(Re: May 2010)
Shortly after receiving the written results from Liam’s Early Intervention Evaluation, we went to out first Case Conference. I was expecting this to be the day that the professionals gather together and let us know how we can best help our child.
Boy was I wrong.
Josh and I both attended, along with the preschool teacher who did much of the evaluation, the speech therapist who saw Liam, the psychologist who brought up the A word again, and the special education director from our school district. They started out by essentially reading the written report that had been mailed to us. Come on, I’d had it in my hands for 5 days, I had practically had the thing memorized. Then they said that Liam qualified for the developmental preschool in out school district, which was held every day during the school year, for half a day. There would be about ten children, and the teacher in charge was roughly nine hundred and forty years old. But she had aides to help her. Then they proceeded to set ten goals for Liam to reach for during the following school year. This didn’t feel right. It was MAY. They were telling us that our child has some sever developmental challenges but that they couldn’t help him until the following school year. Even then, the attention given to Liam would be limited, and their goals could hardly be called goals. Josh asked if this is what they thought was best for Liam. The special education director looked at Josh and managed to say with a straight face, “We have autistic kids in our program.” Ummm that’s not what he asked you, lady!!
Needless to say, we didn’t sign anything. We told them that we were pursuing this privately as well, and that we would be in touch. The school psychologist followed us out and told us (off the record, of course) that she thought it was a good idea that we pursue this privately if we had the means.
We stood outside in the parking lot just looking at each other. Josh said, “It looks like we’re on our own.” I said, “Yep, it sure does.”
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