We did VB/ABA therapy for Sarah with the ABBLS as our guide on what to teach her as well as following programs from "Behavioral Interventions for children with autism" and other teaching manuals..she was a busy little girl (30hrs/wk) and speech 2 hours a week!~
Make sure you get good feedback on his progress and updates often...ABA therapy is all written down and graphed so you can see progress and what needs more attn. too or what is mastered :) I hope his teachers are knowlegable in teaching kids on spectrum:)
The MRI is a good idea for knowing what is going on too...Sarah had delayed myelin when they did hers..we never would of known.
Good luck!
The ABLLS is the curriculum used in ABA/VB - looks like you're getting that? If so, good - it's humane and appears to be a very good way of teaching functional language to our kids.It sounds that way, fred. They're very big on reinforcement, not adversives, to address "behaviors", and we spent a good bit of time at the beginning of the meeting discussing Jason's likes and dislikes as a way of finding things to motivate him.
That sounds like a version of ABA to me, anyway.
It's sounding pretty good to me, too, so far. One really encouraging thing is that one of the few centers they have in the SD is actually the same elementary school my older boys attend, which is just down the street, literally, and so that's where he'll (eventually) attend preschool.
It also helps that our school district has a dedicated "autism cadre", I bet. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that things turn out as well as I hope they will!
Evie...I am so glad things went so well for you. I am a few weeks behind you, so I will be following your story carefully.
You sound happy and comfortable with it, which is a great start. I hope I am as comfortable with our IEP as well. Judging from our Assessment, I think I will be.
Well, I am glad I'm not babbling into a void here, and that you found something useful in what I posted!
And yes, so far, I am quite pleased with how things have progressed. I've been extremely lucky that things have also progressed quickly. From the time I took Jason to our new doctor to now has been two short months! I'm also benefitting from the posts of the parents here, and I am extremely grateful that everyone has shared their experiences...I've learned an awful lot here, and I think that can only be a good thing for Jason. (I hope so, anyway!)
Let us know how it goes in your IEP, yepper!
Well, I had the IEP meeting today. I'm feeling a bit brain-drained at the moment, but I'll give y'all a quick recap.
We sat and basically chatted about Jason, where he is now, what our priorities for him were, and where we hoped to see some improvement. Everyone was extremely nice, thank goodness.
The upshot is that even though the SD will be on a break from the first week of August (I believe, maybe it's the 8th??) until the 20th, when school starts up again, Jason will start getting therapy in our home starting most likely NEXT WEEK, yay!! Joint visits wherever possible with a speech therapist and an Early Education teacher. Minimum of six visits per month, I was told, but plan for eight. Speech therapy twice a week, with once a week visits from his teacher. They're planning on using a picture system of some kind (PECS, probably) and ABLL's, I think they're called, for charting his progress and goal setting. We'll also be working on his sensory issues, as well. They said they'll be working with me to teach me things I can continue doing with him at home in between visits, and the teacher that will be visiting us this summer will be the teacher he has when I/we decide he's ready for school environment.
This is broad strokes...I will probably have the draft IEP in my hot little hands next week sometime, and of course, the finalized version NLT 30 days from today. I will have more specific information for you. I'm a very visual learner, so I will be better able to understand the specifics once I can read them in black and white. For the record, I'm also getting him in to see a psychiatrist later this month, and looking to get a referral from our doc to an ASD Center at the state university medical center, where we will also follow up on some other concerns I have.
I think he needs an MRI, and probably an EEG as well, as he's showing (I think) some red flags for seizures, which I need to get followed up on ASAP. From my research online, it doesn't appear that he's got Fragile X, so that much is good, but I will talk further with his doc about this.
So, does this sound like a reasonable course of action (and IEP, of course!!) for a nonverbal, classically autistic preschooler to y'all? I am doing my level best to leave no stone unturned, and to do the best job I can here for him. This is his very first IEP, so I think conservative is sort of the way to go right now, since I can plug him into the preschool as soon as we think he's ready, or keep him at home for as long as I feel it's necessary as well. They're really letting me decide, which is pretty cool, until I turn out to be a complete dunce!
BTW, having an advocate from the ARC was an excellent idea! She asked a couple of questions that I completely forgot to ask, since we were covering so much ground (almost a three hour meeting!), and I wasn't charged a dime! I'm sending her a thank you card first thing tomorrow morning!