Party of Five

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Early Childhood Evaluation

We decided to go ahead and get Faith screened through our school district. We live in an outstanding district that provides all sort of fabulous services for the families. This screening is one of them. It's primarily for kiddos with health or development issues and enables the district to establish an IEP (Individual Education Plan) for the child. Since early on, we have been told by doctor after doctor that Faith would have issues and would be a child who needed an IEP. The closer we get to Kindergarten, I have felt that these doctors were full of hot air. Keeping in mind, some of these doctors were also the ones who said she most likely had cerebral palsy, would probably never walk or not walk normally and would most like always have fine motor issues. A bunch of hooey.
Anyway, Faith and I went to her evaluation today. Have I told you how proud I am of this little girl? One of the questions on the 500 forms I had to fill out was "Can your child dress/undress themself?". As we walked into the room with Faith wearing purple leggings, a pink shirt with ruffles and her blue and pink Smurf socks, I had to laugh to myself. Yes. Yes, my child does dress herself.
Once the evaluation got underway, it was evident early on that there were no issues. But after the vision screening and the hearing screening, we went into a large playroom type area with tons of toys and lots of therapists waiting to analyze her every move.
She joined a few of them on the floor and they started playing with farm animals. They had a large container with horses, pigs and cows. One of the therapists asks Faith if she sees any "horsies". She says "Yes. I see a bunch of horses." Then pulls out every one of them, lines them up by size and then pulls out and sorts the cows and pigs. She then looks at the therapist and says "There are 6 cows, 4 pigs and 2 cows." Then she takes one of the pigs and puts it on top of this brown area on the rug we were sitting on. She looks at the therapist, smiles, and says "This pig is in the mud". 
I love this kid.
So... no IEP for Faith. We will have a Health Plan on file with all her medical conditions and restrictions, but no IEP.
And I think I might write those doctors a letter. Right now the only thing I can think of to say is "Eat Faith's dust."

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