Andrew and Preschool #3
Months ago, over the summer when I was starting the hunt for Andrew's new preschool, I was told about the preschool run through the public school districts, specifically meant for kids who need speech and occupational therapy. I heard about it from parents; I heard about it from Andrew's speech therapist. So I called up the school district to ask about it.
That was at the end of July. We weren't even in our house yet. A meeting was arranged, I thought for Andrew and the school's speech therapist, to evaluate him to see if he qualified for the school. As we'd just had an evaluation from his regular speech therapist, I figured I knew what I was getting into. About an hour of the therapist talking to Andrew, Andrew not really talking back, pointing at pictures, saying their names, and so on. No big whoop.
Boy was I wrong. It was an hour long, sure, but it wasn't just me, the speech therapist, and Andrew. It was me, Andrew, the speech therapist...and the occupational therapist, and the preschool teacher, and the vice principal of the school. And a power-point presentation on something called an IEP, which apparently Andrew needed if he was going to attend the preschool, and it wouldn't be generated until after he'd been evaluated, and that would take sixty days to determine, two or three visits to his current preschool (because he'd already started school by then) and a hearing test.
Okay, I thought. Sure. Whatever. And I went along with it, asking a few questions, but not really, because...well...I didn't know what to ask. And I had the OT and the speech therapist saying this was a good thing for Andrew, and his teachers at preschool saying yes, this would probably be a good thing for Andrew, and I liked the people in the meeting, so...what harm could it do, anyway?
So sixty days goes by, and Andrew has visits from the school's speech therapist and the occupational therapist and the preschool teacher, who asked him to visit her at the school for an additional hour so she could do some more evaluating, and some telephone conversations where I was quizzed on if he could walk backwards and jump forwards and hop on one foot and climb stairs. And a hearing test in which he spent more time flirting with the nurse than actually saying if he heard the beeps through the headphones.
And so we have another sit-down meeting with the speech therapist and the occupational therapist and the preschool teacher and the vice-principal, and me and Bill (who happened to have the morning off), and they presented their findings that yes, Andrew did indeed qualify for the preschool, and now he'd need that mysterious IEP, and the school had 30 days to write it and implement it.
(And if the boy described on the paper didn't quite match the boy I knew...well, it was close. I know he knows circles and squares and triangles, but he didn't identify them on the day he was asked. And I know when he stays at the sink to wash his hands, it's not because he's washing his hands over and over, it's because he just likes playing with the water. And I know the reason he doesn't sit still during circle time is because it's morning and he's three and he wants to run. And keep in mind the school's evaluation is still probably closer to accurate than the speech therapists evaluation in July, because when that was done, we were still in the hotel, and Andrew hadn't settled anywhere just yet, wasn't sleeping well, was barely eating well, had one small suitcase of toys, and asked to go "home" - meaning Cairo - on a regular basis.)
I have been a wreck for most of the week, because on Monday, I got a call from the preschool teacher that the IEP was nearly done, and everyone involved would be available to meet on Friday morning, and could I come in to discuss and sign? And yes, she said: they wanted Andrew to attend the preschool. She told me a little about it; not much. I can never think of questions in the moment, it always takes me a little bit to let information sink in, and I think of questions later, piecemeal. So I didn't really ask the things I ought to have asked, and thus only got some of the information I needed. (Including, as I'd hoped, information that turned out to be misinterpreted.)
But before I get into the wreckage of me, today's IEP meeting.
An IEP is a legally-binding document generated by the school district. It basically outlines a student's abilities, and details how the school needs to help him achieve specific goals. Every student who is determined to be special needs has one. It can be as basic as "Tommy needs fifteen extra minutes of reading time every day" or as complex as...well, however complex you can imagine.
When I went to school, special education was a whole separate thing. There were the regular classes - and then there were the special ed classes, where some kids spent all day, and some kids just went for a subject or two. We didn't see much of the kids who were in there all day, and we were always a little suspicious of the ones who went for a class or two, and you never, ever, ever wanted to be one of them. Ever. For any reason. For me and my classmates, special ed basically meant you were stupid.
(Not true, of course, but tell that to a ten-year-old. Heck, tell that to an entire playground full of ten year olds.)
