Early Intervention

     My boy is sitting in my bed, watching Transformer videos. Or rather, he is watching videos made by grown men and posted to YouTube about the +s and -s of certain Transformer figurines. I am trying not to be bothered that these reach him in a way that I can't; supporting the interest.
But as I watch him the thing I wonder about most, and am perhaps the most upset with at the moment, is the reality that the term 'early intervention' is very, very empty. That it's a catch phrase. That people use it to make it seem as if problems are being addressed, questions answered, services rendered.
     They aren't. At least, in our world they weren't. The Dr. who helped us with Boy's evaluation made certain to put his IEP assessment percentile rankings on her report. She did that to draw attention to them. Attention even I hadn't paid. I focused on the fact that he was ''at least'' receiving services. 15 minutes a week was better than nothing, right? Well, that depends. It depends on these nice little numbers, numbers Mommy's who don't know what they are looking at don't understand, mean.
These numbers were from last spring. One year ago. Before he qualified for the DD pre-pre-K class they enrolled him in and promptly tried to graduate him from without services.

1%

     That's 1 percent. That puts Boy in 1 percentile ranking. Which apparently means 1% of children his age score LOWER than he does and 99% score higher. That is not good. The PhD and OT and SLP at his school gave him that ranking in more than one domain on his Batelle Inventory. His total was 7%. I'll let you do the math.

And then I'll ask you a question;

Does 7% sound like ''does not require services'' to you?

Well, golly.

     So you see the frustration. A year later, after countless concerns and fits and interventions and assessments here we sit with a diagnosis that explains EVERYTHING and then I have to back track and wonder what happened. I mean; what the hell happened? Where did these specialists who do nothing but provide early intervention, get the idea that 7% ranking is ready to go into a typical classroom without modifications?
     I don't have the exact answer. I have suspicions. One of those haunting suspicions, lurking in the shadows, whispers that this is the reason IEP advocates and lawyers exist.

And it sucks.