ECI to ELC

I am pretty behind on blogging about where we've been with Ian's ECI (early childhood intervention) stuff and where we are going.  There's been a lot happening lately.  At three, Ian ages out of ECI and transfers to the public school district for services.  So we've been wrapping up ECI services.  We had already transferred out of dietary services a couple of months ago, and we said good-bye to our speech therapist and occupation therapist this month.  

Ian's last visit with Meredith, his wonderful OT.  She is the one who identified the sensory issues and has given us a lot of tools to work with Ian.  On this particular day, Ian was pretty wound up, so Meredith was using the couch pillow as a weight and more couch pillows as surrounding pressure to calm him down to the point he could sit down and work on a quieter, cognitive task like a puzzle.

I will miss having Meredith as a resource!  She has given us so many helpful hints and tips along the way.  I think I would have pulled my hair out in frustration many times if it wasn't for her!

As we've been getting ready to transfer Ian to the Early Learning Center (ELC) in our school district, we've gone to the ELC a number of times.  We had an initial meeting with the transition coordinator, a speech evaluation, and an ARD to set up Ian's IEP (individualized education plan).  Ian loves "cool" and knows where the turn-off is to get there!  

The evaluation showed that Ian still has a significant speech delay where articulation is concerned.  That will probably be another post altogether. :-)  However, due to that delay, he did qualify for the TALK program with the school.  The TALK program basically consists of speech therapy for two hours, twice a week.  Much more intensive than the fifty minutes he was getting twice a month through ECI!  So even though there are only four school days left in the year, Ian went ahead and went to his first day of "school" today!  

Ian was so excited about school and his birthday all being on the same day that he wouldn't sit still.  I told him to say "cheese" and this is the face I got!  Goofy kid!

This first day of school went so much better than the first day of Mother's Day Out last year!  Ian's teacher said he had a good day and he did pretty well in circle time for his first day.  I know he'll be sad to see it end for the summer (and so will I)!