Assessing Noah

To Ching and I, Noah is a smart, determined, undeterred, stubborn, sweet, immature boy. 

We're never sure that's all a recipe for success in school. 

Over the past month or so, Noah's teacher, speech therapist, the school psychologist and a social worker have all compiled reports on Noah's development.  This includes a set of questions sent home to Ching and I that were statements you answer with "always/often/sometimes/never."  I'm not a big fan of those types of evaluations, but they have their place. 

Today, I met with all of those people and we went over the reports in an effort to formulate a plan for Noah succeeding in kindergarten next year.  What I appreciate most about all of this is that their assessments of Noah align really, really well with how Ching and I see him.  That's a good thing. 

One of the interesting things about Noah is that his overall picture is a little complicated and atypical.  I often wonder if he'd be different if he weren't an only child - not that there's anything to be done about it.  There's no way to know why his speech is delayed the way it is.  I think it's a mix of things - he's excited and in a hurry to say what he has to say.  But, he also isn't overly concerned if you don't understand him, so even if you ask him what he said, he's already moved on to the next thing. 

I had been looking forward to the psychologist testing to see if the results were what we thought they'd be.  Thankfully, some of those assessments are non-verbal.  Of course, he did the best on those.  But even on the verbal ones his intelligence came through.  

Other than his speech issues, he's easily distracted (even for a boy his age!).  Add that to a tendency to not do things he doesn't want to, and there could be real issues next year. 

We know he's going to be in a regular kindergarten class next year, which means lots of kids and one teacher.  (Not sure about there being teacher's aides in the classroom yet.)  Because Noah isn't entirely typical, we think it's going to be helpful just that his teacher next year has all this info from his IEP to know where he's at and what to expect from him.  Without the IEP I think he could be misunderstood. 

The next phase is formulating an actual action plan to get him the help he needs next year.  He'll continue speech therapy, but he'll also get some one on one assistance in the classroom.  He needs help staying on task and sometimes with understanding instructions. 

As I've said a few times, I'm not the biggest fan of public schools in general, but we really are grateful for the people who have worked with him and taught him so far.  I know it helps that he's happy and outgoing, it takes the edge off his stubbornness. 

Noah's First Movie Theater

About a week ago, Noah's school sent home a flyer that said a close enough movie theater would be holding  a special showing of Home for special needs kids.  The volume would be lower, the lights would be left on, it would be ok to bring snacks, things like that.  But most importantly, it would be a place kids could be kids and watch a movie.

That's where we went this morning.  While Noah is (or used to be until recently) is pretty good at sitting through a movie at home, we haven't felt like trying a movie theater.  These days Ching and I hardly go to movie theaters.  Between people acting like the theater is their own personal living room and the high price of tickets and the lack of really good movies, well, why go. 

But there was still a part of me that was thinking it would be fun on summer days, or winter break days, or spring break days, for Noah and I to go see a movie. 

Before we got there we put the chance of him sitting through the whole thing at about 50/50.

He did great!  Just over halfway through he decided to take a bathroom break.  Other than that he sat through the whole thing. 

It was really nice to be able to let him try this is a stress free environment.  And for a theater full of special needs kids - it didn't seem to be any different than any other showing of a kids movie.  Not all of the kids made it all the way through, and there was lots of wiggling going on.  Nothing wrong with that. 

The movie itself was cute enough. 

Problem Solving

Once every two weeks, Noah's teachers comes to our house to do school stuff with him.  I enjoy seeing what they're working on, how well he does or doesn't do and such. 

Yesterday, she brought a puzzle and then a worksheet where he had to figure out which of these things is not like the others and put an X through it. 

Puzzles fall into the category of things Noah doesn't spend time on at home, like coloring and reading.  (Always remember, 2 bad moms!)  His teacher said something about Noah not using his problem solving skills to figure out where puzzle pieces go.  And then he was terrible at understanding the NOT like the others.  Again, something I would never have figured to work on.  He was good at making Xs though. 

Last night, Ching and I were talking about how funny it was that his problem solving skills would be in question.  This is the kid who can figure out how to manipulate his classmates to get what he wants, or manipulate the entire situation to get out of something he doesn't want to do.  Those are master problem solving skills.  Puzzles probably just bore him!

April 10 is the big meeting to see Noah's evaluation results and plan for kindergarten next year.  We still wonder if school will be a good fit for him.  Will they recognize and appreciate his strengths as well as weaknesses?  But, as long as he is happy being there, we won't worry about the rest of it!

