Week Five

After having numerous meetings with Kaylee’s special education teachers, mainstream classroom teachers, and her guidance counselor Trish, Jody, and Brody all decide that it is best to keep Kaylee in the mainstream classroom even though she is having a difficult time socially. It is important for Kaylee to still be surrounded by her peers. In addition, Kaylee will learn through observation of what proper social cues and rules are and she will have more stimulation to proper speech and language. This could aid her in developing better speech patterns which will in turn help in her reading development. Jody and Trish feel confident about the decision they have made but they think it is very important that Kaylee works on social rules, social cues, and behavioral triggers in order for her to be successful in developing friendships. Therefore, as Katie enters middle school her grandmother, Mom and Dad all meet with Katie’s new IEP team to discuss goals and proper accommodations that may be necessary in order for Kaylee to be successful in the next 3 years.

Trish has been much more involved in Katie’s life now that she feels she is mentally stable. She feels very blessed to have such willing and helpful parents and that Kaylee’s father has been very helpful and involved. Trish continues to work on her teaching degree and will hopefully be finished at the end of the year. It has been helpful for Trish to be involved in other groups and activities in order to remain at a mentally stable place in her life. She has begun to take adult pottery classes at the same place where Kaylee takes classes and she attends weekly group therapy for mothers who have a child with a disability. Talking about her concerns and doing something that makes her happy has really brought out a different side of Trish. Because of this, Kaylee seems much calmer and ever happier. This made Trish wonder if some of Kaylee’s behavioral problems stemmed from Kaylee realizing that Trish was going through a tough time.

Now that Kaylee is in middle school, it is imperative that she has an IEP team that will help her be as successful as possible and help her develop in any way she can. One of the main objectives is to come up with short-term and long-term goals for Kaylee and also talk about accommodations for her in the classroom. Kaylee’s IEP team consists of her special education teacher, her mainstream teacher, her speech pathologist, her occupational therapist, guidance counselor, and reading specialist. They feel that a lot of Kaylee’s tantrums are as a result of her frustration in the classroom because she does not understand what is going on and she is full of energy. Confining Kaylee to one area and one room all day caused her to be very disruptive and resulted in her developing problems with her peers. They feel that because she is in middle school now and she changes classrooms more often that she will not feel as agitated. In addition, they think it would be beneficial to extend her test taking time and give extra help or less options on more challenging subjects since her classes are much more difficult this year.

Kaylee’s speech and language has been progressing. At the end of 5^th grade, she at a 3^rd grade reading level. This indicates that she may have an easier time with some of her classes this year because she now is able to read in order to learn the material whereas she was previously learning to read. However, the reading specialist is going to continue to work with her. One suggestion that was made during the IEP meeting was for the reading specialist to take her assignments and tailor them to a 4^th grade reading level. She will have a better time comprehending it and it is still a challenge where she is learning. Trish and Brody really liked this idea and felt that the whole IEP team was really coming up with ways to individualize Kaylee’s personal needs. Kaylee’s MLU is not quite where her peers are, in addition they are able to create much more complex sentences. Kaylee is able to create a complex sentence but her length of her sentences are not as great. In addition, Kaylee has trouble understanding prefixes, suffixes, word roots, plurals, and singular. This is something she has made leaps in understanding but she still has work to do. This proved to be a challenge when she needed to create a story about a little girl living in a city in Mexico. Kaylee and her team worked on researching about Mexico and the culture and Kaylee knew what she wanted to write about, but she has trouble correctly stating words, adding word endings, and making it present or past tense. Although it was a challenging experience for Kaylee compared to the other kids in the class, she was able to learn a lot about proper grammar when writing.

As Kaylee progressed through middle school she still seemed to struggle with friendships. Although her behavior was more controlled than in elementary school, she was still throwing tantrums and she was still not picking up on typical social rules and cues. A lot of emphasis of Kaylee’s therapy throughout middle school was based solely on academics, speech, and OT. However, not a lot of the therapy was placed on social aspects that Kaylee seemed to struggle with. As she entered high school, it was very important for Trish and Brody to figure out possible solutions to help Kaylee socially.

Kaylee had made huge leaps academically throughout middle school. She was only about 1 grade level behind in her reading and was speaking much more intelligibly. Compared to her peers, she was still having trouble but she was making progress. Kaylee was really taking the time when she was talking to stop and breathe and think about what she was going to say next. Her clustering disorder had not seem to be an issues, except when she was put in anxiety-like situations. This led to frustrations which ultimately led to a behavioral outburst. Because Kaylee was still having behavioral problems, her doctor did not want to take her off her medications. He was afraid that taking her off her medication may prove to be more harmful than good.

Physically Kaylee was very short compared to the average individual that was 15 years old. She was 4’10 and weighed under 100 pounds. However, she could grow and had grown about 3 inches in the past year but the doctors are not sure that she would continue to grow much more. Katie needed to continue to go to OT for some deformities in her limbs that seemed to give her some problems as she started to grow. In addition, because of her low weight, her doctor recommended her seeing a nutritionist to make sure she is at least getting the proper food groups in and that she is eating things the strengthen her bones and foods that can help calm her.  Brody and Trish were very willing to take these steps in order for Kaylee to be healthy. Brody and Kaylee’s relationship has grown and Brody and Trish have been doing a lot of research about Kaylee’s condition in order to help her. One thing that Brody has realized is that involving Kaylee in more hands- on activities (like the pottery) can help her grow socially and academically. Therefore, as Kaylee entered 10^th grades, they decided to sign her up to take classes at the local vocational technical school that is affiliated with her high school. This seemed to be a great idea and Kaylee was very excited about it she decided to take classes learning about cosmetology and horticulture. This had proven to be a very successful decision made by Kaylee’s parents. Everyday Kaylee came home from school, she had stories and stories talking about what she had done during the day. In addition, she asked her mom if she wanted to plant a garden with her that summer. Trish was finally feeling like Kaylee had found her niche and she seemed like a very happy young girl. The best part about the whole experience is that Kaylee met a group of girls in her cosmetology class that she really enjoyed and she had a new best friend named Taylor that was in her horticulture classes with her. Kaylee was starting to really feel like she was fitting in and her parents and IEP team realized that she was also behaving much better.

As Kaylee entered her junior year in high school she seemed to be very excited about her upcoming year. However, her classes were starting to become increasingly difficult. As her peers were preparing to take the SAT, Kaylee was becoming more confused about her future. She still lagged behind cognitively, she was having minor issues socially, her speech and reading was certainly not perfect, and she seemed to have more problems with her hearing. Brody and Trish wondered what to do about Kaylee’s future. They see how well she is doing in her vocational classes but they worry about her future beyond high school. They saw drastic improvements from Kaylee within the past 3 years but they feared that more problems would arise or she would regress from the improvements she has made. Trish wanted to do more research but wondered if it would be beneficial for Kaylee to start another type of program for individual with learning disabilities and behavioral disorders. She feared that this would be something Kaylee would not want to do and would in turn cause Kaylee to throw tantrums.

Decision point:

Do Trish and Brody enter Kaylee into a program after high school for individuals with learning disabilities and behavioral disorders or do they let Kaylee look for jobs in horticulture while she continues behavioral therapy on the side?

Questions:

1.       What is a vocational technical school?

2.       What kind of jobs can Kaylee get in horticulture/florist? How much would she make?

3.       What is the true definition of a clustering disorder?

4.       Can a mother’s reactions/behaviors impact a child’s behavior? For example, was Trish’s depression a possible factor in Kaylee’s behavioral outbursts?