Julia Update

A few days ago I was going to do a bullet point update, but with Cheshire home for a few days, my brain is emptied and I may not remember anything. I'll start with our plan for First Grade.

We had our IEP (Individual Educational Plan) meeting on Thursday. This is a mandatory meeting required by federal law with mandatory participants and specific forms to follow. In many school districts all the rules are necessary in order to ensure that the plans are completed and are followed. In Madison, or at least at Franklin School, the bureaucracy is not really necessary. Once again, as in the beginning of the year, I feel like we are part of a teach who are all interested in Julia's education and development. I do not tend to say things like this, but we are truly blessed.

Julia is finally ready for school! Her behavior and work readiness is that of a child entering Kindergarten. She will receive a lot of support next year at school, including OT, speech, ESL, social communication, some physical therapy. And best of all, she will be with the same teacher next year! I have since found out that the school tries to give as many kids as possible the same teacher for two year. The theory being that such consistency is good for young kids. Christy, Julia's teacher, knows her well and knows Julia's strengths, weaknesses, and tricks to get around doing her work. The class will be a K/1 class which is also great for Julia. She will need to do lots of kindergarten work and will not have to be separated from kids in her class to do that work.

The goals for the next year include reading and writing 3-5 word sentences, using numbers 1-20, following 2 step directions independently, moving through school routines independently.

Julia is using more sentences! Best sentence story comes from school:

Julia: That stupid! (probably yelling and with a stomp of her foot).

Amy (Julia's aide): Use your words Julia. And stupid is not a word we use. (Stupid and Shut Up are bad words at home and school.)

Julia: The rules are bad.

Amy: Why are the rules bad?

Julia: The rules are bad because they are stupid!

Amy admits that she had a hard time not laughing.

When Julia was evaluated at the Waisman Center, the evaluators talked about Julia's emerging understanding of her emotions. She is interested in her emotions and she uses a few emotion words all the time – happy, sad, and angry (or mad). Sometimes when I pick her up from After School, we look at a list of emotions and faces. She is very interested. Today, for the first time, she told us that she was grumpy. And she really was (probably because she did not have enough sleep last night).

Julia was a great traveler on our journey to Connecticut and back. She played with clay, watched movies, drew, and played with her littlest pets. The toughest part of our traveling was taking Cheshire's stuff from New London down to Brooklyn, then going from Brooklyn to Jersey to pick up the furniture we brought out from Wisconsin and left in Jersey, then back to Brooklyn to drop off the furniture, and then back across Manhattan to get on the road home. Julia had a great time watching the city, the people, the trucks and cars on the road, and the road itself.

During out back and forth traveling, we passed NYC China town three times. When Julia got back to school on Wednesday and Christy and Amy asked her where she had been, Julia explained that she went to see Cheshire and she went to China! Yes, she was watching.