Now, there aren't any separate classrooms, at least not here, not unless they're really truly necessary (like for the kids who would actually be a distraction). It's all about inclusion - so the kids who might otherwise have been in that special ed classroom are now in the regular classrooms, except now they come with assistants or shadow teachers or specialized equipment, and they all have IEPs outlining what is is the teacher needs to do differently in order to help them learn.
(On one hand, I feel bad for the teachers. Here, have an overcrowded classroom and no money for supplies and no parental support and state-mandated tests every week and oh by the way, read these 20-page documents for the three or four children in your class who need extra assistance.)
This morning, I was shown a draft of Andrew's IEP. (To be fair, I had a draft copy last night to read through, but it's a lot of therapist-babble and rather sticky reading.) And we went through it, page by page, talking about what was there.
And then we got to the goals, the things that according to the school district, Andrew needs to be able to do within the next year. Stuff like: be able to identify colors and shapes with 80% accuracy. Be able to hold a pencil or crayon correctly with 75% accuracy. Be able to answer "yes or no" questions, "who or what" questions, be able to look at a photo and correctly identify the object in that photo.
And this is all stuff that...well, he can do, though I wouldn't swear it's with 80% accuracy. Maybe not the colors (he mixes up orange and red all the time, but frankly I look at what some books label as red and I think it's orange). And I know he knows the words for swimming and kicking and running, because he uses them, but sometimes a picture of a person running looks like they're flying instead, and maybe he just doesn't want to answer because you're the adult, you should know that already.
(Maybe he's picked up on the whole need-to-know vibe you get from embassy life. If you don't know that car is blue, then maybe you're not supposed to know.)
Or maybe I'm the ostrich with its head in the sand, and I'm making excuses because I don't want to admit there's something wrong.
Now, one of the things I've been doing this past week is talking to other people here, because there are a few people who have kids with IEPs, and are in special programs, and even the director of Andrew's school has a son with an IEP. And they've all been enormously helpful and have been offering advice right and left, and one of the themes is that I can't be afraid to push back, to question, to demand more explanation when I need it. And that an IEP is changeable - it might be legal, but it's always in flux. I can request wording be changed, removed, added, whatever. I don't have to sign anything I don't agree with. I've got the power. You know, that kind of thing.
So I questioned the goals they'd had set. "Look, I think he can do these things. Maybe not at 80%, but he's made so much progress since you all last saw him. I had an actual conversation with him yesterday. He's drawing circles, he knows how to hold a crayon, he can draw vertical and horizontal lines and he actually does cut with scissors really well - his OT claims he did a straight line all by himself. What if you have him, and in two weeks, he's hitting all of these? What happens? Do we have to go through another 30-day evaluation and sit-down meeting to discuss the next goal?"
And this is the thing that I think clinched it. Their answer:
"We move the bar ahead. Right then, on the spot. We start working on the next step. If he can cut in a straight line, we make him cut a zig-zag. If he knows squares and triangles and ovals, we discuss trapezoids. And later, we call you and we say, 'We need to change the IEP, and here's what we want it to say.'"
And so I kept asking. "What if he meets all of the goals, and the next goals? What if he is one of those kids who just needs a bit more time for his brain to click into gear? What if something goes PING in the next year and he's fine and doesn't qualify for the program anymore?"
And I liked that answer too: they re-evaluate him, from scratch, just like they did the last few months. Dot the I's, cross the T's, and basically write an IEP that says Andrew no longer needs an IEP.
In the meantime....the preschool is four days a week, three hours a day. Much, much less time in a classroom than he's getting now (which is 4-1/2 hours a day, five days a week). But there's eleven kids, including Andrew. And he's not the oldest, and he's not the tallest, and he's not the best talker or the worst. There's two teachers and at the moment, a student aide. (She leaves at Christmas.) There's more girls than boys in the class, he's not the only Black kid. He's not even the only one with loads of energy - though I'd still bet on Andrew for being the fastest.
There's even a bus that could pick him up at the end of the driveway, and bring him back again. (With a carseat installed. I admit, this sort of makes me nervous, even so.) He'd be in the same class with the same teacher this year as well as next.
And yes - he has outdoor time. I misunderstood. There's even a playground just for them, fenced in so no danger of running into traffic. (Andrew's reliable, maybe not all kids are.) It's not a lot of outdoor time - around 20 minutes a day - and that time is flexible depending on weather and how ornery the kids are, but it exists.
