Evaluations are DONE!

I can breathe a sign of relief. Austin's speech evaluation was done on Tuesday and the Psychological Evaluation was done today. It's so hard when the therapists ask what is wrong and why the eval is being done, because at first glance he is a bright little boy. But something is off...what that something is, I don't know and I don't know how to describe.

He did great yesterday for the speech part. I didn't request the speech eval, but the CPSE board did. I don't have concerns about his expressive or receptive speech, but I did have some concerns about the articulation of his speech. He can't make the /sp sound. I have tried to encourage correct pronunciation, but he just can't. There are a couple other sounds that are off a little, but no more than a typical child. At least that's my opinion. On the three areas he was tested in, he passed all three. The average range is an 85-115. For receptive speech he had a 102, for expressive he had a 114 and for articulation he had an 86. She then pointed out that only 44% of males aged 4 yrs 5 months have mastered the /sp sound. I was relieved. I wish they printed that info somewhere.

The psych eval today was MUCH longer and more difficult. If not on him, then on me. It's so hard to silently...key word, silently...sit there and not help him. He started off well, but the attention issues became quickly apparent. He has trouble staying on task. You'd think it would be if the subject matter were difficult, but they were subject and topics that I KNOW he knows. For one task he had a page of geometric shapes. Within those shapes he had to draw a specific symbol (2 parallel lines, 2 vertical lines, a plus sign or a circle, as directed). He made it through about 3 shapes and then just started scribbling all over the page. This right here is my MAIN concern about him going to kindergarten next year. 3 hours later when the test was complete, she found that once again he was in the average range. However, his adaptive skills are low (which I expected). She feels she can make a clinical judgement request to get him some special education therapy.

All these average scores are great, but now I need to find past evals and make sure he isn't dropping on those averages. That will be key.