We survived Round One of Transition, etc.

It was sort of uneventful, other than introducing Ela to the group. That part was sort of like bringing in the scruffy, wrong-side-of-the-tracks boyfriend to meet the upper-crusty familiy. Nothing overt was said, but the members of the Child Study Team sort of had fake, frozen pleasant expressions on their face. I was told that I could bring any material along that would help the CST understand Micah's issues. So what if the 'material' was a person?

Ela drilled them as to whether they had a Teacher of the Deaf consulting with the district on its deaf and hearing impaired students. (No, but we could get one. A non-answer, IMHO.) Ela emphasized that all the evaluations on Micah thus far have shown no cognitive or motor delays, his sole issue is the hearing impairment and its impact on his language development. (Read: don't stick Micah in a room with behavioral or physical disabilities and expect this child to emerge with a life-long love of learning.)

The same social worker, who at the end of our in-home meeting said, "Oh, he has ATRESIA, too?", was again stating that they are familiar with Micah's conductive hearing loss. That was about the time I pulled out my fake, frozen smile and just screwed it on. Yes, you deluded twits are experts based on your N=1 sample of children with atresia/microtia, and you need to know nothing about the auditory/oral program he's been in for the past year because you know it all.

Oh, just bite me or kiss my cellulitic pink tushie and we'll be done with it.

The next step will be to have the child study team evaluations done, once I sign the permission - then the school has 15 days to get the evaluations scheduled and ninety days to actually complete them.

The CST, of course, wants these done as close to his third birthday as possible, even though research supposedly shows that it doesn't make that much of a difference overall.

Considering Micah hadn't napped on the drive from the sitter's to Orchard Elementary School, he deserves points for not having a meltdown, and at the least I deserve chocholate or a pedicure with blue nail polish for maintaining the facade of cooperation - which will remain in place until we're presented with the IEP (if the IEP doesn't offer us Summit School).

Addendum: The FDA ban on importing the BAHA processors (from Sweden) has been lifted. A post yesterday on the BAHA Yahoo group passed that very, very good piece of information along. Of course I haven't heard from our Early Intervention service coordinator who I emailed a couple of days ago about Micah's second BAHA.

Addendum #2: I forgot to add that Thea survived her first visit to Dr. Andy the dentist for a filling today, which he was described to her as 'cleaning' the tooth. She's only had visits for cleaning so far, and with any luck this will be the only filling for awhile. It wasn't an actual cavity, per the dentist, but a softer area that could develop into one. Daddy did dentist duty, which Thebes will tell you is alliteration.

Addendum #3: This is a rare week because I worked a half day this week and 2/3 of Friday in addition to the usual Tuesday/Thursday. I hope the office hires a new full-time provider, NP, PA or whatever, soon. Since we're in the home stretch of Early Intervention, I am not feeling kindly toward anything interfering with Micah's services.