Birthdays!

Noah loves birthdays, and birthday parties. 

A couple of weeks ago, in an effort to help him with days of the week and time in general, we got him a little wall calendar.  Every morning when I go in to get him up, he'll ask if Ma is home, and I'll say, "Nope, today is Monday, Ma is at work."  So, he's at least heard me tell him the day of the week for a while.  (Side note, Monday and Tuesday when I went in to get him, he told me it was Monday and Tuesday - wow.)

One morning last week, he brought up birthdays, so I got the calendar and showed him that today would be Ching's birthday and all the things he and I could do that morning for her.  He's talked about it every day since! 

First thing this morning he asked if I was ready to go to the store and get cake and candles and balloons for Ma's birthday.  He's so sweet. 

Still the Same

Over the weekend, I finally transferred the photo and videos from my phone to the computer.  I store all of our videos of Noah in my Google drive, so of course, after putting the new stuff in there, I watched a few of the old ones.  Wow.  (Unfortunately, the one I'm going to talk about I can't find a way to post here for you to see.)

I watched one from almost exactly three years ago of him out in the front yard with us.  The stunning part to watch was how he really wasn't able to speak at all.  He's always understood everything we've said to him, but it's amazing how slowly, but steadily his speaking has improved. 

The fun part was that other than speech, he's still the same kid.  When he saw that I was recording him, he ran over and wanted to see it.  Then he was looking for Ramen to come to the open screened front door.  Then he ran over to my car and tried to open the door.  Ching asks him if he wants to drive, and the one thing we can understand that he says is "Yeah!"  When that fails, he runs over to Ching for her to pick him up and then points at the car indicating that if he can't drive, she can take him wherever he wants to go. 

He still does all of those things. 

Happy

We thought we had escaped it, passed it by, but apparently not.  Neither Ching nor I like the song Happy at all.  Noah has never heard it in either of our cars.  But yesterday as we were driving Noah started asking for the "happy... clap your hands song."  Several months ago, Noah's teacher was nice and made us a cd of songs they sing in the classroom - typical old school kids' songs.  (We don't really like them either.)  So, we put in that cd and found "if you're happy and you know it..." - nope, that was not his song.  Poor kid, we were failing horribly and couldn't figure out what song he meant.

Fast forward to lunch time at a restaurant with pretty loud music.  Happy comes on and Noah starts dancing like a fool and is, well, happy.  Yep, that's his new song.  It seems they've played it for them at school.  Sigh.  He usually has better taste.

How Things Work

On Saturday afternoon, we had lunch at Uncle Julio's.  And while Noah loves their chips, he didn't get his standard order of fries.  Later, when we were home, he wanted his usual fries and lemonade.  We said we'd already had lunch.  So, he said we could go on a picnic, get money, and go to the store.  When that didn't work.  He said we could call and get some - like we call and get pizza or chinese food.  When that didn't work he said the brown delivery (UPS) could bring it.  Poor boy.  He knows how all this works, but it doesn't get the result he wants. (Yesterday was actually very nice weather wise, so we did get his fries and lemon and chicken and eat at the park!) 

A few times, when we've been at various stores and getting ready to leave, we've explained to him that we have to give them money first.  Now, if you handed him a dollar bill, he wouldn't know that was money.  (Well, we did finally do that yesterday, just so he'd have an idea.)  But, he's not ready to make the connection between doing X and getting money, and then taking the money to the store and buying things.  It probably won't be long though. 

Last weekend we went to Cracker Barrel for dinner, and of course, walking through the store part, he saw a car and a truck he needed.  He took the car to the table with us, and then decided he had to go back and trade it for the truck.  (It is a very cool, solidly made old truck.)  He and I are done eating, but Ching is still trying to finish.  So he tells her it's time to go and to get up and go give them money.  He was done and was ready to go home and play with his new truck. 

He's also very into looking at clocks and saying either where the little hand is, or where it should be for X to happen.  He has no idea how to actually tell time, he just knows there's a connection there somewhere.  

In, he's kinda crazy news.  About a week ago, Noah told me the light fixture in the stairs said Hi to him. Since then, he insists that it be on all the time, because it's scary. Then, when he saw the other one like it in the downstairs hall, he said it had to be on, too.

Our boy is crazy smart when it comes to observing how things go and using that to his advantage.