Olivia’s IEP

I was really excited after Olivia’s IEP meeting this year. How often do you say that? I love her meetings because her team is amazing and loving and they have such wonderful things to say about my girl. It sure makes us proud!

This year’s IEP is very interesting; it definitely shows that she’s growing up. We are starting to make a shift towards independent living skills. It’s thrilling and scary at the same time.

Olivia’s language still continues to blossom which amazes me. I’m pretty sure one of the first doctors we ever saw said that, if she progressed at all, she would stop at around age 8. Suck it doctors! She’s 11 and still keeps improving!! Her struggle with this point with language is describing things. For example, if she’s trying to tell you about a movie, and you can’t understand her, she’ll just get mad and say “NEVER MIND!”. We’re thinking if she can get better with her descriptive language, she’ll be able to describe what she’s trying to say in different ways so eventually the listener will understand. Pretty great, right?

I told you a few weeks ago about her progress with writing. She’s petty much mastered the “O” and the “l” in her name so we will continue to work on her signature. She’s pretty famous you know. She has been showing a new interest in craft and art activities which is really fun. She’s never been interested in this before! I think it’s because it’s easier for her now, so it’s fun!

Something new we’re working on is functional math problems. She will be working on sorting money, using a calculator to add and subtract, identify fractions with measuring cups and spoons, tell time on a digital clock and count objects up to 5. Isn’t that awesome and doesn’t it make so much sense? She’s already doing an awesome job with telling time. We’ve been trying to have her get out the forks for dinner (since we need 5 of them) but this is really, really difficult for her. We’re making a mat with a picture of the forks and hoping that helps her to count by matching them. For whatever reason, counting a certain number is hard for her. She can count with no problem, but counting out a certain number of objects is really difficult.

Olivia loves to read and loves to look at books. We are continuing to work on this goal for her. She tries to read words in isolation (which she does the best) and sentences isolated. These are pretty hard for her. We’ve also added in learning how to read safety and informational signs, brand names of items she would buy from the store, names of restaurants and choices she would make there and names of family members and people at school. Those make me so happy too because it’s so independent!! It gets me choked up thinking of her as a grown up making these choices and reading them for herself. Pretty cool.

Her physical goals are always a challenge. We’re working on getting up from the floor without getting on all fours. We’re also working on opening and passing through doors. We’re still working on improving her jumping skills. She wants to be able to jump just like her brothers on the trampoline and jump into the pool off the side. The last time we went swimming, she said she wanted to pass the deep water test so she could go down the slide. So, as a family, we will be working on that too.

Isn’t this an amazing IEP? It’s exciting to watch her grow and become so independent. I love imagining her doing all of these things for herself. She’s just going to continue to grow and blossom, don’t you think?