Judy's Homegrown Blog

Yesterday, Jeff and I attended an IEP meeting with the school district that went smoothly. We like the “placement” that was offered to Jillian: a small, specialized private school that contracts with the public school to provide a unique educational environment tailored to her needs. She will be getting Lindamood Bell-type remedial reading tutoring for 3 hours per day, plus her Occupational Therapy, Physical Therapy, and Speech Therapy right on site, as well as some Behavioral Management. All this to deal with the Attention Deficit Disorder, some anxiety toward struggling with learning how to read, and problems speaking clearly due to speech apraxia. Among other things. Jillian is a very complex kid.It helped to have copious reports from specialists in every field from psychology to speech and language. We still need to do a thorough vision assessment to explore why Jillian is having trouble tracking a flash card with a single word on it. Her eyes and her whole head move off the paper into space, as though she can’t keep looking at it.And we still need to work on increasing her speech and O.T. services, to address the fact that she still can’t write legibly or say her “r’s” and “l’s”  clearly enough to be understood. She sounds really “cute” saying “I wuv you, Mommy,” but she’s 8 1/2 years old so it isn’t really that cute when you consider how she could be ostracized by her peers.We like the Center for Learning Unlimited placement because she’ll be in a very small class of 4 or 5, and she gets a lot of 1-on-1 tutoring. I expect to be sitting in on regularly-scheduled progress meetings with a team of professionals, tweaking her program to maximize her involvement when she’s drifting off.