Another Bad Title

Evan tells me that he gets compliments on his titles and that I need to work on mine. He's very competitive you know. Oh well, I can take it, as long as I can tease him. I've never been very good with titles.

First, regarding the last post, I want to say that I appreciate all the sympathy and also that I think I did not write it as well as I intended, because as I wrote it, it seemed funny to me. Perhaps I should have made it clear that at the points that Evan and I were yelling at each other we were also trying not to laugh. Evan has got good at that -- mock fights in which everyone is releasing real frustration along with a sense of humor.

That he wanted me to hold his hand through cooking a dinner with his abilities was absurd in itself, but you know, having an excuse to vent some irritation was good for me. And I appreciate that he has enough of a sense of humor to play along, and enough ability in the kitchen to cook the dinner without my actual guidance.

It was also a good thing that Frankie was out of the house (at the library) for the worst of it. If he had been here I would not have been able to laugh and yell so loudly, at least not without making him nervous. I also wouldn't have been able to mention the blog.

So don't worry, all is well here is casa de Yondalla. (Or is it "casa del Yondalla"?)

As for the IEP, well it turned out that the FAX was 49 pages. That included the cover page, the birth certificate, the immunization record, testing results, progress reports, and the actual IEP. So the IEP itself was under 10 pages (maybe only about 5 pages, I don't remember and Hubby took it with him to work).

As I read it I kept seeing Ben, on my sofa, that concerned look on his face telling me, "Frankie has worked so hard, and he has made so much progress. I hope that you judge him based upon the person he has become, not on the person he was."

Well, this IEP was absolutely written for the person he was: a kid with ADHD so severe he became violent when frustrated and had no test results that were considered reliable because he could never finish the test. This IEP was written for a kid who was going to end up in a treatment center for kids with major behavioral problems.

Fortunately he ended up in a good one.

And now we are able to use this IEP, which is a document that legally obligates the schools, to get the much more mild supports that the kid Frankie has become still needs. And what he needs is work that challenges him, addresses his educational gaps, and teaches him the organizational and study skills he did not learn along the way. And it just so happens that our high school does that very well.

So we are happy.

And one more thing: it turns out that having a kid who slurs (speech therapy is on his IEP) when you have a slight hearing problem is not a bad thing. See -- he is accustomed to being asked to repeat things. If anything, he is pleased that when I ask him to repeat I am blaming it on my hearing, and not on his speech. And I am pleased that he is the only person who does not roll his eyes or get frustrated when I have to ask him to say something for the third time.