School and Therapy

At meet the teacher for Logan's first year with the school system, we learned that we needed to have an IEP meeting before he could be allowed in the classroom. IEP or Individual Education Plan is where the school system and the parents sit down to discuss what the child needs. It gives the teacher and therapists an educational plan for what is expected to be taught to the child during that school year.

I had no idea what the IEP was or what to expect but Logan's teacher was very helpful and told me who to contact and what they would need. We were able to get the IEP scheduled for the next day (which for the beginning of a school year was pretty miraculous). We sat down with his teacher, the occupational therapist, speech therapist and the staffing specialist to discuss what we all expected for the year. I have since learned that as the parent I have a lot of say so in what is allowed with my child. For this first meeting, I was totally lost and confused and just went along with whatever they said.

Logan is a runner and with no communication that qualified him to have a one-on-one aide. This was a great relief for us; his classroom was in the same wing with the older children. I had visions of him darting away from the teacher and getting lost in this huge school. This has been the best thing for Logan. Not only does she help him with all of his school work but she (and his teacher) work his speech and occupational therapy lessons with him through out the day.

Autistic children don't know how to interact in a social situation so group therapy really doesn't do all that much for them as far as I'm concerned. The schools do not get enough money to hire enough therapists to be able to provide one-on-one therapy for all the children. They do the best they can with the funds that they have. In our community there is a parent group that is working hard to fix this situation. In the meantime, we have had Logan with an outside speech therapist for over a year now.

The first year of school, we had taken him to see his neurologist in November. She was encouraged with his improvements. The last six to eight weeks of school, he wasn't able to get his speech for whatever reason. (I'm not sure what happened with the school therapist) When we took him to see the neurologist, she noticed the lack of improvement. She actually saw some regression regarding his speech. At that point, she stated that if he wasn't talking by the time he was five or six; he wouldn't be talking at all. That pushed me over the edge; talk about a wake up call! I did some research and discovered that our insurance covers 20 visists per year for speech therapy so we took advantage of it.

We immediately contacted a friend that gave us a name for a local speech therapist. We signed up with her and have been taking him there ever since for one session per week. There has been no regression since we have started taking him to the outside therapist. We are in no way out of the woods regarding him speaking but I believe that he will be speaking someday.

Logan - Therapy and School

After Logan was diagnosed, the EIP group decided how much therapy was needed. He went to two 30 minute sessions per week of both occupational and speech therapy until he turned three. After three years of age the local school system became responsible for his therapy. Since Logan's birthday is in July, we continued with our regular therapy until a couple of weeks after school started to guarantee that he wouldn't go without therapy. When the school year starts up the schools have to get all the paperwork and therapy sessions scheduled and it sometimes takes a good four to six weeks before therapy begins.

Thankfully, I was still working at that time and was able to afford the therapy sessions. I also had a very understanding boss. I would spend my lunch hour (around 2:15 each day as I had to pick up my oldest child and deliver her to the daycare where Logan was registered) driving to the school, daycare and then to therapy. After therapy I would head back to pick up the eldest child and head home to make up the hour or so that I had missed twice a week. I would have to get in to work as early as I could after dropping the oldest child at school so that I wouldn't have to work too much extra each night. I did this from the very first therapy session until we stopped a month after school started. What a crazy couple of months that was!

Stages of Growth Chart - what to look for

Just about every hospital or doctor's office will have some form of Stages of Grown chart. It gives you a list of things that a baby/infant should be doing at certain ages. For example:

19 months to 2 years
Walks well alone with some falling.
Runs and climbs some.
Makes mark with crayon on paper or table.
Sometimes uses spoon to feed self.
Actively helps to dress and/or undress self.
Knows and responds to own name.
Uses more than ten words and understands more than he/she uses.
Follows a direction like "Go get the ball" or "Pick up your toy".
Plays by self, begins own play.

Logan wasn't feeding himself using any utensils, wouldn't respond to his own name (wouldn't look at you when you called his name), no talking anymore and couldn't seem to follow any directions because he wasn't listening or so I thought.

If any of this sounds familiar contact your family physician or local Early Intervention Program in your area to let them know your concerns. It's pretty easy to find an EIP near you by simply typing in Early Intervention Program with the name of your state in a search engine. (Yahoo) See my Other Websites or Blogs of Interest for Florida and Texas Early Intervention Program websites.

Logan - 18 months of age

We begin our story with Logan at 18 months of age. When I think back to it now, I realize he wasn't talking as much my daughter did at that age. He was saying Mommy, Daddy and trying to mimic some other words. He received his MMR and a flu shot and we didn't think anything of it. At that time, we didn't know the possible dangers of Thermerasol that was used in vaccines to prolong their shelf life. To be totally honest, I can't blame Logan's Autism totally on that. I believe, that my husband and I have something in our genes that lay dormant in Logan until those shots. Once that happened, Logan's Autism had help coming to the surface.

We didn't notice anything until right before he was 21 months old and only that he didn't seem to be talking like we thought a child his age should. Since we had a girl who was almost 6 and a non stop talker, the doctor's excuse that he wasn't getting a chance to talk sounded about right to us. We mentioned it to several different doctors over the next 8 months before our daycare person approached us. She had recently been to a class on toddlers and what to expect and had seen something in Logan. It concerned her enough to mention it to a doctor she knew. He said the "flipping" Logan did with anything he could get into his hands could possibly be a symptom of autism.

Our daycare person was nervous approaching us about this but felt it was something we should be made aware of. She was so wonderful - she handled it with kid gloves; said to just tell the doctor that someone mentioned autism and that we wanted him to rule it out. I thank GOD for Ms. Gail for that. It was a very scary time for me, as right out of high school I had worked in the local school system and had seen severely autistic children. I was reminded of the movie Rain Man and it was terrifying to think that my baby could be just like him. It took us about 3 months from that date to the day we got the diagnosis that Logan was autistic. His diagnosis was severely autistic in speech and moderate for behavior.