Our son recently aged out of the Early Intervention program when he turned three. A few months before his birthday, we took him to a developmental screening hosted by the school district to determine what areas of development he still needed help with. I had hoped this would be an easy transition, but I found myself back in the familiar role of advocate, pushing for an evaluation and therapies for our little guy.

The developmental screening is a play based assessment of your child’s development. A small group of kids interact with a preschool teacher while several therapists and school administrators observe. Our little guy is shy, and of course he didn’t want to participate in the screening. So I got on the floor and coaxed him to answer the teacher’s questions and participate in the screening. In hindsight, I should not have done that because it swayed his results. With me coaxing and prompting him, he was able to answer the questions by pointing to the correct answers. He was scoring as high as the five-year-olds in the room on the cognitive skills, and this probably caused some staff to overlook his speech and language delay.

After the screening, we met with the head administrator of the program. She couldn’t definitively tell us if he qualified for services and would contact us in a few weeks. The following week our son’s speech therapist with EI was working with him, and I shared how the screening went. She was not happy they weren’t recommending services right away, and was concerned they didn’t understand the severity of his speech and language delay. We brainstormed and decided she would call the school speech therapist from the screening. The two therapists discussed our son’s speech and language skills, and the school therapist had some concerns too. We all agreed I should bring in our little guy for a one-on-one evaluation with the school speech therapist. After the evaluation, the school speech therapist explained she could not give us results at that time due to school policy, but we did schedule an IEP meeting where she could share his results. She did stress it was very good we brought him in for an evaluation because some of her concerns about his language skills were confirmed.

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Finally, we had the IEP meeting. I brought my son’s EI speech therapist with me to help advocate for services. (My husband was out of town for a funeral service, and couldn’t attend the meeting). The administrator of the program wanted me to understand this was a program for kids at-risk academically and stressed risk factors like having an impoverished background. I understood this, but countered that kids can be at-risk academically for other reasons including their medical issues and diagnosis. I had our son’s neurologist’s notes explaining that his medical issues put him at high risk for learning disabilities, along with his EI assessment showing the areas he needed help, and of course his current struggles with language we as parents noted. I felt like we were going in circles, and asked for the results of his speech evaluation.

The school speech therapist explained our little guy only scored in the 10th percentile for speech and language skills on the evaluation. Both the school speech therapist and his EI therapist advocated heavily for our little guy to receive speech therapy twice a week, and for him to be eligible for the blended preschool, language based program. We didn’t even get into his sensory issues. The meeting became a little tense at one point between our EI therapist and the administrator, but we all finally agreed on a plan for services. I rushed to sign the paperwork confirming his eligibility for services and to end the meeting. I had hoped to stay behind and meet his new preschool teacher, but at that point I was ready to leave.

Truthfully, it was not a great way to start off our relationship with the school district. But I don’t want to paint this administrator in a bad light. I understand working in a public school has it challenges. There are only so many spots and funding for the preschool, there’s pressure from administrators and parents alike, and I know she is truly worried about kids in our school district receiving services. My plan for his next IEP meeting is to keep the focus on our son’s skills and how he is functioning in the classroom. My hope is his development will take off, and maybe he can transfer to another preschool and open up a spot for another kid in the future.