Interesting Meeting

We had a very interesting meeting at the school on Tuesday concerning Elijah. It all started Friday after school when the Guidance counselor called and spoke to Dave, she said "It's time we sit down and see what we can do to help Elijah." Of course our immediate thought is NOW IT'S TIME? It wasn't time last year, or the year before when we asked for help and were told we were looking for a problem that didn't exist. We were so angry Friday, but we thought about it over the weekend and decided that we need to just bite our tongues. It isn't about us it's about Elijah and rehashing the past isn't going to help him, it'll just put us against them. For a little assurance I decided that we would record the meeting, since noone remembers last years meeting the same way Dave and I do. Of course I had to let them know my intentions and stopped in Monday morning to let them know and also smooth over the angry responses we had on Friday, I really wanted to set us up to succeed in this meeting.

Did I mention over the weekend we tried to buy a mini tape recorder? Uh, it you only need the tapes, no problem the Navy Exchange carries those, but no recorders. We ended up using the girls MP3 player with a desktop microphone attached. I was worried about the quality, since the only microphone I could find was a cheep $5.99 one, but it cam out very crisp.

So Dave and I go there on Tuesday, I was nervous about the outcome of this meeting. It was kind of like entering the twilight zone.It's amazing what a difference having a teacher on your side can make. Suddenly everyone was seeing everything that we've been saying for the last few years. The special ed teacher, who's Elijah's teacher has been getting ideas from this year, tells us that she's been watching Elijah since Kindergarten when she had an encounter with him during an evacuation drill. We even had the Principal in for the meeting. We were told more than once that we're doing the right thing, that we were our son's advocate, blah blah blah. It was a total 180 degrees from last year. Suddenly everyone in the room could see a diagnosis of Aspergers fitting him very well. Although they did have to cover themselves and say that because Elijah is so intelligent and can do his work, just not in the time they provideed or without redirection, that it's not a obvious as some children that he needs help. Of course I didn't bring up that that was why we brought it up the last two years in a row, whatever.

So basically here's waht it all came down to. We're supposed to let them know as soon as we have a diagnosis from the Dr. The Special Ed teacher made them concede to saying that no matter the diagnosis they were sure there was something they could do to help him. They gave me a copy of all kinds of things out of his record, lots of things that I hadn't seen or heard before.