First Preschool Meeting

Today was Ryan's first official meeting with our school district on his transition from Early Intervention to school. We met the Child Study Team at the towns elementary school, present were Ryan's new caseworker, psychologist, speech therapist and occupational therapist. We talked a little bit about Ryan's history and his strengths and weaknesses in all areas. We discussed in district and out of district placement options. It seems highly unlikely that Ryan will be placed in district as they would like him to be in an all day programme to enable him to have as much therapy as possible but the case worker hasn't stopped looking for all day preschools a little closer to home. I'm still very concerned with the out of district school and Ryan not being exposed to walking / talking peers enough. Although I understand the need for concentrated therapy as early as possible as the school systems main goal is the mainstream Ryan at some point I still think he needs to be around regular peers in order to motivate him to move and talk more. I'm also struggling with the school being 5 days a week as this also takes away his ability to continue his playgroups and swimming lessons. And then on the other hand I feel very ungrateful as i know there are some parents in other states that would "kill" for 5 days a week / all day preschool. But I still feel its too much too soon. I'm trying to not put the cart before the horse and wait until after the evaluations until we know more about which placements they are considering before I start freaking out. We discussed Ryan riding the bus and how he could be dropped off in another town as long as it was the same location every day. I was worried about this one because if he had to have been dropped off in our small town it would have made it next to impossible for me to have found a babysitter for the afternoon hours while I'm still at work.

So basically over the next month or so we will have more meetings and conduct evaluations so we can write Ryan's IEP (Individualised Education Plan) Its all very scary to think that in less than 3 months we will be moving on from Early Intervention, looking back the past 3 years have flown by! Ryan is really growing up way too fast.

Murphy and Champ enjoying the snow, while the barn pet deer Pebbles watches. (Yep, random i know)

(art by Holli Conger)