Your kid is stupid

Anyone who as ever been to an IEP meeting you would know how frustrating it can be. These fun Individual Education Plan meetings can occur once or twice per year and involve you, your spouse (if applicable), your childs teacher and paraeducators such as occupational, speech, and physical therapists.

Don't get me wrong, I've been fortunate enough to have caring teachers in my daughters life however I've never come away from one of these meetings feeling positive of my daughters future. I've been told she has no object permanence, major step in child development which isn't true. Like most people, she could care less about things she's not interested in. Try to test her object permanence with a toy, she wouldn't have any. An electronic item such as an iTouch... now she's completely interested.

What brought me to write about this is what happened two days ago. At her last IEP meeting, her behavior on the developmental scale would be between nine and twelve months.  I'm watching TV, folding clothes when Evie is fussing and squawking because she's hungry. I tell her dinner is almost ready, we'll eat in a bit. She walks over to a floor lamp that was next to me and starts to take hold of it. I tell her "Evie, you need to wait for dinner I know you're hungry." After no waiting at all she goes upstairs when I hear a crash seconds later. I go up to find she went to the living room, directly to an even taller floor lamp we have and knocked it over. She stands there, looks at me, and walks into the kitchen. A bit smarter than a twelve year old in my opinion.

IBT

IBT or intensive behavior therapy... I honestly have no clue what it is but whenever I hear IBT, my nursing brain automatically thinks of IBS (irritable bowel syndrome.) I first heard mention of IBT from the director of a long-term documentary on Autism who asked us if we ever considered it for Evie. At the time, she was getting weekly occupational, speech,  and physical therapy with copays equaling $60 for the week. I know that doesn't sound like much but it really added up. At any rate, he highly reccommended we look into it when we had the chance.

Now that we live in the glorious state of Idaho and are on one income, Evie qualifies for Medicaid. She goes to speech therapy twice a week, and continues with her weekly occupational. Last month her speech therapist (who oddly enough married a girl I grew up with and is now cousins with my parents neighbors- small  world right?) suggested we look into behavior therapy. Despite the fact at her last IEP meeting her cognition was measured at 6 months, her therapist recognizes how smart she is. For instance, on numerous occasions she will fall asleep 20 minutes into a session only to miraculously wake up and want to get down when we exit the building. If this tactic doesn't work she will go to plan #2 which is to go #2. Seriously. She knows we forget the diaper bag.

Later today she has her first intake visit with a behavior therapist and I, despite my best intentions of finding out what it is, still have no clue what to expect and am trying (unsuccessfully) to rid my mind of the vision of Evie getting electroshock therapy. Wish us luck.

UPDATE: During her intake, it was determined that Evie doesn't qualify for Intensive Behavior Therapy as she doesn't exhibit any negative behaviors such as hitting her head against the wall, kicking or aggressive biting. She does qualify for developmental therapy. Main difference being education of the therapist. for IBT, you need a masters for DT it's more of a trade school type of training, which I'm okay with. We set some initial goals such as walking up steps with alternating feet, setting cup down on table when she's done (instead of chucking it across the room), and of course, improving communication. An Ipad was brought up but I'm still on the fence about using one. Part of me thinks it's a really good idea and she would take to it right away given her affinity for all things electronic and colorful, but the other part feels it may be more of a crutch. Who knows. For one thing, the social worker did say she was amazed at how mellow Evie is. She said typically children who are non verbal have several negative behaviors that take place of communication. During the intake, Evie did her usual escape attempt out the door, climbing over another desk and crawling under my chair. It was nice to hear something positive.