Well, we just finished a really crappy week. Just a bunch of shit piled up. I can’t talk about some of it because it is related to AJ’s company. Suffice to say that we made a mistake that is going to cost us a lot of money. But the good thing is that AJ caught it early so that it won’t cost us as much as if he had caught it later. His friends who are business owners are telling him everyone makes mistakes and in the grand scheme of things, this isn’t a bad one. But it still sucks. It also means money will be tight for a while.
The part I can talk about is Gege’s first week of school. It wasn’t good. He spent an hour the first day hiding under the teacher’s desk, and it didn’t get much better as the week passed. The principal, the school psychologist, the speech therapist, and others took turns taking him out of the room to calm down when he felt overwhelmed, a few times each day. At the end of the week, they called a meeting with us and said that he is just not ready for kindergarten. They felt that while he is academically ready, he has the emotional maturity of a 3 year old.
In hindsight, we feel really stupid pushing him to start kindergarten. In hindsight, it’s so obvious that he wasn’t ready. We wanted so badly for him to be “normal” that we listened to bad advice and pushed aside our gut feelings.
Unfortunately, Gege doesn’t qualify for junior kindergarten, because he was born in June, and the class is only for those kids who were born between October 1 and December 31. Yeah, it doesn’t really make sense to me. Sure, he was born in June, but he is delayed.
Anyways, I was able to find a spot in a preschool that has a pre-K program, and he will start in a couple of weeks. He’ll remain home with me until then. I feel terrible that we’re going to throw him into yet another new environment. He has never taken change well.
The only positive thing that came out of him spending a week in kindergarten is that he’s been talking a LOT more. A lot of it is unintelligible still, but what’s more important, he’s trying. He’s making attempts to string words together and to experiment with wording to make us understand what he wants. He’s just been more interactive in general.
But then, to top off the week, we heard that the school district may not approve Gege for speech services this year, because he is of kindergarten age yet will still be in preschool. This logic really makes no sense to me. If a child is already delayed, wouldn’t they want to help him to catch up? They haven’t told us officially that he won’t qualify, but if they do, we will definitely fight it. We asked to have him re-assessed and also have him tested for sensory issues. Hopefully the results will show that he really needs services.
Ugh, I hope next week is better.
He may be of kindergarten age, however, it was the school who decided he wasn’t ready, essentially they asked you to take him out of school, the district should continue to provide services as an intinerant (sp?) case. Does Gege have a diagnosis from a private doctor (pyschologist, neurologist, etc)? If so they are obligated by law to offer services, regardless of his age or status, but you may have to drive him to the service during the day. Also, are you close to the specialist (therapist, psychologist)? If so can you ask him/her what they will write on his IEP? We were fortunate that our daughter’s school district speech therapist really looked out for her and when we held her back a year from K she wrote the IEP in a way that really emphasized how much she needed the service though she was going to continue to be “itinerant”. I don’t know how your school district is, but ours was getting strapped and we really had to push for continued service for that one year we held her back, having the ST back us up really pushed it through. Good luck!
christina
Thanks! We are going to do everything we can to get him the services he needs.
Egads! That’s a lot to deal with one at a time, all at once just seems like cheating. I’m thinking lots of happy thoughts that next week is better for all of you!
Also. my Mom was happy to hear you sent your thanks and that you still think fondly of our scouting time. Mom says hi. I told her that the spiders thank her too.
Hahaha, that’s awesome. I love your mom.
Thanks for the good wishes!
Oh, that sucks. We are keeping L back a year because I think she will do better, but it wasn’t an easy decision at all.
As for the speech therapy, does Gege have an IEP? If not, even if he is in preschool he should be able to get one. I have been told in our state sensory issues don’t qualify for IEPs in Kinder+, but in preschool they do. Speech should be available no matter what.
You should look around and try to find either a Special Needs attorney or a SN advocate to attend your IEP meeting with you. We plan to do that next year when we are setting up L’s IEP or 504 plan in preparation for Kindergarten. There is no way they should be allowed to take away speech, especially if it is affecting him so much they advised you to unenroll him. Email me if you want to talk more about this stuff.