In follow-up to our October meeting with the school, Grant and I again met with the child study team last week.  We have agreed to have Tyler evaluated.  This would include being evaluated for “academics”, speech, occupational, social and psychological. I thought Tyler was doing better in school as we have had no calls from the teacher but the teacher says Tyler remains very disruptive.  It’s not anything she hasn’t been able to handle but right now she has a student teacher helping her and soon she will not.  Tyler seems to require more attention, more time to calm down and sit still then the other children.  She said that Tyler can barely write his name and is way behind the other kids.

I brought up a concern about some muscular weakness.  When Tyler uses a stylus at home he can write on his little computer and if he uses chalk he can write on the sidewalk.  He has always had difficulty riding a bike and he struggles to button or snap his jeans.  They told us he will be evaluated for this, to see if it is a matter of that he just won’t do it or that he can’t, and whether it actually is a muscular issue.

All of the women there truly seemed to want to help Tyler.  The principal even sat in on our meeting.  Things sure have changed since I went to school, when the principal was a man to fear and you never heard from him unless you were in serious trouble.  She told us that she has met Tyler and that she knew he was a good kid, that he had touched her heart.  She also said that a lot of kids have trouble transitioning into kindergarten.

All of the people that knew Tyler had wonderful things to say about him, his amazing memory, how well he told a story.

On another front, we decided to let the psychologist go.  She had drawn up this behavior chart for Tyler that was broken down to before school and then after that every hour when he came home.  Basically, every hour he would either get a star or not, depending on whether he was good.  Grant and I felt that seemed like overkill; every hour we would be discussing with Tyler whether or not he was good or bad?

We told the child study team why we decided against this psychologist and they all thought the behavior plan was too much.  We aren’t going to rule out therapy in the future, but we didn’t click with this therapist.  Also, thankfully, some of the issues that brought us to see the psychologist in the first place have improved.  Tyler has only hit me twice, does not use bad language (we all “swore” it off) and is speaking to us less violently.  I pray that this was a stage and that he is learning to get a hold of his anger and use better words to express it.

So, Grant and I signed on the dotted line last week to agree to the evaluation, which won’t start until after the new year.  I can only hope that the child study team is as genuine as they seem to be and has Tyler’s best interests at heart.