age appropriate

[Guest guest]

Hi, I have a question for everyone. We are going to have a meeting

on Annika tomorrow. I have a difference in opinion between her

special ed staff and the oral deaf school staff. To make a long

story short, I choose to take Annika to the oral deaf school without

any help or recognition from her local school program. They denied

that she needed to go there. The said that they could provide FAPE

here. Well, I disagree but that is not the problem at this time. But

I thought I needed to add that little background history.

The issue is what is age appropriate for her to learn and what is

not. I was wondering if anyone knew of a website that I could locate

that would show what language, words, etc would be age appropriate.

The biggest one right now is that the oral deaf school teacher

recommends that we start working with Annika in teaching her colors.

That it is age appropriate for her to know these by the time she

turns 3(which is in 6 months). When I discussed this with some of

her local staff they said no not age appropriate and that she is not

ready to be taught this. I was told by one teacher that her son who

is 4 doesn't even know his colors so why try with her. I say why

not? In order for her to start putting more than 1 word together she

needs to have some adjectives and the like to work with. I have seen

it with one child who was implanted about a year before Annika. He

is the same age as Annika and knows all his colors and is starting to

work with two-three word sentences. When I brought this up, I was

told well that is fine for him but some kids learn certain things

because that is their area that they are strong in. Not something

that we need to do with Annika.

I just thought if someone knew of a website or something that I could

look at to see who is right and how to prove my case(or disprove, I

guess) that would be great. Though, I will say that I will go along

with her oral deaf school whether it is written in her plan or not

here. Then when she learns them and it isn't because it is in their

plan then I would have a case that they are not providing FAPE here.

I struggle with this at almost every meeting. The local special ed

staff have really no great vision for Annika. They just want to take

baby steps and (in my opinion) have no idea on how much is possible

for her since she was implanted. Part of the problem for them is

that they really have only worked with kids that were implanted later

in life. I have been told by staff that they can see a big

difference already between Annika and the other kids they have worked

with and yet they don't get that they need to change their

expectations for her. Frustrating for me.

I also know that part of the issue is that they want to make sure

that she acheives her goals. They write the goals lower than we try

to push for so that they can document that they are doing a good job

with her and she is meeting her goals either within the guidelines or

earlier. Just for example, we have her annual meeting in March so we

wrote goals then. Well, it is August and she has met almost every

goal that they wrote for her. Some of them were written for only 6

months but a lot of the ones she has met were written for March. I

know good job Annika but let's get some vision here.

Sorry so long.

Mom of 4

Marcus 14

12

Jon 10

Annika 2.5

bilateral implanted 3/1/04

hookup 3/25/04