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.