This week was Liam's spring break from school. Dave was acting SJA at work, so the boys and I had a quiet week with playdates with friends and battling colds. Changes in schedule often lead to crazy behavior, but this week wasn't bad, all in all. Last week Ben was in the emergency room for his 3rd head injury and had to get a staple, but it healed quickly and the staple came out this week.
This week brought 2 big milestones for Ben:
He is finally telling me that he loves me! Surprisingly for a kid on the spectrum, Liam reached this milestone when he was younger than Ben. Ben has been walking around using a delayed echolalia phrase from a Christmas episode of Blue's Clue and anytime we read a book declares, "I love this book SO MUCH!" He recently started saying he loves everything.....except for me. So hearing "I love you, Mama" was the sweetest sound in the world.
Ben is spelling his name! He still cannot answer the question "What is your name?" but randomly declares "B.......E.......N, Ben!" He also can spell a couple words by memory and this morning saw a book title and read "B.....U.....N.....N....Y, Bunny!" At this rate, I wonder if he'll read before Liam?
This week and next bring alot of testing. Yesterday Liam had an appointment with a neuropsychologist for IQ, achievement, and academic testing. We were in her office from 9am until after 2pm. I used to do similar testing with juveniles accused of crimes, and they eemed to have trouble being cooperative after 2 hours. Liam is a rock star and is totally my hero. The testing i usually done while the parent waits in the waiting room, but Liam insisted I stay in the room with him. Do you know how hard it is to stay quiet and uninvolved in testing that YOU did professionally that is now being down with YOUR child? I was emotionally exhausted after fighting all my instincts during the testing.
I meet with the neuropsychologist on Thursday to go over the results. I have some guesses about what are his strngths and weaknesses. In all the memory sections, Liam did amazing. I cannot impress how impressive his memory is, but I was amazed. He also did well in sections that involved problem-solving and logic. The other areas of strength I'd guess to be his vocabulary and the academic testing. My guesses as far as areas of weakness? Block designs or anything requiring visual-motor integration/skills and the verbal comprehension areas.
I am hopeful that we'll get useful information for school planning.
On Monday, Ben has his eligibility testing to see what school services he might need. This testing will also determine whether Ben needs an IEP and continued services or if he'll graduate from Early Intervention. Ben is such a tricky kid that I cannot even begin to guess how it might go.
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How did Ben's testing go?
Ben was super cooperative for the testing...in fact too cooperative. The evaluatorsseemed to have trouble believing that he struggles in social settings. They ended with saying we won't know more until they score the tests. We go back for feedback and IEP writing on March 30th.
Don't you just hate when that happens? I remember praying for Kate to be her usual self during her private evals. Only within the last year did I realize that the reason she was doing so "stellar" during the 1:1 private speech evals was likely due to the auditory processing disorder (likely) and because the room was quiet, no background noise, etc.
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