A Step In The Right Direction

We made progress today! Actually a step in the right direction with the public school system. You see Bryson, you do need to go to school again in the fall. I do not regret my decision at all to home school you and it proved to be a wise one with the progress we are seeing but come this fall, to make everyone's lives easier and hopefully provide you with some of the peer interactions, structure, and program I cannot you need to go back to kindergarten.

By no means was this an easy decision. It was such a struggle last year for the school system to understand what your needs were which is why I ultimately ended up pulling you out. Every IEP meeting was a battle, as you will see from previous journal entries, and your behaviors were spiraling out of control. You and I had both lost trust in the school system, the educators (except for your general education teacher) and we were beating our heads against a wall - you were literally doing this.

So today I walked back into a room with your team on my side and tried to keep a smile on my face and my head held high as I brought everything back to the table with the ultimate goal of you re-entering school in the fall. Much to our team's surprise, we did it. The IEP team agreed to support, accommodations, scheduling, etc, that they had never been open to before. I am sure your psychiatric diagnosis helped this cause but I do not care what the reason was as long as your needs will be met. Here is the progress we made today:

- You will receive a full day kindergarten program (in Loudoun county it is technically a half day program for the general education) five days per week

- No more then 2 people are allowed to provide your behavioral support (before you had up to 7 people providing this support with transitions every thirty minutes)

- They will support your use of the augmentative communication device (your iPad or Maestro) - this was another HUGE win for us as we had to request separate evaluations

- We also gained a few more accommodations/modifications to make your day easier

This was the first time I have left a meeting feeling as if we had come out on top. That the team had worked together and come up with accommodations that addressed your needs and after a year of fighting and playing by the books it was such a good feeling.

I know the implementation of this is a whole other story but at least we have something to hold them accountable for, we did not have to have a knock out drag out, and it is a step in the right direction.

Finally, I feel as if we are slowly getting a team and services in place, after a year, that will support you and that we do not have to keep fighting. We love our new psychiatrist, we start play therapy tomorrow, your home team is strong (thanks to Linda and Karen and Brandy) and your speech therapist is icing on the cake.

Keep on Truckin Baby
Love
Mom