Derek's Evaluation

After 2 months of waiting, even though it has felt a lot longer than that, Derek had his evaluation today. The e-mail we received said it could last from 1 to 3 hours, it only lasted 45 minutes. Now most people wouldn't complain about that, and I'm not; exactly. When I arrived Steve was walking out of the classroom with Derek, they had already talked to him and given them their findings, the only thing left was some paperwork that Steve didn't know the answers to such as; when did your child first; roll over, crawl, walk, say a pronoun... etc, you know all the questions that only a mom of one child would know the answers to off the top of her head.

I asked how everything went and what we do from here? This was the response I received "Your son is a very polite smart little boy, who loves dinosaurs! Honestly, from reading your e-mail we were prepared for a handful but he did everything we asked without hesitation and was very sweet."

"He has an issue processing big sentences. This could be why he struggles in big group settings, because there are too many details being thrown at him and his brain can't process it all, it goes into overload and that's why he melts down. He is frustrated because he knows he's supposed to do something but he doesn't understand any of it. So when talking with him use smaller sentences and do things in steps. Such as please pick up the book; once he has done that then say Go put the book on the shelf; then when he's done ask him to Come sit down. Most cases we would normally say Ok go pick up the books put them on the shelf and when you've finished that come sit on the carpet."

They tested his general & fine motor skills. He scored perfectly on the general motor skills, like jumping, running, hopping, etc. However he only scored 20/60 on his fine motor skills, things like the way he holds a crayon to color, a pencil to write, cutting paper, holding a fork etc.

Derek saw a speech therapist and she said he was right where he needs to be for his age, so no problems there. He also had his hearing and vision checked, passed that with no problems.

Where we go from here? They have 45 days to get back to us and set up a consultation meeting to discuss what they have found, what they think needs to be done, and set up any referrals for treatment, therapy etc.

So we will just wait. I expected to hear a little more of the results today, and was a little disappointed that we could wait up to 45 days, but I think about where Derek was when he first started school to where he is now. He has grown so much in these 5 months. He now has best friends that are excited to see him. We went to a festival on Saturday and surprisingly there were about 5 of his school buddies there, every time we'd go to a new booth, or area of the festival there was one of Derek's friends and they would growl at each other and chase each other around us, typical boy stuff. Usually though it's Elora who runs into so many friends, it was very surprising and I was excited for him!

We have only received one bad report from school in the past 5 months, compared to his first 3 weeks when we were being pulled aside EVERY day after school. So things are coming along, taking each day as it comes.