PART I: IEP MEETING
Lyric's IEP meeting was today. We had to reschedule it from Friday because she had a low grade fever, and kids have to be fever free for 24 hours for them to come visit. It didn't end up blossoming into any kind of illness though, thank goodness.
I would summarize what we discussed at the meeting as "She's really frickin' smart - she just doesn't talk, and has no kids to interact with." Before I arrived for the going over of things, Lyric's "teacher" (her special ed. coordinator) was talking to Travis about the fact that her cognitive, reasoning, gross motor, and fine motor skills are all off the charts. She scored in the 110 - 120% in those categories, which puts her at 36+ months in development for them (she was 29 months old at the time of the evaluations). She went over this again with me, highlighting some of the skills Lyric has that put her ahead. The best part of it was when she was talking about the options as far as what will happen in the future. I have mentioned before that there is an option for her to move in to a special preschool classroom setting when she turns three. We were told that she likely wouldn't qualify for the classroom setting, because she is too smart to be included in it. Talk about an ego boost.
When going over the language parts, we had to call Melissa and put her on speaker phone because she couldn't be present for the meeting. It was basically the same thing that she told us on the day the initial evaluation was completed. Lyric has skills that are anywhere from 9 months to 27 months in level when it comes to speaking, and understanding language. She uses sentences on a regular basis, she's improving on putting together phrases, she uses words in their proper social situations - she just doesn't do it up to the level that she should be at this point in her development. She is slightly behind in some areas of engaging people socially, which is something that can impede language development.
The sensory profile results made me laugh a bit when I looked them over. Of the 10 categories of sensory processing, she had one "typical performance", 4 "probable difference", and 5 "definite difference". It was actually kind of nice to get a confirmation that the things we were noticing weren't just things we were pulling out of thin air, or that we were making up. Overall they aren't issues that affect the quality of her daily life, so the sensory integration is being put as priority #2.
We wrote up a short list of goals that involved getting Lyric to engage more socially, use more words consistently and appropriately, expand her vocabulary, and try to integrate more sensory experiences into her day to help her adjust her responses to those. Early On will be coming once a week - we decided that twice a week would be too overwhelming. The focus will mainly be on speech, but Hannah (the occupational therapist) will attend once a month to address the sensory concerns.
Overall I'm feeling very positive about the direction we're heading in. It seems like it's all a matter of figuring out how Lyric learns to speak, and gear her therapies in that direction. My fingers are crossed that we will "graduate" from the services by the time she turns 3, but I know this is also probably an unrealistic expectation.
PART II: FUN ACTIVITY - GLOW STICK BATH
In the spirit of my New Years goal, last week we scooped up glow sticks in all different colors from the dollar store, and used them to give Lyric a glow stick bath. It's just a normal bath, at the normal time, but the lights are turned off and there are glow sticks in the tub illuminating the water. She really enjoyed it, and I was worried she might throw a fit if we made her get out - but Travis had her help collect the glow sticks, so it went pretty smoothly. We will definitely be repeating it at least once a month.
A normal bath?
But wait - there's more!
This is awesome!
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