Sunday, December 21, 2008

Seeking Help From School for Jackson

Sorry it has been so long since I last wrote, but it's taken quite awhile (almost 2 months) for the school to complete the testing and for us to learn the results.

Well, in a nutshell, according to the school psychologists, Jackson does not fall on the autism spectrum. We're not sure if that's completely true as he has a lot of behavioral outputs that are characteristic of some children with autism. Anyway, after much testing, they decided to qualify him for special education services (which I think are now officially referred to as the resource room) so he can have assistance in learning letters and numbers, writing, and reinforcing what the teacher is learning. He did qualify for these services under developmental delay, which is something we've said from the beginning. Our son seems to be about 1-2 years behind his peers, which is very common of children who have been institutionalized. He also qualified for services and help from OT (occupational therapy) and PT (physical therapy), so we feel like we may be making progress. More to come as we learn more....

Jackson seems to have "adjusted" to the classroom as his teacher reports he's sitting in the circle more often, playing with some of his classmates, sitting at the table, and fewer tantrums. So, we're optimistic that the teacher and his classroom aide have done a GREAT job in helping him. He knows all of his capital ABC's now and can count to 12 - sometimes 20 (on a good day). We're working with number recognition now.

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