Proud, Confused, and a bit angry.

The past two weeks have been re-eval week for Ella at her school. I am happy to say that Ella has made HUGE improvements in the past year!! I mean HUGE!!

On Friday her Occupational Therapist (OT) did Ella's testing. The results kind of blew me out of the water. This test shows it's results in deficits, zero being average for a "typical" kid and then going down into the negatives. So, for Ella's self-help skills she scored a 0.00, meaning she is right on course with her "typical" peers, how freakin awesome is that? For her grasping skills she had a deficit of 0.33 and for her eye-hand coordination skills she rated a -1.33, bringing her score/average to -1.00

Great right?? Apparently not. This score officially disqualifies her for occupational therapy services when she enters pre-school. To get OT in school the child has to have a deficit of -2.00, and in private practices here in Spokane it needs to be a -1.5 So, I guess I should be thrilled that they think she doesn't need OT, but SERIOUSLY??? The kid can not even use her fingers correctly. Her new thing, when people ask her her age, she holds her hand out to me and whimpers because she wants me to put two of her fingers and her thumb down so she can hold up two fingers. She canNOT correctly do signs that involve her fingers etc. So, the plan is that they re-evaluate her OT abilities 6 months after she starts to see if she has regressed or fallen behind her peers enough to qualify. This makes no sense to me.

We are not supposed to put any limits on our kids, work with them, teach them encourage them. But not too much. Because if you do than you won't qualify for help. Ella has Down syndrome, a concrete diagnosis, one that will not change, one that puts her at a disadvantage compared to "typical" kids, always. Why is that not enough to qualify in preschool?? Whatever. I'm really scared now to see what her scores are for her speech and physical therapy evals. I have her speech results but they aren't scored the same so I don't know what the cut off for services is. Let me tell you, all hell will break loose if they tell me the kid doesn't qualify for speech therapy........

So, yes I am annoyed and a bit angry. BUT I am SOOOOO proud of Ella and all of the hard work she has done in the past year!!!!!!

Here are some pics I took Thursday morning before leaving for Speech Therapy at our house, then the pics of her in the blue swing are her in the therapy room after speech at school.