Expectations

A few weeks ago, we had Erin's IEP meeting.

There was some things that were brought up in the meeting that

brought more questions to me.

Independent Life Skills,

that was spoken a lot.

They explained of the many things they are teaching her to be independent once done with school.

During the course of teaching her Independent Life skills, she is learning academic things

Just in a different way.

I decided I needed a meeting with the school and ask exactly what the exceptions were for Erin, as I was getting the impression they were teaching her how to be able to live independently vs academically  being where her peers are.  Also some things mention may us wonder what I have been wondering almost since she came home 2 1/2 years ago.  Does she have some sort of learning disability.

There is also the concern that Erin maybe only 1 or 2 girl students left next year surround by boys.  How healthy is that, and to established relationships with girl friends when you mostly are with boys all the time in school.

I got to meet Erin's therapist she has had for the past year.

This meeting brought a lot of things to the table on both sides.

 

We discuss about the trauma she experience while living in China.  How that can affect ones way of learning.  How that can incorrect put labels on other disorders like ADHD or Learning Disability because of the trauma she endured.

Erin continues to show improvements on many things, even with things she struggled with.

Recently she had an 3 month Social studies project she had to do,

There was a lot of frustration with this project on all parties.

She wanted to give up and said it doesn't matter, even if that meant she lost a lot of privileges because if she didn't do this project, she would flunk the class which then means no sports, no camps, summer school and repeating the class.  She had a very hard time understanding the long term affects.

Her survival instincts came out and that to quit because it was to hard.

She learned some very valuable lessons during this project....

1. She is capable of doing it, no matter how hard it was or how she felt about it.

2. Her mom and dad (and Aunt that helped her once) would help her if she asked nicely and didn't give attitude.

3.  Teachers at school would also help her when she ask for help with the project.

4.  She wasn't hurting us by saying she wasn't going to do this project, that she wanted to give up.  She realize it was herself that she was hurting and she had control over it.

5.  She is smarter then she thought she was.

6.  That her parents, family, friends truly care about her, that they want her to be successful because she deserve that.

When she finished the project, you could tell she was relief and when she found out that she passed the class, she was very proud (and it helped that many people also told her they were proud of her).

Since then, and perhaps it is a coincidence, but she is trying hard in school, more motivation.

Erin has big dreams, yes she dreams now.

fashion designer?

model?

sewing things?

and perhaps photography.

These all need good math and reading skills, things she continues to struggle with.

The teachers and therapist (Psych and OT0  at school don't have any concrete answers.  They notice things, and can see how much Erin has improved, yet something throw red flags, but aren't typical red flags.  Trauma related or not is the big question

Erin has decided again to try speech.   She not wearing her hearing aides much, but she is speaking words a lot while signing.  She said she wants to do it thru school this time.  She feels since that speech therapist works with deaf kids all the time, that perhaps she would be able to incorporate it with what Erin learning and do it in "ASL" way.  The speech therapist she seen in the past knows sign language and Erin really likes her, but she doesn't work with many deaf kids, and the ones she does are young ones.  Sometimes Erin felt overwhelmed.

It was also decided that we would have the OT and ST do some testing to see if they could figure out anything, or perhaps we will have to see a visual specialist and neuro pysch specialist.

Erin is very smart and creative, she gets stuck is some ruts with learning or understanding things which cause her a lot of frustrations and brings her self esteem down to where she feels she not good enough, then survival mode comes out and we need to work on building it back up.

I pray that we will find some answer to help us help Erin to fulfill her dreams and to be living independently.

That we all understand what Erin expectations are vs what ours are.

I also found out something interesting about Right side hearing and Brain, but that will be another post.