Jett had a brief screening with ChildFind today. For the uninitiated, ChildFind is a program that works through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA. They screened his development in five areas: physical, adaptive, social-emotional, cognitive, and communication. Jett scored average in physical and adaptive behavior, below average in social-emotional and cognitive, and delayed in communication, thus qualifying him for further evaluation at a later date. A preschool special education teacher will call us to schedule a “natural setting observation”, which means they’ll come to our home to evaluate him in his natural environment, and he’ll also have some further, more in-depth evaluations at another support center.

The results of the screening were about what I expected – no surprises there. I’m glad to finally have an in-home evaluation coming up. I’ve been hoping we could have him observed here at home. His behavior here at home is so different compared to his public behavior.

His speech seems to be improving already since speech therapy started. He’s picked up several new words, and he’s getting better at expressing a want or need without getting seriously frustrated. He still has some trouble putting two words together in a sentence without mumbling a lot. He’ll say “I want juice”, but it sounds like “uhnn juice”. That’s probably one of the clearer two-word sentences he says. Usually, the first part sounds like complete jibberish. I’ve read about developmental apraxia of speech, and trouble making two-word sentences is one of the classic signs. We’ll find out more about that during future evaluations.

Things are progressing, and we’re seeing some results. Thanks for all of your continued support and prayers. 🙂