Evaluation One of Eight is in the Books
Throwback Thursday!
We had Cooper’s 1st evaluation of 8 yesterday for the school district. Of course, during a blizzard. What else is new? These 8 evaluations are required to determine if he is eligible for a free spot in a developmental preschool through the school district. Yes, please!
At the time of the evaluation I had been awake for 28 hours straight. My dear friend had her baby and I got to be in the delivery room with her. If you want to talk Super Mom than you need to meet this lady! LOVE!!!
Anyhow, I was a little under the weather so praying for a good outcome.
We got to the school and Cooper’s excitement was infectious. There were a million kids walking the halls getting ready to go outside for break. Cooper was so excited. He wanted to play with every single one of them. As I tried to usher him through the chaos his defense mechanism to avoid the evaluation and stay with the kids was to go limp.
Oh. My. God. Nothing angers me more than when we are walking and he gets mad and lays on the floor. I see red and little puffs of smoke come out of my ears. I ‘kindly’ whispered in his ear that none of the other kids were lying on the floor and that he needed to get his sweet booty up and moving. It worked. Thank God.
The evaluation was a bit long at 60 minutes. Too much for my 3 year old. I am going to say that he participated for 45 minutes out of 60. This is a V-I-C-T-O-R-Y! Don’t get me wrong, he was downright naughty for different parts. Throwing blocks, knocking over chairs, going limp, etc., but honestly, he did so well for Cooper. And he ate his weekly allowance for treats but who cares! I was thrilled. He stacked blocks, did puzzles, found treats, pointed, etc.
At one point a lady came into the classroom to speak with us and Cooper saw this as his way out. He went up to her, hugged her and pointed out to the hallway. If he could speak I swear he would have cried child abuse to get out of there. She looked at him sweetly and said, ‘let’s talk to your mom first,’ Ha. No go kiddo! Tantrum in 3-2-1.
I am really working on not apologizing for Cooper’s behavior. And also not blaming myself when he acts naughty. It’s not my fault. All I can do is keep us moving forward. And that I did.
7 more evaluations to go.
I am glad it went well, but I am still CRAZED that you have to do EIGHT evaluations. Minnesota, YOU ARE DRUNK!!!!!!!!!!!
Hell yes they are! Ridiculous if you ask me. Honestly, I am 30 and I don’t know enough in my life to be evaluated 8 different times! This kid is 3 and nonverbal. How much can we really evaluate???
Seconding this! W.t.f.
Yeah, I’m stuck on the 8 evaluations as well, although having seen what my fourth grader went through for his IEP evaluation, I can’t say I’m surprised. As for being naughty, not your fault, not his fault. It just is…..Hang in there.
That many evaluations is nuts, but Yay! You survived the first one!! Way to go everyone! 🙂
What a cutie pie seeing baby pic of Cooper. 8 evaluations? Wow talk about torturing a child. How do they expect a child to do that? I am enjoying reading your blog posts when I have sec or 2 😉 I am about to take a deep breathe and give you something to think about. I had a kind early child interventionist who came to our home to evaluate my son when he was 3 so we could access public services and she told me this.. “when your son does things that frustrate you or confuse you your first instinct is to think he’s being a *bad boy* and he’s trying to manipulate you. Try thinking of it from another point of view and not that you are dealing with a typical child. What if the behaviour was a way of communicating? How do I change the behaviour? What does he get out of this behaviour?” I was confused at first but after a few more conversations from her, talking to a few more early childhood educators who work with children with developmental delays I realized that I needed to do something different. I went on google and search for “behaviour is communication” and the following article came up. I still wasn’t completely comfortable with the label of Autism but this I could handle. I hope it helps.
http://www.thinkingautismguide.com/2011/08/i-want-to-tell-you-secret-about-autism.html
Congratulations to you all for getting through that! Hopefully it’s all downhill from here! And it honestly sounds like he did great AND his enthusiasm towards the other kids is awesome! He will do wonderfully I’m sure!
Great news on the appointment. As a parent you should never apologize but So many of us think we should. :/