Slouching toward progress

Today, we had eldest's official IEP meeting at school, and we learned a bit more about what's going on with him. We were given results of a bunch of testing that the special ed team did, and their findings were conclusive -- 1. He's not on the autism spectrum (duh. I could have told you that.), 2. He does have some social behavioral problems, but they're mainly due to his ADHD (like having trouble maintaining a conversation because he's too distracted), 3. He needs OT, PT, and Speech therapy in order to help with his motor skills, social skills, and language lag, 4. He's academically on par with his peers and if his attention span could get under control, he'd probably be doing great, 5. His ADHD is really holding him back in big ways -- socially, academically, and even physically, which I initially found hard to believe, but I think it's probably true.

I'm still kind of processing all of this because it seems like there are more problems than ever. But I'm also glad that he's getting more services offered to him under this new IEP than he previously had. What I really wanted was for him to have a full-time aid at his side every day, but I don't think that's going to happen. He does have people who work with him every day -- a special ed aid -- but it's for only part of the day. He has a student teacher that he's really latched onto, but she's going to be leaving the school in December. I know he's really going to miss her.

I like the student teacher, too. She told me a story today that made my heart burst smilingly. One day a couple weeks ago, eldest picked up a book from our bookshelves -- a Shakespeare book that contained the late romances. Without asking, he took the book to school. He unpacked his bag during one of his "sensory breaks," in which he's taken out of the class for an attention span refresher/breather. He brought the Shakespeare book to the student teacher and said, "Will you read this to me?" She said, "This is Shakespeare." He said, "I'm named after Shakespeare. Did you know that?" She said, "No, I didn't." He said, "Will you read me Shakespeare?" She said, "Uh, okay." So she started reading The Winter's Tale to him, and she said she felt kind of ridiculous, but he was sitting quietly and listening intently for about ten minutes. This is a big deal. Nothing makes my kid sit still for ten minutes. She stopped reading at some point and said, "We should probably get back in to class, okay?" And he said okay.

Maybe there's an argument to be made to get my kid into some kind of Shakespeare therapy.