Sensory Evaluation

[Smiley74]

Is there a requirement that when doing an evaluation, the child has to have input? School did a sensory evaluation consisting of only the school companion of the Sensory Profile 2, but did not provide the parent or student with any opportunity to participate in the sensory evaluation (10 yo).  Is the Sensory Processing Measure a better evaluation? Does anything take into account the child feedback versus solely relying on a teacher to be noticing? Seems a little one-sided if only one person is asked to evaluate for a concern, especially if there's very subtle things happening and kid "flies under the radar". 

Child is not an obviously distracting kid due to anxiety surrounding getting in trouble and fear of being sent to principal. Child is a fidget object user, but it's very tiny and discreet so I'm not sure teacher is even aware it's in use (though allowed by 504).  I know school is oblivious to  times child sits out of recess due to social issues (kid tells parent teachers are elsewhere and no adult approaches them to ask why alone, etc).  Child is also bothered by classroom distractions (noise, actions of other kids, etc), but not by loud or sudden noises.  Enjoys certain rhythmic noises when self-made (ASMR sensation), but finds them irritating when made by other people (typing on keyboard, fingertip tapping)

Is there a chicken and egg thing here-anxiety causing sensory issues/needs versus having both anxiety and sensory disorders?  How dos it get teased out in an accommodation when school claims nothing is seen as academic impact?

[JSD24]

I'm not going to answer your question.  What I'm going to do is to say that school evaluations need to be complete & accurate.  Asking one adult in a child's life doesn't sound complete to me.  The person who did this eval, IMO, failed to follow best practices with evaluating the sensory integration issue this student deals with.  (Kids will mask at school so they can fit in & not get teased.  Then they come home and have symptoms of Afterschool Restraint Collapse.)

There is wording in IDEA that says multiple measures.  Not following IDEA if this is all they did.  I'm not sure that a teacher in front of 20+ students has the bandwidth to nuance the sensory difficulties one student might have going on.  My feeling is to ask the student and have the parent fill out the parent version of this rating scale so there are multiple measures.  A parent letter of concern might also be something to do if the OT doing this eval doesn't request info from the parent & student.