Newly Diagnosed & Explains So Much

by Jessica
(NY)

Mu son is 2 1/2 and just had his eval completed. He scored moderate to severe in all the areas that they can accurately test a child his age in. He has been involved with Early Intervention for 9 months for behavioral issues as well as some other things. This was due to his daycare complaining about his aggression and his aggression with his sister (who also has many signs and should be completing her eval soon) Daycare insisted that they had a very structured day with a very experienced teacher.

When his Special Ed teacher from early intervention started to go there to work with him once a week she said it was a free for all and the lead teacher was still in school for early childhood development and had worked retail before this. We trudged on because he was making progress with his behaviors however daycare kept going back and forth with their reports about his behavior. He had a great day, he didn't. All depended on who you asked.

His Special Ed teacher gave them so many tips to help not just him with unruly behavior but general 2yr old naughty behavior. Like not just yelling across the room for them to stop it when they are doing something wrong. DUH! Specially for my son, touch him to make sure he is actually hearing what they are saying and don't get in a power struggle with him over wearing his shoes. All suggestions ignored. From a teacher with 20+ yrs of teaching experience. And shes the nicest person and never would have been condescending about it. This place isn't even just a regular daycare. Its an early learning center. They all are supposed to have degrees or at least be so far through school for a related field.

Ryans teacher mostly saw a lot of the teachers chit chatting and doing paperwork while the kids had a free for all. Not just not good for Ryan but not good for any 2yr old. The director and owner of course defended them. "Everything seems fine when we go in there." Of course, they can see them coming from their offices from a mile away...Just as we reached our limit and convinced ourselves things were never going to change there and were about to pull him, they informed me that they were asking Ryan to leave. His sister was welcome to stay. (Unfortunately she is still there because it would be more upsetting to pull her now from friends shes had since she was 6mos old but she starts kindergarten in Sept.) But through all this his teacher, service coordinator and social worker all kept picking up on little things.

After many months of "That almost seems like sensory." they requested an eval for him. Not a single person was surprised with they results. He hasn't started OT yet because there is a backlog- Shocking- but the evaluator gave me some things to do with him to help. Some are working, some not. He is loving the sensory diet. His sister too. I can't wait for her eval to get done. Hers almost mimic his, with some exceptions, like the aggression in unstructured situations,but I would like to have her start OT before kindergarten starts. A regular teacher is going to be less tolerant of her "quirks" than a daycare pre-school teacher who basically lets her do what she wants with in reason.

I gotta say the only good thing this daycare did for us was less than gently suggest calling Early Intervention. That's the only way we would have figured this out while he was young enough to prevent a lot of heartache.