I have a meeting tomorrow for my oldest son Steve at school it is his annual ARD meeting. ARD is an Admission, review or dismissal meeting. This meeting is used to determine if a child is eligible for special services at school. Now every year we have to go through this and it is sometimes good and sometimes not so good.
Steve is in special ed because he was behind socially (from being in a bad home prior to age three) and he is behind on his math and reading. He is getting much better on math since he has been getting the extra help. Tomorrow I am going to push for him to get extra help in his writing. My goodness his penmanship and writing skills are horrible.
If you have a child with special needs or medical conditions an ARD meeting is in your future. This year I have a problem with it because they noticed his attention and behavior changed and never mentioned it to me. During the Thanksgiving break I noticed it and was a little upset that the school who has him for 8 hours a day never bothered to mention it. We had his medication levels tested for his epilepsy medication and his levels were extremely low which explains the attention and behavior changes. Now during the month of November and December they did their annual testing of him and said that his IQ fell to a below normal level this year.
Now don’t get me wrong he is not an A student but he is not below average intelligent either. Steve has multi-focal seizures (which means he has seizure activity in all four sections of his brain) and when his medication levels are off like they were he will have more absent seizures or complex partial seizures and they can go un-noticed throughout the day. His levels were so low that the doctor doubled his daily medication. When he came back from Thanksgiving break he was just starting his higher dose and it takes a while for it to get leveled off in his system. I am kind of upset at the school for doing his testing during that time when they knew there was a medical issue that affects his abilities.
We will see what tomorrow holds.