Of Course I cried. I always cry.
Jaimie on Oct 30th 2008
Today was CJ’s fall case conference, where we discuss his progress and talk about the future for him at school. I met with the special ed advocate as well as his teachers and his speech therapist.
In good news, CJ’s made remarkable progress in the past two months with all his goals. So much, in fact, that the teacher and speech therapist are now talking about how he should go on to Kindergarten next year vs going into a 5 day “mainstream” preschool program. He’ll be 5 in June, so he’ll be age-appropriate for Kindergarten (barely) but I could hold him out another year. They weren’t pushy about it at all, but it is a lot different than when I met with them in August and they were very “he needs more time before Kindergarten we think”. So now I am re-pondering that. I had mostly decided to find him a 5-day half-day preschool program, but now I am thinking, maybe we’ll start Kindergarten on schedule after all.
We’ll revist that in May at his spring case conference and decide for sure then.
He’s actually doing really well overall, so well that the speech therapist feels he may test out of needing speech therapy at all next year. He’s progressing well and things are good. However, he still has a lot of trouble attending. He is very easily sidetracked and distracted and he doesn’t pay attention hardly at all.
I have trouble figuring out how much of that is typical 4 year old. I kind of got in an argument about it at his case conference. My goal is not to turn him into super-child. It is just to get him to the point where he falls in the range of typical. I wasn’t really feeling heard about that at all. But that’s how I’ll decide if he’s ready for K - if he falls within the normal range for paying attention, not if he becomes super-listener.
Anyway. I always cry, so I cried when talking about that. Now I have to decide when/if to proceed with a more comprehensive evaluation before K to see if he might qualify for some services then.
I’m already talking about it like he’s going to K next year. Maybe in my head I’ve decided to grasp onto that as proof that we’re doing a good job getting him help where he needs it and the fact he’s progressing rapidly now is proof of that. Who knows.
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I think sometimes we are living parallel lives. We are going thru the exact same thing here. Does she go to K next year or not? I’m going to observe a K class in a couple of weeks. The K teacher I talked to when setting that up said that one thing to keep in mind when making the decision is K is very easily repeated. It’s not a big deal at all, happens all the time. So that’s what someone else said.
The other thing I want to say is that I’m afraid that C.J.’s teachers might try to say that he has ADHD if he has attentiveness challenges. Often times SPD gets misdiagnosed as ADHD. And based on other things you’ve written about him, I’d lean more toward SPD than ADHD. SPD-based OT might really help him with the attentiveness. Just something to think about.
Another thing that has been known to work with attentiveness is removing artificial colors and flavors (google: Feingold diet).
Good luck with decision. I’m right there with you … and, like you, I’m leaning toward going to K next year.