It’s the last day of school.

I’m ready to be done with school for a while but no such luck.  Tomorrow is our IEP meeting to discuss goals for next year and how to implement them.  I wish I could say I was excited but you all know that excitement isn’t an emotion that accompanies these sorts of appointments. 

Last night I sat down with his IEP and took notes.  I looked at each goal that we set for this year that has now just ended and noted to the left either “Yes” or “No.”  He met 25% of them.  How is that for a kick in the pants?  We knew we had been ambitious when we set the goals but I wasn’t expecting such an outcome.  If you were to look back here you would see that we proclaimed him to have met almost ALL his goals at that point.  What is the explanation for this drastic re-evaluation?

I plead wishful thinking and willful ignorance.  At that meeting the teacher and his therapists lead the discussion and proclaimed him to have nearly met every goal and I drank the Kool Aid they were offering.  Who doesn’t want to walk out of a parent/teacher conference with a glowing report?  I have to give myself a little credit because I did recognize that the reports in the meeting were not the reports we had been expecting given the evaluation his teacher had prepared for the FX clinic.

Last night when I was reviewing the goals and came to this much lower number I admit I was in a very different place emotionally.  Before reading his IEP I had read his teacher’s report on his classroom functioning.  The first paragraph set the tone for the rest of my evening.  I’m so angry with this woman, how can she be so out of touch with reality?

You see, the first paragraph laid out her version of Monkey’s “transition issues.”  She proclaimed that he initially had trouble with a variety of transition issues in September and October but that, due to their implementation of a “variety” of techniques he was essentially cured in November.  He’s been making fantastic progress ever since.

The woman is delusional.  I looked back at my blog entries (you can too if you search for the “school” category) and she is so far off that I think maybe she forgot which kid she was writing the report on.  Monkey HAD no transition issues in September or October.  I noted on Oct. 31 (the day she scared the heck out of him by dressing up for Halloween) that he was less excited about school due to being more challenged but still doing well.  Of course, it all went to hell from that point on and we didn’t get the kid to walk into his classroom again for another SEVEN DAMN MONTHS. 

All those months that Duhdee and I were prying this screaming, crying, tantruming child off our arms, legs, waists only to get out of the classroom and break down into tears ourselves….didn’t happen as far as she is concerned.  None of it.  None of the stress and anger and helplessness happened.  The world has been peachy keen since November even though we were in TEARS in the office of a private psychologist in February because we had reached the end of our ropes.  We were done.  We were considering pulling him OUT OF SCHOOL. 

I don’t think this meeting tomorrow is going to go very well at all.