Advice on DC Early Stages Process for 5 yr old, no speech or cognitive issues but significant other

[Anonymous]

My child has significant behavioral challenges and fairly fine and gross motor challenges. He is teased a lot by peers due to the motor challenges, which increases the behavioral issues etc.

What is my shot at getting an IEP or 504 with no speech or cognitive impairments.

He is miserable at school socially and we are going broke trying to do private social skills and OT, plus lessons like martial arts and swimming. We cannot keep babysitters and pay top dollar for them, exacerbating the issue.

Any constructive comments are so welcome.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My child has significant behavioral challenges and fairly fine and gross motor challenges. He is teased a lot by peers due to the motor challenges, which increases the behavioral issues etc.

What is my shot at getting an IEP or 504 with no speech or cognitive impairments.

He is miserable at school socially and we are going broke trying to do private social skills and OT, plus lessons like martial arts and swimming. We cannot keep babysitters and pay top dollar for them, exacerbating the issue.

Any constructive comments are so welcome.

Has your child been in a DCPS so far? What will his teachers say about his issue interfering with his learning? Have you been to a developmental pediatrician or other practitioner and gotten any kind of official diagnosis?

[Anonymous]

How far into his 5 year old year is he? Can you wait until he turns 6 (at which point the school takes over the evaluation - or at least, evals happen at the school and the chances increase that they'll listen to feedback from the school)? Seriously, in my experience Early Stages is awful, particularly if the issues your kid is experiencing show up in the classroom but may not be easily assessed, like behavior and social issues (as in don't count on Early stages being willing to conduct an observation and most certainly don't count on them considering any information from the school/teacher - as in the people who actually know your kid). That said, if they're significant challenges, at least with fine motor, you could potentially qualify for minimal OT. The gross motor challenges, unless he can't safely navigate the school are unlikely to net you PT from early stages evaluators. So you might end up with a 504 for the OT I guess? You could also get things done privately, but in my experience Early Stages "considers" and then promptly ignores all private evaluations - as in they chose to pay attention to a DC evaluation that was a year old over the TWO private evaluations we presented to them that had been done far more recently, but as long as they say they considered it, they seem to think that's all they have to do. I've talked with multiple school staff that hate dealing with Early stages and send kids their way and get told nothing is wrong etc, even though the kids clearly need help.

The one other consideration weighing against waiting though is that it sounds like maybe your kid best fits under a developmental delay category - which in DC can only be used for kids 3-7. That means he has a bit of time, but may be better to try to get in under that label sooner than later (know that per their policy they won't find a kid DD for social/emotional issues alone, apparently those kids are SOL or maybe under emotional disturbance, so he has to qualify based on the motor skills or another area). But the bar is high (2 years or 2 standard deviations behind) so if you get a team that draws that line in the sand, immovably, it may be tough to qualify.

YMMV, of course - I only have our experience to go on, so hopefully others will chime in, and we probably don't have enough info to make a true assessment anyway. If it's early in his 5 year old year, then you might as well do early stages, since you can just repeat everything with the school when he turns 6 if early stages goes badly (or I suppose, go the private evaluation route or independent evaluation route after early stages evaluates and see if you can make them actually consider those evals).

Is there any diagnosis? How far behind in these areas is he? Does the teacher see his behavior as problematic/interfering?

[Anonymous]

Is he at a DCPS or charter? My kid is at a charter and has a similar profile. Has an IEP. Is doing really well.

I hear Bridges does not have a wait list for K to 2nd.

Have you asked the school to do an evaluation ?

[Anonymous]

We had an Early Stages evaluation at 5 for social and gross and fine motor impairments, at the suggestion of his wonderful pre-K teacher who obviously could tell he had Aspergers but wasn't allowed to tell us that. No cognitive issues (to the contrary, he was far ahead), and he talked like a chatterbox with a close to adult vocabulary. He did/does sometimes get stuck on sentences and have to restart (a neurological thing associated with ASD, when he is under pressure) but Early Stages didn't care about that. The speech issue they were concerned about was "pragmatic" speech, which was just another way of saying that his social skills were awful and he had trouble sustaining back and forth conversation that was not just him explaining something he's interested in. And he had/has trouble with frustration tolerance. We got an IEP right away and several hours a week of OT, SP, and social skills group. Formal Aspergers diagnosis by private neuropsych evaluation didn't come until more than a year later, and didn't affect his IEP all that much. So clearly it is possible to get an IEP recommendation out of them for social and motor issues, with the caveat that my kid is obviously autistic (if you really know what to look for--we didn't understand it at the time).