Evaluation Round 1

Today was Will's official evaluation by the Wake County Public School System's special needs pre-school team. His evaluation team consisted of a physical therapist, a speech and language pathologist, a vision therapist, a pre-school teacher, and an occupational therapist. It was also supposed to include a child psychologist (!) but she called in sick today.

So Will and Nate spent the better part of an hour playing with various therapists. Will really did well! Nate took a couple of Will's favorite toys with them, to put Will at ease while running through his bag of tricks. All of the therapists were very happy with the progress that Will has made, and his level of intelligence and involvement.

At one point, the speech and language pathologist was asking about Will's verbal repertoire. Will has a number of single syllable sounds these days (ma-ma, da-da, ra-ra, etc). So Nate asked Will to say "da-da," to which Will responded "aaaaaama." The speech and language pathologist went to praise Will for his good job when Nate stopped her. He repeated his request for "da-da" to which Will responded "da-da" with a smirk. Nate turned to the speech and language pathologist and told her that she just got played by a 2 year old!

So now we wait for a little while, during which time they will determine which services Will will receive at his special needs pre-school (we are anticipating that he will receive the same therapies that he gets now), as well as which school he will attend. What we really want for Will in his new pre-school is a supportive environment which provides all the services that he needs, but also really pushes him to his full potential. We're going to have to warn his pre-school teacher about Will's games! His current teacher certainly doesn't let him get away with anything and calls him out when he's trying to do less than she's asking.

In a funny twist, when Nate pulled out the bag of wooden fruit for Will to play with, one of the evaluators exclaimed "I've seen the falling fruit video!" One of Will's physicians reads our blog and was so enamored with the falling fruit video that he sent it out to a local listserv for therapists and parents of children with special needs. Our thought is that this therapist is on the listserv, although she told Nate that she saw the video on YouTube... someone let me know if Will's falling fruit video is out there on YouTube!

Evaluation Round 2 is later this month, when Luke has his official evaluation. This whole process is very long (we've already had 2 planning meetings and the boys had audiology testing). Hopefully we get through it in one piece! The goal is to place them in their new schools (if they are both determined to need services - the question now is if Luke still needs them going forward) by their 3rd birthday on March 11.