. LOL...I still remember those days of the high chair and bibs and getting her to try different foods.