Thursday, March 13, 2008

Evaluations SUCK!!!

Okay, I get that they are a necessary tool, but I now officially HATE evaluations!! The guild school called yesterday and moved our appointment to today, which that part went fine. But the speech therapist, (who is very sweet!) came in and went over Ella's scores from the day before. The special ed teacher rated her cognitive skills at 13 months, Speech and language was receptive skills 13 months, expressive skills 12 months, Physical Therapist rated her gross motor skills at 10 months, OT rated her fine motor at 10 months on the Bayley scale and 14 month on the adaptive behavior subtest. Talk about a sucker punch to the gut. It caught me really off guard. 10 months old??? Really??? Ella is 18 months old, that's 8 months behind, almost half her age. Ugh. I guess I have perhaps been in denial, or have I?
None of this takes away from how amazing and wonderful I think Ella is, it just makes me think I should be working harder with her. I don't know. Just a crappy day. I do take comfort knowing that this school is not going to cut her any slack and she will be working hard. They are going to go ahead and put her into group therapy 2X a week for 2 hours a day. All though I don't really know how much group time she will have, they are recommending 45 min a week of OT, 45 min of PT a week, and speech 2 times a week, all of which she will be pulled out of group for. She will not be starting till the 2nd week of April, which sucks, she hasn't had services since Jan, so I'm not happy about that, but what can you do.
Okay, I'm not going to be down in the dumps anymore, I'm over it, or at least I'm forcing myself to be. They did say some really nice things about Ella and I KNOW that she really is doing so good, I am blessed far beyond my wildest dreams and these stupid tests don't mean anything!!!
I think since we won't be going in till April and they expressed a fair amount of concern about her hip laxity that I am going to go ahead and order the Hip Helper shorts on my own. They are only $15 and I figure it's better to get started now. Well thats it, off to bed I go!!!

7 comments:

Melissa @ Banana Migraine said...

Don't let those numbers get you down. I think the group therapy will be fun and she'll pick up lots there. The last time Delphine had an eval. one of her therapists told me not to worry about the numbers there - that around her age there won't be much change for a bit because of the different scales they use to evaluate. I don't know if I'm making sense, for some reason I can't seem to type it out well. She basically was just warning me that the numbers might stay on the lower age range for a bit and then once walking and stuff begins - they'll go up more.

Shannon @ Gabi's World said...

I think we all no the feeling. Sorry. I think you've got a good attitude about it though.

Michelle said...

Oh, I hate evaluation day, too. I KNOW Ruby is doing great - but when they tack on those numbers, saying she's behind ... UGH. Whatever!

The new school sounds pretty sweet, though!

Michelle said...

I got Ruby's hair bows online at Etsy.com

The seller was ellabellabows, I believe - man, there's such cute stuff on etsy!

Tricia said...

I know it's hard when you see those numbers, but Ella is doing so GREAT! I mean, honestly? I love to look at all the things she is doing and say to myself "One day Georgia will be doing all that big girl stuff just like Ella!"

:) Hang in there.

Beth said...

I'm sorry for the numbers - but from what I see on the blog, Ella seems to be doing great!! I have no experience with this - but hang in there and I'm sorry you were having a "crappy day"!! Hope the days get better for you...
Beth

Peggy said...

Personally, I have told C's teachers and therapists to not give me the comparison ages. It does me no good. Yes, they need to know for the sake of knowing which skills to work on, etc. But I don't need to know. For me, you are holding her to a standard that she, as well as many "typical" kids just aren't going to reach. Let's focus on what they are doing, not so much that they are behind... I know how you are feeling and I agree... they SUCK!