Dominic's PT Conference/Evaluations

Wow. Last night's PT conference was so indepth and educational, totally different than your normal preschool or grade school PT Conference. We were in the conference for 35 minutes and one of the teachers had to take Damien for a walk because he was getting tired and pulling all my hair in his grumpy rage. The other two were in the gym playing. They had daycare!! I just didn't want to overwhelm them with a baby so I kept him with me.

First the good news is, Dominic has room for major improvement so he'll be in the program again, under an IEP. What this means is the school has found he is not at a preschool 3 yr level and he needs some help and because of that his schooling is free under the State of KS. He'll be going next year M-F 8-12. I asked about the whole improvement thing, if he suddenly gets smart mid year, would they kick him out? No, at March they'll do their evaluation and let you know if they are in for the next year. So this is a BIG BIG BIG BIG relief for us. If he was dismissed at the end of this school year and told to go to a normal preschool, we'd be so screwed first because of his language/speech and then second his behavior and attention span. Since we got him in so early to the program, he'll go next year for the full 3 yr preschool year and then March 2007 is when we'll find out if he'll be in for his 4 yr preschool year.

The teachers were very informative and told us if we had any questions on anything to make sure to ask. I didn't think they were going to have graphs and percentages just a bunch of scientifical things you don't normally see during a PT Conference. Below are his scores but we knew alot of this was correct already from observation of other parent's kids so it was no big shock.

Dominic's 37 mth evaluation:
Receptive Language: He's at a 25 month level 1%ile
Expressive Language: He's at a 24 month level 4%ile
Physical Therapy: Not recommended
Cognitive: overall 24 month level 2%ile- there's a few things he scored at a 12 month level
Social: 24 months 1%ile
Self Help/Adaptive: No need for special instruction, still needs to potty train.
Vision: Passed
Hearing: Passed

They said the checklist I filled out matched their findings pretty well. He's your normal little 3 yr old on stacking blocks, running around, tumbling, pouring a drink, taking his clothes on and off, etc. It's just the whole school learning thing we need the improvement on. They had a hard time doing the tests and told me 3 minutes is about the longest they can keep his attention. I knew that one! The speech therapist says that he says a lot of baby babble then will throw in a real word which I see that all the time here.

On Cognitive he can name pink, circle, square, and a star is a twinkle. LOL He counts to 3 and can recognize his name on paper now! On his language, he'll speak in 2-3 word sentences and now says his name. He demonstrates understanding in, on, and over. With Social he is still very aggressive, resistant, and it's hard for him to transition from one activity to another. He's been put in time out a few times. I actually forgot to mention on here the other day that he came home without shoes on. He kicked them off on the bus in a mad fit and was fighting the teachers to get on the bus. The reason was rather stupid. His bus driver was not parked in her normal spot and as soon as he saw that he flipped out. I know that makes no sense at all but that's exactly how he acts here about certain things too so I know they are telling me the truth! For example if I moved one of his favorite toys from his dresser to his bed he'd flip out and throw a tantrum. Maybe the teachers should just tell me the truth and say he's ANAL. LMAO