Another new school SLP and outside SLP update

On Friday I received a phone call from Megan's school speech therapist (SLP).  She wanted to discuss Megan's goals for next year; her ARD meeting is coming up on the 29th so all of her therapists are working on her goals.  Megan has only been seeing this lady since just before Easter so she hasn't had a lot of sessions with her yet.  She started going down the list of Megan's current goals and talking about how they should be adapted/modified for next year.  She asked me if Megan was saying any words at home.  I told her the words Megan has been saying at home and she just kept saying that she has only heard "mm" from Megan at school; and I said well you asked me what she was doing and I am telling you that she is capable of saying the words I just told you.

Then she said the goal regarding Megan imitating "m,b,p,n" she said that she wasn't sure what Megan would be capable of but that she wasn't meeting this goal right now and she prefers her students master goals so we needed to change this one.  And then she said "I am not ready to give up on her yet".  I was shocked and couldn't believe that she had just said that.  By the time our conversation was over she had said it 3 times and when I called her out on it her response was "I said not ready yet" like that was supposed to make me feel better.  Needless to say I was livid.  I waited until yesterday to call the school about it because I was in no condition to address it that day.  There was no push back, Megan was assigned a new SLP today.  Starting tomorrow she will see her 4th therapist (her first changed jobs, second was a temporary, third was the aforementioned person who shouldn't be a therapist if she gives up on people).

Now to the good stuff.  Yesterday Megan saw her outside therapist, who is wonderful.  Unfortunately some of the session was spent looking at/dealing with the new software but Megan still got a good 20 minutes at least of therapy and she did great.  Meredyth (therapist) turned on a toy for Megan and then stopped it after 15 seconds or so and showed Megan the iPad.  Megan immediately looked for the word "more" and since this was a different software the button was in a different location and had a different picture with it; BUT she looked around, found the word and touched it all within a few seconds.  Megan knows what the WORD "more" looks like.  I was shocked, stunned, thrilled and so proud of her.  She didn't skip a beat she touched it and looked at Meredyth for her to turn the toy back on.  So to recap, she didn't have to be prompted (other than putting the iPad within reach), she had to figure out where the word was on the screen and what it looked like and she did it all in 3-4 seconds.  The rest of the session went really well, she would touch "more" or "go" when necessary; sometimes requiring prompting by Meredyth telling her to touch it and sometimes not.   At one point Megan pointed to the light switch and made her "do something" noises and Meredyth asked her if she wanted mama to turn off the light.  I ended up standing by the switch and turning the light off and on whenever Meredyth pushed the appropriate button.  This exercise evoked Megan's stubborn side.  She really wanted the light turned off and on but she was frustrated that her pointing at it and making her noises wasn't enough to get it done.  She didn't WANT to touch the picture on the iPad, she wanted me to understand (as I usually do) and accommodate the pointing/gesturing/noises by doing what she wants.  Meredyth was having to either model appropriate behavior by pushing the buttons and me giving her what she asked for or physically using Megan's finger to push it.  I know that we will have to get through more of this as we implement this communication device for Megan so it was nice to see how Meredyth dealt with it.