Kindergarten screening and evaluation

Yesterday morning I took Ryan to the elementary school for kindergarten readiness screening. He did so well! Most of the things I knew he would have no trouble with. He wrote his name, first and last, even though he was only asked to write his first name. He drew a person. He knows all his colors and shapes and he can count WAY higher than 10 (the highest they "tested" him on). He can identify all letters uppercase and lowercase (and can read tons of words, too, but he was only "tested" on letters). He was able to correctly place a block on top of the paper, under the paper, behind his back, and "in front of Mom", when asked. He got all his opposites right. There were a few questions he struggled with, such as "What is a curtain?". His answer was, "You sleep with it." LOL. But he got some right, too, like "What is a ball?" and he said, "You bounce it." He was not able to stand on one foot (I knew he couldn't) and he wasn't able to walk placing one foot directly in front of the other on the floor (although I know he can do a balance beam with one hand assist). I left there feeling pretty darn confident on him going in to kindergarten, figuring he probably knows more than a lot of kids who have not already had 3 years of preschool under their belt or who don't have parents that care enough to work with them.

But then yesterday afternoon, we got his evaluation report in the mail that the school district did, and now I'm not feeling so confident. This is something that was done due to him already being in the IU8 program, to evaluate him and see if he qualified for special education. There were a lot of positive things in the evaluation, but there were also a lot of things that frankly depressed me : (. He does qualify for special education due to being visually impaired and he is also considered speech and language impaired. Something that was depressing to me is that when it comes to articulation, his speech is only at an equivalent of 2 years 10 months and he will be SIX in August. They also wrote that "His speech intelligibility during conversational speech is judged as poor to an unfamiliar listener due to some age-level articulation errors, but more significantly due to his weak voice volume." Volume is one thing they've/we've been working on all year in school. He does not ALWAYS talk quietly, but a lot of the times if he's "put on the spot", he tends to mumble and talk very quietly. On a positive note: His age at the time of evaluation was 68 months. In receptive language, he scored at 69 months and in expressive language, he scored at 65 months, with an average age equivalent of 68 months : ). Right on the money! He talks up a storm and he understands so much. Now it's just working on articulating and volume.

There were some other things that were a little disheartening to read, but I won't get in to all that now. Maybe another day. The bottom line is, he is listed as "Needs Development" in ALL areas: Personal & Social Development, Language and Literacy, Mathematical Thinking, Scientific Thinking, Social Studies, The Arts, and Physical Development & Health. But according to the scale used to evaluate him on school readiness, direction/position, self-/social awareness, texture/material, quantity, and time/sequence, his scoring was "average" overall, so hopefully he will do well and continue to progress as much in kindergarten as he has been the last few school years. (He is listed as "delayed" for direction/position and time/sequence, but "average" for everything else). His cognitive testing is a little alarming to me, though. His test results for that are as follows: Verbal IQ - low average, Performance IQ (nonverbal) - borderline (interpret with caution), and Processing Speed - extremely low. Full scale was determined to be borderline (interpret with caution). I will admit, I'm not 100% sure what some of this means, but the school psychologist is supposed to be contacting me and I'll be able to ask her for some clarification.

I am just hoping and praying that he does not get lost in the shuffle, especially when it comes to speech and interacting with his peers. I'm really nervous for my little man. I just want him to do well and continue to enjoy school and look forward to going. I will be a bundle of nerves, I'm sure, when he starts in the fall. It's true, he has come a L-O-N-G way, but he unfortunately still seems to have a long way to go.