IEPs & MB12

It's report card time! Alden's second Kindergarten report card came today. He is in a self contained classroom and it contains only children who have autism spectrum disorders. These classes are designed so that these kids don't get lost in regular classes and also so they aren't taking away attention from children with more severe special needs who need more specialized attention.

If you don't have a child in the special education program you probably have no idea that 11 page report cards exist. They do! Our school gives a "regular" report card for English, Reading, Science, Social Studies, & Athletics. These are graded on an A-D scale. Alden has made As & Bs on both his "regular" report cards. These are required by the school because the children have to have number grades. The next 10 pages of the report card are his specific IEP (Individualed Education Program) goals. I am actually glad he gets this kind of report card since when I ask him what he did at school today he says "learn" or "sing" and never goes into any detail.

An IEP meeting takes place when your child joins a school program, the meeting is designed to set realistic & a few ongoing goals for the child to reach by the end of the year (or next meeting which is the end of that IEP). I was completely estatic today because Alden's report card says that he has accomplished all but one of his goals for specific tasks. The only ones that he is still "working on" are the ongoing Speech & OT goals. The one specific task he hasn't accomplished is rolling a car or a ball and they even said that he just flat out is not interested in either (which is true). I have a feeling if they gave him an action figure and told him to roll it down the hill away from enemies he'd have no problem rolling it. He has never really has much use for cars, rolling a ball *though he will throw one*, or stuffed animals.

We are so proud of him!

Another thing I want to mention is that I got a call from his teacher yesterday asking if he'd gotten into any food that wasn't on his safe list. I knew he hadn't but I remembered that we were out of MB12 and that last time we were out of it he was a bit all over the place pulling out every single book from the bookshelves and every toy out of every corner of the house. She clearly thought I was insane telling her that the absence of a vitamin would make him act that way but it's true. We ordered a 3 month supply this week so we shouldn't be running out for a longggg time. Anyway I thought it was nice to see that I wasn't the only one seeing a difference when he's off them. I never tell them when we're starting something new just to see if they mention progress and they had, and when it went away they even called. We're doing something right.