Anthony's Assessments

During the time we had been working with Daniel to make sure he was getting what he needed, we started to notice Anthony seemed to stop advancing as well as he had been. We had been working with him ourselves to get him to learn how to count, say the alphabet, know animals and sounds, colors and shapes. But even when Daniel's teacher would come into our home, she would mention that we needed to keep an eye on Anthony. (We are so grateful she did too). Anthony had been learning words, but we really hadn't noticed that he wasn't "linking words".

We also noticed that Anthony had not been using signs he had learned while he and Daniel would watch Signing Time© DVDs. We also noticed that he wasn't starting to play appropriately with toys. So, we tried to schedule an appointment with our regional center for Anthony. The regional center wouldn't see him until he was assessed by the school (since he was almost three before he presented enough issues to be evaluated). Once he was going to turn three, we were able to set up an appointment with the speech teacher at what would be our school. Since our major issue was that he wasn't "chaining words", we had to start with that. The speech teacher did a basic evaluation and noted that we would have a complete assessment for an iep.

After the assessment was the meeting... We found out that Anthony was behind in much more than his speech. We didn't realize how far behind he was. Though we shouldn't have, we compared where he was to where Daniel was. It was our only example at the time. We were shocked - to say the least. We had noticed a few deficits, but not enough to think he had any major issues. Once we had the assessment and IEP, we were able to enroll him in the same sdc class Daniel was in. We also got the word that the regional center would evaluate him now. They scheduled an appointment at an off site facility. When we got there, the psychologist tried to evaluate him, but he was very uncooperative. After about 20 minutes, several questions and Anthony's non compliance, we were told that he would need to come back another day, to see if he could be coaxed into complying.

About 2 weeks later we got a call from our regional center worker that Anthony had been taken on as a client. We were completely confused, but grateful that they took him on as a client because it would mean that services would be available for him. But then, we were told the reason for him being taken on was because he was mentally delayed. He had an "intellectual disability". We were referred to another psychologist who could help determine "the level" of his delay. After seeing this psychologist, we were informed that he had a "global delay", which basically meant that he was behind in every category. This all basically meant that Anthony, while a client of the center, would not receive any services - they didn't believe that he was capable of learning?!!

Once we had "jumped through the hoops" he began the SDC with Daniel. Initially he did well, in the class and speech. He even seemed to be trying to socialize, or so we thought.