Parents of mainstreamed ASD kids, how long did your DC need an IEP?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here and another question for those who have been through this. If you have your own evaluation at the three-year mark does the school system have to do its own review or can they accept your evaluation?

They can choose to accept it or do their own evaluation. In many cases they will take an outside assessment and have it reviewed by one of their psychologists and call that an 'evaluation.'

[Anonymous]

OP - If she is getting private speech and OT, then ask those professionals to also set some skills goals for her to be working on which can be shared. In any case, I would say to keep it and to request the full Triennial Evaluation. You might discuss with your private therapists about when and if to get a new neuro-psych eval to demonstrate the need.

A couple of things that I can see coming up are that the classes start to get larger around 3rd grade, academics more complex and the socialization of kids starts to become more complex as with a bit of groupiness etc. If you daughter has social communication issues, it may well be as "the girls" especially start to go along different tracks of interests and friendships with varying rates of social-emotional development that your daughter could need support in developing her social-communication skills in an appropriate framework.
In the back of my mind, I would seek to keep the IEP in place through the first year and transition to middle school. By then you would have a firmer gauge of just how well she was doing with typical peers in the key, but oh so important non-academic area of school life.