Ok, IFSP does not stand for "I Find Some Problems." It stands for Individual Family Service Plan. An IFSP is a summary of services for a child who has developmental delays before the age of 3. This is to assess her eligibility for services, but she is automatically eligible because she has Down Syndrome.
Once she turns 3, she will get an Individual Education Plan (IEP), which is geared towards preparing Evie for school. There are an awful lot of acronyms in the world of special ed, and I am still learning.
Basically a team from the Early Intervention program comes to our house, and they have a checklist of developmental skills to assess. She gets a score in each category at the end, and then they tell us how Evie is doing compared to her peers. Last time we did this, she was 3 months old, the questions cracked me up, because she was only 3 months old and couldn't do most of the things listed (but who can?).
This year, the IFSP did not crack me up, but I am trying to take it with a grain of salt. We knew Evie would have some developmental delays, but it's still hard to hear scores assigned to my baby girl. Hence the "I Find Some Problems." There are several categories:
Once she turns 3, she will get an Individual Education Plan (IEP), which is geared towards preparing Evie for school. There are an awful lot of acronyms in the world of special ed, and I am still learning.
Basically a team from the Early Intervention program comes to our house, and they have a checklist of developmental skills to assess. She gets a score in each category at the end, and then they tell us how Evie is doing compared to her peers. Last time we did this, she was 3 months old, the questions cracked me up, because she was only 3 months old and couldn't do most of the things listed (but who can?).
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| 3-month old Evie (and Violet) |
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| 14 month old Evie! |
This year, the IFSP did not crack me up, but I am trying to take it with a grain of salt. We knew Evie would have some developmental delays, but it's still hard to hear scores assigned to my baby girl. Hence the "I Find Some Problems." There are several categories:
Fine motor
Gross motor
Perceptive language
Expressive language
Social/emotional
Cognition
Her lowest is gross motor skills at a 5 month level, and her best is social/emotional at an 11 month level. The grain of salt part is that Evie is not a fan of showing people what she can do when she's not feeling comfortable with them. If she doesn't do something during testing, she doesn't get that point. The team was quick to reassure me that Evie is making tons of progress, especially since she had 5 months of dealing with 3 holes in her heart, so she couldn't develop as quickly when she was working so hard to just "be."
I am proud of Evie for getting this far. She may not have extraordinary gross motor skills, but she is extraordinary in so many other ways to me! Thank God for a great team of people (5 awesome ladies!) who come to our house each week to help Evie become stronger and more well-rounded. Seriously--it's actually pretty amazing that we have people who come to help me make sure that Evie is developing well. I definitely wouldn't know to pay attention to all of these things as a first-time mommy!
I am proud of Evie for getting this far. She may not have extraordinary gross motor skills, but she is extraordinary in so many other ways to me! Thank God for a great team of people (5 awesome ladies!) who come to our house each week to help Evie become stronger and more well-rounded. Seriously--it's actually pretty amazing that we have people who come to help me make sure that Evie is developing well. I definitely wouldn't know to pay attention to all of these things as a first-time mommy!
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| Our awesome Team Evie! (and a grumpy Evie, and even Violet made it in the pic!) |
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