Using Her Words At School

Today, Raquel starting talking to her teachers in class. Of course, being my stubborn three year old, she decided to start out with the non-compliant words - the first one being her pointing her finger at Nurse Janice and yelling, "No way!" when asked to do something. That was then followed by the "don't want to", "you do it", etc. I'm just pleased that they are slowly getting to see her true personality, and they really enjoyed listening to her today. She did simmer down a bit at feeding time and would tell them "more", "eat", "come on", etc. I think by the end of next week, they'll be dealing with a little chatterbox.

I also met with Heather, my new Regional Center person. She is really nice and will be assigned to Raquel's file until age eight. She asked me a bunch of questions and put a few goals in place for Raquel for the year. These goals are:

• Raquel to have her specialized care needs met by a trained respite provider in her parents' absence, through March 31, 2010. (This means that my respite care continues! I was so happy because I was previously told that once she started school, respite ends. Apparently not the case - it just keeps renewing yearly until we get to a point where I don't feel I need to leave her with a trained provider anymore.)
• Raquel to be in the most appropriate educational setting with needed supports and services in place through March 31, 2010. (By now, pretty much everyone in the district is aware of my, let's say, "disappointment" with the transition. I still have Bev as my Educational Consultant who I can consider to be my liasion between them. She has the ability to randomly check on Raquel during class and observe therapy sessions. I can, too, except my visits are supposed to be scheduled in advance. I will be talking to Bev next week).
• Raquel to further develop verbal communication skills to include consistent simple sentences by March 31, 2010. (This was added because I stressed my concern about her not talking at school, but, of course, she started doing so today.)

That's all to report for now. Just glad the week is over and that it ended with, as Nurse Janice said, Raquel having a "fabulous" day in class!