Blown Away

We went to the Open House this week. As I was sitting there listening first to the presentation and then meeting his therapist/teacher and the other therapists with whom Elias will be working, I thought to myself "How in the world does a place like this exist and how did we get a spot here?"

Elias's classroom is going to have six children in it with four adults at a minimum there to support. There can be pull-outs (taking children out to work on them one-on-one) as well as push-ins which would be a speech, behavior, or OT therapist coming into the room to work with a child in the classroom setting. While the world may not be set up for autistic people, this school definitely is and has spared no detail or thought into what our kids may need. They also have a staff member who is specifically dedicated to transitional services, that is, helping find the best place for each child after they leave LEEP Forward. She will do the legwork and research and come on school tours with us to find the best place for him.

The only possible glitch is that the switch in our insurance is so new that the insurance company could not confirm yet whether or not they will cover Developmental Therapy services since our policy hadn't been fully loaded into the system. All of the classes are led by Developmental Therapists and will be billed as DT sessions to insurance, which is the only way we're able to afford this school. We could still do individual Speech/OT/Behavior/DT therapy through LEEP Forward, but I think the benefit will come through the preschool and having that support to help Elias learn and grow in a school setting. I'm going to choose to trust that DT services WILL be covered and not worry about it until we have to. And if they aren't, I'm going to fight like a mama bear to get it covered.

So, we have a bunch of evaluations and scheduling meetings coming up in the next few weeks. Thank goodness we have a vacation scheduled in the midst of all of it. I think we will all be thankful to have that break. Elias has yet to have an evaluation where he's truly shown who he is and what he can do; we'll see how he does here. His developmental pediatrician saw him six weeks after she diagnosed him and said "He seems a lot different today" -- he was comfortable in the room and had just seen her not too long ago. The stakes were also a lot lower. I believe that he knows that he's being evaluated on his deficiencies and doesn't like it. Who would?

And so we march on with hope and expectation...