Still raining...

Ok, so all this rain is really getting tiresome. Rain, rain go AWAY! We leave tomorrow for our little vacation, so we're really hoping the weather makes a turnaround. Although we would love for the weather to be perfect, we'll take whatever since we are soooooo excited to get away. It will be great family time no matter what the weather, and there will be no laundry, no school, no telephones. Please say a prayer for our safe travels and much needed fun, and oh maybe some rest and relaxation.

Pauly had his follow up meeting with the special ed. team with the school district on Wednesday. I have been so pleased with all the staff; they are so eager to determine Pauly's needs and are really supportive to me. The goal was to determine if he has any learning, cognitive or developmental delays. It was all very thorough. I had to fill out many surveys on what we observe at home, and then he had evals in the different areas including speech, cognitive, fine/gross motor skills, and also a full IQ/ability to learn eval with the psychologist.

All is all, he has many great qualities. They described him as a bright, intelligent boy. They found no learning or cognitive delays, and feel his ability to learn is very high. His main areas of struggle noted fall right in line with what we already new from experience and tie in with the Sensory Processing Disorder. He did show some delays in his social/adaptive skills which include his ablitity to read others cues and non verbals and his flexibility with transition and give/take situations and also his fine/gross motor skills that require great amounts of concentration and coordination of different body parts.

At this time he does not qualify for services because he needed to be delayed in 2 main areas by a certain margin, and although he showed delays they were not great enough in 2 or more areas, and his strengths brought up his mean score. Part of the psychologist's eval was to determine what his ability to learn is and is there a possibility of him falling into the Autism Spectrum. This is a very broad category hence the word spectrum. As she put it, he displays certain characteristics that "most likely are attributed to Autism Spectrum Disorder" but they are not ready to diagnose until further observations. If he does fall into the spectrum, they would be looking at him as very high functioning, and they would be looking at it strictly from an educational standpoint vs medically, and any services would focus on his weaknesses like the social interactions which could include him having short sessions with the other school kids. We will look into this more in the fall. He is making great strides with us and with the help of the independent occupational therapist, so there is a possibility we won't feel the need. Yesterday at OT, Denise said that of his 10 goals, he has reached all but 3 and is barely away from reaching those as well; he's gone 5 times. The special ed. team did bring in the school's Autism specialist for the meeting, and she is compiling a list of resources for me and has offered her assistance whenever I need it.

I am full of hope and peace about all this and am seeing many fruits of my labor. I am learning so much, and I am feeling grateful for this opportunity to learn and grow as a person and mother; it is changing my perspectives, my attitudes, my goals, and my own behaviors; I know we will all be better off for it. God truly can make any situation into a blessing if we let Him. Thank you for the prayers-they are working. God is good! Please know we pray for all you as well.