Triennial IEP

Due to his significant development delays and disabilities, Matt is educated under an I.E.P. - an Individualized Education Program. Every three years (at 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 years old - not sure if they will have one when he is 18 - I'll worry about that closer thereto!) he has a triennial review. From what I understand, the purpose of the review is to verify if he still needs to be educated under an IEP.

As there was no question that he would still qualify for an education under an IEP, I requested that we use the opportunity to do an in-depth assessment in all areas so we can establish what he truly does know, what he truly can do and then make a plan based on that. The reason for my request was that there are still gaps in his foundation skills. For example, it did not make sense to me to focus on teaching adding and subtracting when Matt does not comprehend numbers - that two items are always two items - not as many or as high as he can count. Kelly, his OT last year, was also concerned that he was missing some of his foundation pre-writing skills. She was not sure how he could write as well as he could - given the gaps in his fine-motor skills.

We received most of the assessments before our Triennial IEP meeting. I really appreciated everyone doing that so that I could read and assimilate everything before the meeting. I have given up hoping that assessments will not upset me. Other than the doctor telling me that she was worried about Matt's delay when he was 6 months old, rarely am I surprised by anything I read in an assessment. The fact that I already know the extent of Matt's delay doesn't change the emotion kick in the teeth I feel each time I see it in black and white.

I also realized a while ago that the assessments view Matt differently than I do. I look at where he is at and focus on what we need to do next to help him progress. The assessments start at where he should be at his age and focus on the gap. I look on his current abilities and how to help him grow and development. The assessments look at his disabilities and how far behind he is. Once I realized that it was just a different perspective, that there was no factual difference, I started to recover faster. I'm still flattened but now it is only for hours instead of days.

There were some bright spots in the assessments. Matt has acquired 31 months of vocabulary since his last assessment three years ago. As speech is his most challenging areas, that was so exiting to hear. He has done so well with his gross motor development that he is being transitioned to Adaptive PE and his PT will consult with the Adaptive PE instructor.

As he is very driven to both communicate and move (walk, run, play sports, etc.), it is not surprising that those were the two areas in which he made the most progress. Unfortunately he does not have the same internal motivation to use his hands for writing or dressing, so he did not make as much progress with his fine-motor skills, but he still did improve.

Not surprisingly with the difficulties these past two years, academics were an area in which Matt was really delayed. Thankfully with his current teacher he is already making gains in academics. He is starting to read and learn his sight words. He has completely adjusted to her class. Although he has displayed some testing behavior, because she has handled the situation so well, there has not been any of the behavior problems he exhibited last year. She has seven academic goals for this year (he only had two listed last year). She also believes that Matt is going to do great in her class. If it continues as it has started, it'll be a great year.

For fine-motor, they are focusing on writing his full name and for visual motor skills (an area of weakness uncovered during the assessment progress), they are focusing on coloring and cutting shapes. (And with the OT at the clinic - Matt is working on buttons, snaps, clasps, etc. so that he'll be able to dress himself. At the moment, not being able to work buttons or snaps etc. really limits the pants he can wear to just elastic banded exercise pants. Slowly but surely he'll achieve this also!)

All in all, I think Matt is going to have a great year. Knowing that we are basing our plan for his year on what his current abilities are gives me hope that he will make great strides this year.