Ian's speech IEP

This morning I went to the elementary school around the corner (Reeths-Puffer elementary) for Ian's speech IEP (Individualized Education Plan) meeting. I met directly with the speech therapist that Ian and I will be working with this year. Her name is Jennifer (how convenient for me!) and she seems really nice. Ian didn't come to this meeting since it was the official one for me to sign the papers for his goals and for me to tell her more about him.

Last night I typed up a cheat sheet for her of what he likes, doesn't like, what speech sounds he has trouble with and which ones he can do. I also wrote a little bit about what I hoped that she would do for us, like making his picture system more user friendly and giving me specific homework to do with him each week. I was kind of worried that she might think I was crazy for giving her 3 pages of ideas and info, but she was very thankful. When we talked about his picture system she told me that if we couldn't get it set up in a way that worked best for Ian, that there is a speech therapist who works for the Intermediate School District (a bigger group of specialists that work in all the school districts in Muskegon county) that now specializes in just setting up the picture systems (it's called PECS although I'm not sure exactly what PECS stands for).

She had already written him into her schedule and it was exactly at the time I was planning to ask for! I was so relieved. I was hoping for a Tuesday or Thursday morning and she had him scheduled for 10am on Thursday! It's the perfect time for us.

Another cool thing is that she is going to a conference tomorrow and Friday about apraxia . I've kind of had this feeling that this might be what Ian is dealing with, but it's really hard to figure out with little kids and so far his two long term speech therapists have still not been able to decide if that truly is his problem or not. So she'll have all the most current info about it when we see her next week and maybe she'll be able to finally figure out what is going on.