School Evaluation and Classroom Placement for Brian

We arose early yesterday morning for Brian's 9am appointment at the elementary school. He was tested and evaluated for classroom placement for the upcoming school year. Things seemed to go well. One of the three kindergarten teachers took Brian back to a classroom and when they came back, she shared his test results with me. Brian maxed the shapes and colors as well as writing his name begining with a capital and the remainder in lowercase. He did pretty well with grouping. When the teacher asked him to group together 3 things, 4 things, etc. he was able to. He got 4/5 on this one because when she asked him to group 5 things, he counted 4 and didn't add another to make 5. When we went out to dinner last night, I had him group peanuts at the table and he was able to. He had a little trouble recognizing all the letters of the alphabet and numbers so we'll have to work more on that. I think he has lost the memory of those since being on summer vacation. He recognized a few of the sight words and had a little bit of trouble with the front/back and direction of reading a book. Not quite sure about that one or how they tested for it. He also only counted to 7 on rote counting which I KNOW he can do at least to 10 if not more. The teacher said that perhaps he was just nervous with someone he didn't know. I honestly think that he may have been distracted and interested in the new surroundings...which may be the ADD. I'm not positive, but that's my hunch. She then stated that Brian did well and that he tested average among his peers. WOW! For him to have a diagnosis of autism and then to test average with his typical peers almost brought tears. It's such an emotional feeling to know that our hard work, research and dedication to him has gotten him so far. I remember him playing solo or even parallel playing among other children and now when we go to the park, Brian is the first one to ask a child to play or what their name is. :) I'm so proud of him. The next part of the evaluation was with the speech therapist. Our neighbor's daughter had gone in before Brian and when she returned, the therapist said something about th sounds coming out as f sounds which is typical. We're actually working on that in speech with Brian now. Anyways, Brian goes with the speech therapist next and when he returns she smiles and says, "he's great!" She then asks if he goes to speech and we talked a tad bit about his sessions now. She doesn't have any concerns for him so now I'm left wondering if his speech therapy received at school will be reduced. Hmmm. The therapist was also to hang out a bit with Ethan earlier while she was waiting for students to evaluate. She had a small chat with Ethan about what he was coloring. As we were leaving, she said that I should keep an eye on Ethan and his speech patterns. I stopped and I was a little annoyed; not with her but with our past. I had taken Ethan to be evaluated for speech when we were in NC. They did see him however, I was told that he really did not need speech therapy and was testing within the range. We of course then moved and I asked for a referral for him to be evaluated. He was tested and the results came back as him not needing speech therapy services. And now, just a quick chat at the school, and the speech therapist is suggesting that he may need some service. We talked a bit about that and she told me that he was evaluated via medical views and that it's different than educational. She told me to check into Early Intervention, which is how Brian was able to start pre-k in SC at age 3. So on that note, I better go so I can research it and see if I can get Ethan into an appointment. If I can get him into pre-k this year, then that would be wonderful!