First Meeting With School District Therapists

This morning we had our first meeting with the school district therapists. It started out a little rough because I stopped to talk to the district psychologist, Lorraine, and the occupational & speech therapists took her to another part of the room to start their evaluations. I should have took her there and sat with them first but didn't, and soon a tantrum started - and it lasted about 15 minutes. Oh well. It's good for them to see that side of her as well and none of them were freaked out by it at all. And I guess they see it on a regular basis anyway.

Our new speech therapist, Lynn, knows Mary very well and will definitely talk to her since she's worked with Raquel for close to a year. She wants to get Mary's input before putting her program/goals in place. Leigh, the occupational therapist, seems very cool. She was there for just a short time and wasn't really able to do much of an evaluation because of Raquel tantruming in the beginning, but I answered a bunch of questions for them and was given paperwork to fill out. Tim (I think) is the physical education guy. He was able to make some observations but plans to do most of his evaluation next week. I did mention my concerns with her being scared in unfamiliar environments and he said that it's just a matter of "desensitizing" her and that he'd make that one of the first goals.

They all seemed really nice and were great with Raquel. Towards the end, I sat down with Tim and Lynn and they both stressed how they are going to be designing a program geared towards Raquel as an individual and not based on how she scores on assessments. This was great to hear. We meet again on the 12th and this is when I will get more information regarding how the program works, how often they treat her, and more of what to expect.

On a side note, I have decided to go ahead and have Raquel re-evaluated by the Regional Center - even though it isn't required and it went really bad the last time. My reasoning behind it is because if she is given a diagnosis, we would continue to receive services from Regional, and the more services she can get early on, the better it is for her. Watching her progress through the ABA Program these past six months has been very encouraging.

Speaking of ABA... Raquel had a really great session with Jennifer today. No behaviors, very cooperative, very happy throughout. That is a big change from yesterday when seeing the Visual Schedule go up on the wall sent her in orbit. She just didn't want to work. Jennifer couldn't do half of the programs and we spent the first part of the session trying to calm her. I was very relieved today - especially considering she had a rough time this morning at school. And we were there 1 1/2 hours. She fortunately went down for a nap right when we got home and I was giving her lunch with Jennifer arrived. I suppose being rested and fed helped in that regard. Hopefully she'll have another good day with Cari tomorrow.