(And to address a couple other concerns: "teaching them how to play" involves not so much teaching them HOW to play as in teaching them OTHER ways to play. The kid who drops all the play food on the floor is reminded that food doesn't go on the floor, it goes on plates and here, go make me some spaghetti. The kid who is building a house with blocks and putting the animals inside is shown that blocks can also build a road for the animals to walk down, and here's a tower for the animals to climb, etc.)
There's OT and speech therapy worked into the day: Andrew would get half an hour of each, one-on-one (though still within the classroom setting), and it's also worked into group sessions.
Written out, it all sounds fine. And the classroom is smaller, and maybe a little less shiny - but it looks like a preschool room, and it has Thomas, and Andrew didn't seem to hate it on sight.
But.
Sending him there basically means pulling him out of his current school. There's no point to sending him to a second preschool for afternoons; two hours of the afternoon time, they're napping, and Andrew's not a napper. And even if he were, I'm not paying for him to nap somewhere other than home.
It's another transition. And I thought we were settled. I felt like Andrew was finally settling into a routine. He's going to bed so well, on his own, without us sitting nearby, and he's been sleeping through the night (mostly), and his potty training is a bit off, but it's getting better (mostly he just doesn't want to stop playing to go to the potty; he's got better things to do).
And he is getting better with talking, and paying attention, and following instructions, and even the teachers at his preschool say he's improved so much in the last few months. Who's to say that wouldn't continue? That left to the devices we've already implemented, he wouldn't catch up on his own without this extra assistance? That part of the reason he's advancing is because he's in the right place and is comfortable and thus willing to make those leaps?
But.
What if all he needs to really hit all the places the teachers say he should be hitting is that extra little help, the extra attention he'd get, just for a little while. Just for the rest of this school year, and maybe a little of next year?
And then there's this: if we refuse the IEP, that's it. We can't go back and add it in if we change our minds next month. In fact, we can't go back for three years. If we refuse to send Andrew to the preschool now, then he can't have it, period.
So we could pull Andrew out of his current school, send him to the specialized preschool, and if it's a totally wrong fit, his current preschool would take him back. (We checked.)
But we can't go the other way around.
It comes down to this:
The worst case scenario of keeping Andrew at his current school is that when he does start kindergarten in two years, he's still behind, he still needs extra help, and he can't receive it. And he gets more and more behind, and more and more frustrated, and we can't move school districts, so we'd have to send him to private school, and this would likely take months, and really, we're planning to move between his kindergarten and first grade years anyway. It's almost a pointless venture.
The worst case scenario of pulling him out of the current school and sending him to the specialized school is that he's miserable, he doesn't keep advancing because he's miserable, and we pull him out and send him back to his old school, and eventually, he catches up on his own. But I somehow don't think that'll happen. I think it's more likely that he'll be miserable for a few days, and grumbly for a few weeks...and then he'll be fine.
And I admit: I really, truly, completely hope (and to an extent, believe) that he is one of those kids who just needed a little extra time, and if that's the case: the extra push isn't going to hurt. It might accelerate it. I admit, he needs all the help with speaking that he can get. I'm just not sold on the rest of it. And maybe this time next year, he'll be caught up, and he can go back to his old school, and start kindergarten and not need any extra help, and the IEP will be a faint memory, a little asterisk in his school reports, and something he barely remembers except as that time Momma moved him from one school to the other for his birthday.
Maybe that's wishful thinking.
I'm not going to lie and say I'm totally comfortable with the decision I made. I'm not. But I think I wouldn't be comfortable the other way, either. I'd always wonder - would he have been better off with more specialized attention early on? Just as I'll always wonder - would he have been better off if we'd left him where he was?
(Would he have had these problems if he hadn't had the seizure? Would he have had the seizure if I'd checked his temperature before putting him down to his nap? Would it have been high enough then that I would have given him ibuprofen, or would I have thought, no worries, it's just low, I'll keep an eye on it?)
Anyway.
Monday is his last day at his current preschool - Preschool #2. And Tuesday he starts at Preschool #3. Fast, I know. But...there's space, and #2 says that since they knew this was probably coming, they're not going to hold us to the two-week-notice thing, and really, there's not much reason not to move him. There'd always be a reason to put it off. And everyone says this is the better thing, this is good for him, that he's going to be just fine.
And I know they're right.
I just wish I could agree.