IEP Meeting for the Girl

Princess had her IEP meeting today, and they're increasing services. I always get paranoid that they're going to take them away. They said that actually they'd already increased services and now the IEP was going to officially reflect what they were doing.

They said she's going interesting gaps where she does higher level skills well but misses basic skills completely. Her functional speech is still a big issue. She scored at 47% on receptive speech, which gives her a huge gap between expressive and receptive skills.

She can't identify double digit numbers at all, which puts her math skills behind, but I've heard her add and subtract, so there's that gap in a basic skill again.

She's now getting four 30 minute reading sessions, four 30 minute math sessions, and one hour of speech therapy per week. They're also evaluating her for music therapy, and they said they'd add that on if she qualified. They're also giving her extra cues and prompts and extra time.

She's got good coping skills, and she uses all the resources available, and she's making excellent progress. She just has a ways to go.They're very pleased with her fine motor skills, which used to be a concern in preschool, so yay. That's one of the reasons they wanted to see if she qualifies for music therapy. They figured she was so artsy that it might play to her strengths.

And sometimes Google isn't your friend. After reading this article, I'm even more concerned about dyslexia. She does all of those things. I guess the good news is that because she's receiving services, they're more likely to catch it if it is dyslexia.

Vaccines Don't Cause Autism, ABC!

So I watched the premier of a new show I thought might be good and end up being all pissed off instead. The show, Eli Stone, showed a jury awarding a huge cash payment to the mother of an autistic child over "mercurium" in a flu vaccine. They had a disclaimer at the end, but damage was already don.

Please, people. We don't need anymore damn "vaccines cause autism" scares. It's simply not true. The mercury used as a preservative leaves the body too quickly to do the heavy metal damage you'd see from eating fish or being exposed to environmental toxins. And most vaccines have phased it out due to bad press, anyway.

There are enough people scared of vaccines as it is. I'd rather have my kids avoid exposure to pertussis, TYVM. I've had it. It wasn't a harmless and comically loud cough. It was a struggle to breath with the occasional vomit. Yay.

And then when we get past the stupid vaccines and autism faux link, we find a kid who apparently neatly stacks thousands of toy blocks. His mom must own stock in the wooden toy block factory. Oh, and he never melts down and knocks them over. He just stacks the blocks. I know that if my son likes blocks? I'll buy him thousands of them instead of letting him play with 30-40.

It was just weird.

And the show? Was trying to be funny and really failing.

Eli Stone? You suck.