Wednesday, February 13, 2008

It's a small town, after all

Setting: IEP meeting in a conference room in elementary school. Papers are being passed around for signing.

Characters:
  • Five adult females: Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP), Occupational Therapist (OT), Classroom Teacher (CT), two mothers (Mouse and Trillian).
  • One almost-5-year-old male. No lines are given here, but he should ad lib along the lines of "What are you doing?" and "I'm ready to go." Frequently and loudly.
Background: Towards the end of the meeting. Goals have been set. Our options have been explained. The mothers have declined the offer of the bus service since they live fairly close to the school.

CT (receiving first page of packet): I know exactly where you live. It's my friend's house.

SLP: Oh, the ____s'?

Mouse and Trillian: Yes, that's the one.

OT: You know, I live in the house where CT grew up.

CT: She bought my parents' old house. And I used to live on ____ (one street over from us).

SLP: And I live on ____ (two streets over from us).

Trillian: And [other SLP] lives on the corner from us.

SLP: Right.

OT: That's life in a small town!

Postscript: Scooter starts preschool next week and I have put his name on the kindergarten list for next year. He gets an hour a week of OT and a classroom teacher who seems absolutely wonderful.

4 comments:

Bea said...

Hehehehe. I'm pretty sure I've had that exact conversation. (No IEP meetings yet, though. I'm STILL waiting for the paperwork to come detailing Bub's diagnosis AND confirming our purchase of the lot so we can actually register him for kindergarten. Sigh.)

moplans said...

This just warms my heart. I can't wait to hear how it is working out.

Aliki2006 said...

Wonderful! We have another IEP next week--I'm not sure it will go as warmly, but I sure hope so.

Mouse said...

Fingers crossed for you, Aliki!

B&P, I feel for you. This process, with a willing school district, has taken many more weeks than we'd expected. On the plus side, I was able to slip him onto the kindergarten list when I was taking care of registration for preschool. Two birds.