In looking back at my previous posts, I realized that I never gave you all an update on Jackson's 24-month IFSP meeting. It was held back in July and there were 4 therapists, 1 service coordinator, 1 county official, 1 Mommy, 1 Grandma, 1 Grandpa and 1 Jackson in attendance. Jackson's speech therapist wasn't able to make the meeting but did provide a progress report.
Jackson held court at the head of the conference room table the whole time, making sure that a few ladies had a good handle on all of their paperwork. That is, until he saw the cupboards along the wall and then proceeded to open and close the drawers with gusto.
Jackson held court at the head of the conference room table the whole time, making sure that a few ladies had a good handle on all of their paperwork. That is, until he saw the cupboards along the wall and then proceeded to open and close the drawers with gusto.
The overall consensus is that Jackson has been making great progress in all functional areas (adaptive, cognitive, communication, social emotional and physical) but is still considered to be developmentally delayed by about 33% (or more) in most cases. This was not a surprise for us. We've been in constant contact with his therapists all along and can see on our own how's he progressing. We're extremely proud of him (as are all of his therapists - they adore him!).
Much of his IFSP remains the same for the next six months. The two major changes are that OT (Occupational Therapy) is getting bumped up to twice a week and his Developmental Group at Happiness House (preschool) will now be three mornings a week instead of two. We're at the point now where we need to be extremely mindful of whether we're putting Jackson into therapy overload. As it stands, this is his current therapy session rundown:
- Physical Therapy - twice a week (at home)
- Occupational Therapy - twice a week (at home)
- Special Ed Therapy - once a week (at home)
- Developmental Toddler Group - three mornings a week (at Happiness House)
- Speech Therapy - twice a week (while at Happiness House)
All of the individual sessions are basic sessions - 30 minutes long - and some of the sessions are co-treats (where two therapists come at the same time). Right now we believe this arrangement will be more beneficial than harmful to Jackson. We need to maintain the progress that he's made and continue to work on closing that developmental delay gap. We are, however, completely open to changing it up if it turns out that this all becomes too much for him. After all, he is only 2 and half. He needs to be a kid too!
There was some discussion as to whether the Special Ed therapist was still needed since he's going to preschool. His therapist talked with Jason and I beforehand and we decided that we were going to lobby for her to continue for the time being. We all feel that while the group will be great for him, he still needs individualized instruction to obtain the goals set forth in his IFSP.
We also discussed having the added session of OT take place at Happiness House since he was going to be there an extra day with no therapy scheduled that day. In the end, we decided not to go that route because it would mean adding an additional therapist. Doing that would just further complicate things and make it harder to align therapy strategies and probably result in a communication breakdown somewhere along the way.
Again, if our current approach becomes too overwhelming to Jackson we will revisit and revise. But in the meantime, if we have approval (which we do) from Yates County for all of these services, we are going to use it!
Oh yeah, we also scheduled a transition meeting. :'( What's a transition meeting mean? It means that Jackson is close to aging out of Early Intervention (happens at age 3, or a little later depending some other circumstances). A transition meeting introduces the parents to the school district that oversees the CPSE program (Committee on Preschool Special Education). This will be the program that Jackson will transition to next year. I've been a little anxious about this because I've heard several stories regarding the CPSE program in our school district, but I've been told that the CPSE chair is actually attending the meeting so that's a good sign, I guess. She doesn't normally attend meetings from what I hear. Fingers crossed this transition between programs goes smoothly so that Jackson experiences little to no interruptions in services.
I didn't want to overwhelm everyone with all of the details/progress reports/goals/etc from the meeting all at once, so I'll spend some time in my next post going over the "details". Just thought I'd share a little bit about what happened.
Til next time,
PS...football is back on! We're not a football family but I found Jackson a jersey with his name on it, so he got all dressed up for last Sunday's season openers. Jason and I have talked before and we both think we'd be Steelers fans if we actually watched football. So never mind the Bills jersey, just look at the cute kid.
Til next time,
PS...football is back on! We're not a football family but I found Jackson a jersey with his name on it, so he got all dressed up for last Sunday's season openers. Jason and I have talked before and we both think we'd be Steelers fans if we actually watched football. So never mind the Bills jersey, just look at the cute kid.
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| Too bad that's not a football, huh? ;) |
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