The Monster’s IEP meeting is two weeks from Tuesday, so we’re starting to get our ducks in a row for whatever fight might be coming.

One of the interesting parts, to me, of the Monster being in a public school is seeing how he deals with the ‘real’ curriculum in his pre-K classroom.

Now, granted, the academics weren’t on his IEP when we negotiated it last year – I think none of us were really worried about where he’d be at the end of this year, since he already knew his letters and numbers, could count fairly high and recognize distinct numbers even higher.  By that measure, he was already ahead of a lot of the kids his own age in the schools, and we figured “at worst”, he’d lose some of that lead by the time he transitioned into a kindergarten class for next year.

As I’m sitting here on Sunday morning, he’s taking the foam letters from his mat and putting them into the toybox, announcing which one is a vowel and which one is a consonant.

There are things that he could be doing better with academically – his handwriting is worse than atrocious (due to his grip, which is part of his OT) – and his pronunciation of ‘vowel’ and ‘consonant’ leave something to be desired.  He’s very willful and doesn’t want to do his homework which would help reinforce what he’s learning at school.  And further, we’re not really sure what else is being taught in school, since he’s still not up to using past tense verbs or giving a narrative of his day… and those are things that I wish that they’d find a way to get him to convey.

And yet, these are all things hat I’m not quite sure are able to be covered by the IEP.  I mean, that’s the school’s job anyway to ensure that he learns the things he’ll need for being an intelligent, functional member of society, and so it’s almost redundant to give them grief about it in the meeting that’s already going to be (I feel) contentious.

On the other hand, it’s important to look at the positives.  He is identifying some letters based on the sounds they make.  He’s able to distinguish between groups of items and how many are within them.  He’s starting to recognize rhyming words (sometimes).  And those are interesting additions to his toolbox.

Now, just to get the reports on the actual IEP goals…