Bracing for Impact

This is how I feel approaching Evan's IEP meeting next Wednesday.  WARNING: I'm about to get very real.

Yes, Evan is the light of my life and I love sharing how absolutely awesome and amazing he is in every way- and he is!!  He is my sunshine.... we have a bond so strong... SO SO strong.  But somehow I've let him down.  I feel like I have completely failed him as a parent and advocate for his educational needs this past year.  I mentioned in a previous post how his last progress report indicated he was making sufficient progress toward meeting all his IEP goals by August, when in reality he really hasn't gotten close to most of them.  I feel like this past school year was a total waste and he has made very minimal progress.  Can we have a re-do?  I feel like time is precious with him since he will always have some sort of delay.  But my responsibility is to keep him as up to speed as possible so those delays don't fall further and further behind.  My goal has been for him to attend mainstream Pre-K for the 2014-2015 school year.  Is that just a pipe dream now or can we still get there?

I am so nervous coming into this meeting.... How can I express my feelings yet not appear as if I am attacking the school staff?  The people Evan works with on a daily basis are the sweetest people ever.  Yet somehow he seems to have slipped through the cracks.

At 3 1/2 years old, Evan still has no verbal words.  He knows well over 100 signs but very rarely uses them in context.  He can label but will not use them conversationally.  This is my biggest frustration.  He is a SMART little boy, but it's becoming extremely difficult to get those smarts out of him.  I worry how this will impact his education in the next several years since it's so difficult for teachers to understand what he knows and doesn't know.  Do I need to seek out the possibility of another diagnosis such as apraxia of speech or autism? Or is this just my little boy who goes 50 mph at all waking hours and has no time to stop for this communication stuff?  Justin was a late talker- he didn't really start speaking until 2 1/2 years old.... is Evan just following in big brother's footsteps?  Or is this "severe delay" caused by the lack of one-on-one services.... And most importantly, is this ground we can make up next year with proper therapy times?

Currently, Evan has been receiving the bulk of his therapies in the special ed classroom as group therapies.  The only one-on-one services he has been getting individually are speech once a week at his private preschool, and I am thinking he gets pulled for some OT at the special ed preschool.  That's it.  Evan really needs more individualized therapies and this was a huge concern of mine at the beginning of the year as we transitioned from Infants & Toddlers services with therapists who came to the house to work with him one-on one.  And with that transition of me seeing the therapists each time and communicating at each session, to the special ed preschool where I get quarterly progress reports and that's it.... I feel left in the dark.  I thought maybe they were seeing more at school since he was almost always marked as "making sufficient progress to meet IEP goal".... but maybe not so much.  I am anxious to hear what they have to say at this meeting.

Please pray.  Pray that I can get my point across about the lack of communication at school as well as the inaccuracy of Evan's progress reports without being on the attack.  Pray we can reach an agreement for Evan's next steps.  And mostly pray for Evan that he gets the desire to communicate.  I want the world to know how smart my sweet boy is!