Yup my little guy is going to start preschool. Not until January though. He will only go 2 days a week for 2 hr 45 min each day. He will recieve speech therapy, physical therapy & occupational therapy while there as well as learn how to be in a classroom setting and getting along with other kids. I can hardly believe he is old enough for that. He will be 3 in 10 days, WOW.
Yesterday I had his IEP (individualized education plan) meeting with Aurora School District. It is an interesting process with a complex medical kid like Milo. Clearly the best school for his communication would have been in a total communication (sign language & spoken) classroom but there is no school nurse there at all times. The school district was also very reluctant to put him there but if I would have pushed hard enough he could have gone. This program is also 4 days a week for more hours a days and I just wasn't sure he was ready for that (I am but I don't think he would handle it very well). In the end I consented to him going to a school with at least one RN in the building at all times & in classroom with other kids closer to his age and of all abilities from severely affected kids to typical peers. The teachers will learn some sign language so Milo can communicate with them. I am hoping being in such an environment will spur his spoken language skills. I did get a couple of important things put into his IEP too. First is that the IEP would be formally reviewed at the end of May so that if he does need to go to the total communication class (which is at an elementary school much further from our house) that can be done before school starts in the fall of 2010. The other thing was to get him an evaluation for an assistive communication device, basically it's like a little computer with pictures he can push and the computer will say the word for him. We don't know when he will decide to talk so this might be a good option in the mean time. So in the end I got a bit of what I wanted and the school district got a bit of what they wanted and after all his only 3, we've got many years of this ahead of us!
