Faith's Mom's Blog

I really can't believe it is nearing the middle of September already. Time flies though when there is so much going on! It seems that once school starts our schedules go on overdrive! I am very thankful to report that Faith is really enjoying third grade! She is back to driving her power chair at school and it is nice that her classroom is on the main floor so the only class she takes the elevator for is music. She really loves her teacher and this year she has one new instructional aide and also a new special education teacher.  Faith in her third-grade classroom Unfortunately, I was not able to attend her IEP meeting, but Rob was able to go, and it went pretty well. It is great to know that her principal, teachers, aides and therapists are all working together to help her accomplish her goals for the year. They are going to focus more on learning through audio rather than visual. This is due to the fact that she has such great memorization skills when she hears something....

It seems that the month of February always goes by so quickly. Maybe it is because January is usually the coldest month of the year and the month just crawls; then when February finally comes, spring doesn't seem so far away.  This year, with the milder weather, January wasn't so bad, and February is going by even faster than usual. Another factor to a fast-flying February, at least for our family, is that both mine and Rob's birthdays are in February. It is also the month Faith gets to celebrate one of her favorite holidays - Valentines Day. Another fun time for Faith this month was having her 2nd grade program at school. She had so much fun singing along to all the songs and jingling her bell (all the kids got to take turns playing an instrument and hers was the bell) that she wanted to have another program!  It was so good to see her truly relaxed and not having a tough time with startling when people clapped. And although she herself didn't have any lines, she wa...

Today we met with nine members of Faith's IEP team at school this morning. The meeting was at 8:00 a.m. so we had one of our respite care providers come get Faith ready for school and take her there, which all worked out very well. The purpose of Faith's IEP is to set goals for her to work on throughout the school year. The whole team works together to ensure these goals are met. I must admit that probably the hardest part of the meeting was discussing the fact that she is not making any progress with learning words and having the ability to read.  I discussed this in a blog post from this summer after an eye appointment in which the doctor told us she is probably having trouble getting her eyes to track left to right. It is somewhat disheartening, but as the doctor told us we should keep trying and finding new ways to help her eyes "attend" as they called it. One person on Faith's IEP team is a vision specialist who works with the students at school, and sh...

We recently received Faith's report card of sorts called, "Annual Goals, Short-Term Objectives, and Periodic Review of Services." Which basically lets us know how Faith is doing with her therapies and special education/academics at school. These are the goals that we set up for her at the beginning of the year when we did her Individual Education Plan ( IEP ).   Getting ready for school   I was so happy to see that in each area, she is making " some progress ." In occupational therapy, they have been working on self-feeding. This has been a challenge for her as it involves fine motor skills. She does have high tone in her arms, so she has to work through that in order to bring the spoon directly to her mouth. Her therapist in this area says that Faith fatigues during this exercise, but that she is really motivated to work hard. One of our goals is for Faith to begin to read. I am so proud of her that she knows all of her letter sounds and at schoo...

Faith loves chocolate cake! What a crazy week this has been. We have had many appointments and meetings this week but I'm only going to mention a few of the more important ones. We had Faith's IEP Meeting (Individual Education Plan) which is a huge meeting involving all who work with Faith at school to ensure we are setting up proper goals for her and working with her to attain those goals. If I count correctly, there were a dozen people seated around the conference table - all who thankfully have Faith's best interests in mind. Rob could only be there on his lunch break, so I was a little nervous at first when he wasn't there because I was worried, I was going to answer a question wrong or something. They all talked about standardized testing and how that really wouldn't be fair to Faith considering her physical limitations. In the end we as a team decided to for-go any type of testing and focus on helping her achieve her goals. Throughout the meeting, I ...

When I pick Faith up at kindergarten, she is full of excitement wanting to share all that she did at school. And then when Dad comes home from work, she relates to him everything she shared with me. Both Rob and I love to hear about Faith's time at school, but we noticed something. She talks a lot about the adults - her teacher, her teacher's aide, her therapists, her special ed teacher - not much about her classmates though. Recently at Faith's IEP (Individual Education Plan) meeting at school Rob voiced this concern. We know that Faith is more comfortable with adults. She has seen therapists since she was six months old. It took her a long time to warm up to her preschool classmates. Even after she warmed up to them, their sudden noises and movements would cause her to startle. Adults are more predictable to her than other kids and predictable for her is comfortable. At kindergarten Faith is around 18 other kids which causes her to proceed with caution. Her teacher as...