IEP(I'm Ever so Pooped) & The Poison Ivy Update

Ok, I am pooped and have been really tired all day but really IEP stands for Individualized Education Plan. :)


We had an IEP meeting today for Emeric with all his therapists. We updated the goals and talked about what we'll focus on for this next year developmentally. His biggest delay is still language and the Speech Therapist agrees with the Speech Language Pathologist that his language is in the 10-15 month range. We set quite a few new goals for that area.

He had met all his previous goals for Physical Therapy so we updated those as well.

The biggest concerns are his vision, drooling, and speech. The therapists all agree that something is going on with his vision but none of them are sure what. A vision therapist will be coming out next week to give us her opinion. The assumption(at least on my part) is that either his seizure medications are making his eyes blurry or that his brain isn't processing his vision correctly. That's likely what's going on as his neurologist said he had "eye dysfunction" because of the way his eyes move when his body moves a certain way. So, hard to know what they'll be able to do for the vision but it's worth seeing someone about it.

The other big concern is his drooling. It's pretty normal for kids with low tone to drool. The part that's concerning is that he didn't used to drool. He actually only really started drooling within the last 6-9 months and it's progressively gotten worse instead of better. When he was teething he didn't even really drool! They have said he has low oral motor awareness but that more or less just describes the problem, it doesn't tell us why he has it. Since he hasn't always been drooling so much it isn't likely related to his tone. It could be that since he prefers softer foods he isn't exercising his mouth enough and the muscles are weak because of that. These are the better options. Another reason he could be drooling is that he could be regressing some. That's always been my biggest fear so I'll try not to let my mind go there too much but there's some signs of regression in his language, sometimes in his gross motor skills, and then the drooling. He is cognitively delayed but they said Speech and Cognition are closely related and it's hard to say at his age.

Really in all of that the drooling concerns me the most. Again not necessarily because he's doing it but because it's something that he didn't do when he should've been doing it and it's continuing to get worse. The therapists are getting him some different things to try to get his mouth moving more. Some things to chew on, bite on, etc.

Overall he's made quite a bit of progress in terms of gross motor skills. I know kids typically work on one skill at a time so now that he's walking I'm hoping he'll catch up a bit in other areas.

The PT is ordering him a helmet. He's had one for a while but it isn't ours and it's a bit too big. He hasn't ever needed it much but in the last few weeks he's had a couple episodes of not being able to walk for a while and then once he can stand he falls down quite a bit and can't walk without holding on. Mostly the helmet will be for times like that. And hopefully they'll remain few and far between.

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Oh, and for those wondering if the Poison Ivy spread....








It did NOT.

I knowing it's still "Not Me" Monday but it really didn't spread.

Poison Ivy is sooooo overrated.