Seriously, can J-bear get a cape? A theme song? SOMETHING for going through evaluations by the millions?

Let’s break it down:

Since January, he’s had the following:

– ABA evaluation (checks progress of therapy, develops new goals)

– Developmental Evaluation (the complete BIG evaluation determining all his diagnoses)

– Early Intervention evaluation (okay this is Monday but still)

– Speech Therapy Evaluation 

And then between now and June, the schools propose THREE more.

… Are you people kidding me.

I understand the need for a lot of these. I am grateful that the ABA, Speech and EI evaluations are all completed by people who are familiar to him, so they feel like a session filled with play as well as work. He has only had 1 evaluation this year that was truly hard for him and he made it through. 

Every time I go through one of these it is an emotional wringer. First, I watch him work his way through the obstacles placed before him so that his skills may be studied and considered. Then, I watch people deliberate over what the data they collected tells them. Finally, I get emotionally knocked around by hearing “deficient” in this, “behind” in that, so on and so forth.

I propose that all people involved in these evaluations on children place a category within their reports that outlines what the child is AWESOME at. Seriously. We parents and caregivers might very much need that, and as the child gets older, they might need it too! They deserve to see/hear the ways in which they are exceptional. I know my son is delayed and struggling significantly in some areas. It made my day today to have the woman doing his speech evaluation share a great deal of positivity with me about what she sees in Jacob and how she feels about where we can go from here.

We need positivity amongs facing all the challenges. I needed today to hear someone say that he truly is a bright, sweet boy – to know that others can in fact see what I know is so very much him. 

Still waiting to hear when we might be headed for a sleep study for him. Good times!