Serenity is all set to start school!

Our baby girl is about to turn 3, and is now all registered, tested, and ready to start school on her birthday! She will be going two mornings a week; Monday and Friday, and sharing teachers with Edward.  (Edward goes to Kindergarten in the mornings, and then switches to Pre-K at lunch time.  I will be picking Serenity up at the time Edward switches classes, so they won't actually be in class together except for special events.)  Last Friday, Chris and I took Serenity in for Pre-K testing, and today we got to go back for our first IEP meeting (for Serenity). Both of our kids now have an IEP (Individualized Educational Plan, which are similar, yet different.

The one big difference with Serenity's IEP meeting, verses Edwards, was that the school district special ed department lady wasn't at today's meeting. She was there with us last week, but she's been at each meeting for Edward. Serenity is only starting preschool though, so it's not like she's going into the full blown school system.  An IEP will normally last for 1-5 years, but Serenity's is only designated to last for 3 months because she is starting school about 3/4 of the way thru.


I pulled this image from Google, but this is what an IEP team looks like.

I may post Edward's IEP at a later date, but for right now, here is Serenity's.

As a a team, Chris and I discussed each of these pages with the team of teachers and specialists from the school.  We added a couple things to Serenity's plan, but otherwise, this is what her IEP looks like.  It details the things she is interested in and good at, her testing scores, strengths, weaknesses, and what help she will need to catch up to where she needs to be. 

It was pretty interesting going over Serenity's testing scores today.  She actually scored a lot higher than I expected her to.  I've always known that Serenity is smart, but I guess I've never given her credit for how much she really knows and understands.  I was pretty surprised and proud of her.  She likes to be like Edward, and do everything he does, so I guess it isn't too surprising that she scored so well.  Both of our kids are similar, yet they both land at different places on the Autism Spectrum, and a lot of the time it can be kind of confusing to determine just where each of them lands in comprehension of different things.  They are best friends, and do everything together, so a lot of the time, I guess I've just assumed that Serenity is just following Edward's lead, but never really knew what exactly was going on. 

The one thing that I did realize today, was just how far Serenity has come in the last year.  She's gone from not talking at all, to never stopping and driving me completely crazy!  We can still only understand about 50% of what she says, but she is doing incredibly well!  I think she is also ahead of Edward as far as hand eye coordination goes.  Edward isn't as coordinated at a lot of things, the way that Serenity is.  Serenity definitely scored higher in those areas than Edward did, but then again, I'm sure the testing is different for Edward's age group than it was for Serenity.  Serenity actually doesn't need occupational therapy the way that Edward does.  I don't know if it's because she's doing so well in the therapy that she is currently getting, or if she's just ahead of the game, but Edward is definitely more delayed in that area.

I think this IEP is pretty self explanatory, so if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to leave me a comment, or send me a message and I'll be happy to address it right away.