We think we know what's happening now....

....notice I emphasize the word "THINK".

The IEP meeting is now 9 days away. I am so UNBELIEVABLY grateful to the staff at MCITP Upcounty (one person in particular) who has called in favors galore to allow us to hold the meeting in their facility rather than going to the central office. This will allow Rachel and Simon to play in familiar surroundings and we will get several people to watch them when they lose the ability to sit through this anticipated 2 hour meeting. They will be able to get their normally scheduled speech therapy (Rachel) and PT (Simon) and will even get to have lunch there, while Kevin and I can focus on what needs to be done, specifically, this meeting.

As I mentioned in my previous post, after visiting PEP, I truly believe that the right decision is to send Simon to MPAC and Rachel to CAPP. For Rachel, we have rarely questioned which would be the right program for her since she does so well with the one-on-one ABA therapy she's currently receiving through CSAAC. Simon has become more of the "wildcard" in terms of who will be more difficult to decide which would be the best program.

The Parent Educator/social worker came over here to talk to me on Friday and we discussed things for this meeting, and she told me that she felt everyone was going to likely feel the same way, which means that this meeting should go pretty much as we expect. She informed me that the administrator for MPAC also felt that Simon would do well in her program (she is apparently a very good judge of determining which children will succeed in her programs) which also seems to have some weight in people's minds. Now we just need to make sure that everyone sees things the same ways with the need to enroll them into various appropriate services (speech, PT, OT). Additionally, she will be coming over again on Wednesday (before the holiday weekend) to make sure that we don't have any other questions, as that will likely be our last chance to ask any questions and fine-tune our strategy.

I'm still unhappy about splitting them up though. I think I'm still holding onto just the slightest hope that we can find something that will make everything work with them in the same program. I know that's not really possible, but I don't think I can let that go until after the meeting is over, when I have the final answer.

But soon we will have our answer. Then we just have to figure out how to go about making this transition successful.