Ethan Update

Ethan has been progressing at a faster pace over the past quarter than he had in previous quarters. Ethan's service provider, LIFE, made a change to Ethan's program a few months ago and he is responding to it much better. The main difference is that they started a receptive labeling/language program. The initial method in this program is that the tutor will put 4 written words on a board and one picture of an object like a ball. The tutor will then say, "get ball" while tapping the picture of the ball. He then picks up the label card with the word 'ball' on it. He also does the same in reverse (show the word and he finds the picture) and also a version where the tutor only says a word and he finds the written version without a picture. He now has a receptive labeling vocabulary of 70 words where he can pick out the written word without a mistake. This is a very exciting advance to me and Caren because it shows he is very likely least of average intelligence. He is basically reading 70 words at age 3.

We had our 10th day of trail last Friday and it lasted from 9am to 7:30 pm in the case of Ethan vs. Rocklin School District and Placer County. The trial will resume tomorrow and this will hopefully be the last session. We're very anxious to hear the ruling the Hearing Officer (Judge) will submit in a few weeks. To us, this means the difference between Ethan having a decent shot at recovery and him having a poor shot. The trial was very difficult for many reasons, but one of the hardest aspects to digest was the disregard for our son's needs. A couple of the SD witnesses blatantly lied on stand about issues in which Caren had personal direct knowledge to the contrary. A one of the expert witnesses for the SD made remarks about doing cost analysis to make the decision as to how to treat Ethan. Of the 15 or so expert witnesses and school officials that gave testimony against Ethan or against his current program, only 2 had ever even met and observed him. And those were for less than 30 minutes each. It has been made clear from October when this began that the SD did not feel it important to fit a therapy plan to his needs but rather to use the least expensive treatment that meets the state minimum standards. The Lanterman Act (which is the act that provides state funding to school districts that is supposed to be used to educate and treat handicap children) states clearly that each child is supposed to have a therapy program tailored to that child's specific needs. Caren and I are more than a little frustrated and disgusted. We are not suing to get exceptional services, but just adequate treatment. I'll digress. :) However, we know that the outcome will reflect God's will. And we also know that God's will may be that Ethan never recover. But we pray that God will recover our son through any method.

So we'd appreciate a little more prayer over the next few weeks. Please ask God to help the Hearing Officer to make a ruling according to God's will. Pray that Caren will calm down after the 4 weeks of spread out trial in which she sat through questions ranging from Ethan's intellect to Caren's honesty. And pray that Ethan's brain will recover from the damages done in development that caused his Autism.

p.s. I'm not sure I explained the law suit in any previous correspondence. Here's a summary: The state directly provides services (therapies) for handicap children age 0-3. At age three the state hands about 50% of this responsibility over to the local school district (SD) while providing funding to the SD for the programs. Most SDs continue the program the child was using as long as it was within financial reason. A few SDs like Rocklin have recently begun to instead create their own in-house program that costs less. So they offer this program (called STEPS in our SD) and will not pay for any other. The problem is that their in-home program has no real training (non of the instructors or managers have degrees or training in the specific subject, i.e. ABA), does not follow successful therapy methods, is in a group setting (almost no individual therapy) and doesn't include vital programs like real speech therapy. Caren visited the program twice and said it is basically daycare where she witnessed children getting no training at all. These episodes were not atypical as almost all parents with children in these programs observe the same. So our law suit is to try to force the SD to provide adequate services for Ethan, contending that STEPS is not adequate.

Update on Ethan