....our IEP Meetings are set for December 1; both of the twins will be seen back-to-back that morning. I'm still not sure what to expect from these meetings -- only thing I know is that major decisions will be made regarding their educations and their placements. I know that I'm being prepared for this and I've been told that despite the "idea" of this meeting sounding intimidating, it's really not so bad once you get in the room. But I'm not in the room right now. I just got the notification of when the meeting will take place. I also know that any decision that's made can be appealed if I (or Kevin) disagree with their decisions. But that's assuming that we recognize what's right and what's not.
And of course, this is coming when I'm struggling trying to determine how to get hours for Rachel with her ABA and now she's going to start in-home speech therapy (again) since More Than Words is over. Overall, the decision has been made to keep Rachel at 10hrs/wk of the ABA and we can revisit this over the next few weeks -- increasing this to 12 rather than to that terrifying 16 hrs. When I asked the social worker for her opinion as to what we should do, she told me that it really needed to come down to what would work for us -- I recognize how much she has gotten out of everything thus far and it's a good thing to want to get her as much as possible, but if I can't survive the process, is it really worth it? I had to go with the decision of the current insanity (with the new addition of speech here) would push me to a limit that I didn't even know I had. And, again, if things are going well and I think we can make the change, we can add a few hours a week and see how well she does.
As for the speech, the SLP and I coordinated that earlier today and have currently scheduled this to take place while Simon is getting his PT here. More balancing. But she tells me that the two of them can work with both Rachel and Simon perhaps in concert (one from a communication perspective and one from a physical perspective). But Rachel didn't do well before when we were doing this in the home -- will that change now or will we have to arrange doing the speech work in the school? More questions.
Additionally, yesterday was Daniel's school trip to a petting farm, and Rachel and Simon came along (because where else were they going to go?). All of Daniel's field trips in the past has been a bit problematic for us -- the twins are not up to the challenge, and neither am I. So, going into it, I was a bit concerned. As it turned out, I had to "dump" Daniel off on another Mom (he was happy to be with his friends, but still he recognized that he was being watched by this other mom rather than me) so that I could work with the twins. I did take them out of the stroller (never did that on one of Daniel's field trips before), but I did have use the "harnesses" (or "leashes" as I think of them). They did pet the rabbit, turkey and calf, but there was a lot of hysterics along the way and a lot of fighting with me, with both getting from one place to another and trying to head off in different directions. I have to admit -- when Daniel takes field trips in the spring, they should be a lot more pleasant for me -- at least I should be able to do them without these 2 coming along and Daniel will actually get to have my attention on HIS school events (which will hopefully make me feel less guilty about it all).
Every time I turn around I feel like I'm asking more questions. And not getting answers. I know -- there aren't exactly easy answers to my questions. And most of those answers have to come from me figuring out how to handle my life. But I'm still struggling to figure out what the questions are and trying to figure out how to make everything work. Let's just say I'm looking forward to October being OVER.
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