Tag Archives: Preschool

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From Birth to Preschool

The local preschool lottery is opening up, which seems past where we should be but here we are. My local district has preschool available for free, for those students who need services and for those who can win the lucky spot in the lottery. While my littlest one does have a little bit of a speech delay that seems to be getting better every day, my hope is the lottery so that I can finally go back into an office with real adults and have conversations that go beyond “No, you cannot ride Arya like a horse”, “Is that grilled cheese and yogurt yummy?” and singing the Bluey theme and listening to Encanto and Moana music all day long. With dashes of Pidey Len, shooting her webs to prevent the dogs from eating her “(s)nackies”.

It happened so fast. While I’m excited for this new stage of our last child’s life, my husband and oldest son (who’s 22 now) are in denial of the fact 3 is coming up in a few short months. I’m sure tears will be shed by the men of the family. Us Malloy girls though, we’re a breed of our own for sure. Full of assertiveness, sass, and intelligence; we’re in a league of strong women. They boys might not be ready for it. In fact, I’m not entirely sure the preschool will be ready for this ball of energy. But, it’s time.

Not every school district is lucky to have free offerings. Some are luckier and don’t have to play their hand at winning a lottery. (A post for another day, I’m sure.) I was never much of a winner anyways, but here’s to hoping. Preschool will be a mutually beneficial endeavor for us. Len will get socialization from actual kids her age, which will significantly help her speech. It will help her learn and grow and it will be great. I get to go back into an adult world where sweatpants or pajamas at work daily is not acceptable. (Which is probably the biggest thing I will miss working from home.)

It’s helpful to focus on the positives. It’s sad to see your last child go through all these “last” firsts. It’s sad to remember how fast it goes. How one minute you’re singing to them in your belly to being mostly asleep when feeding them and not remembering any of it. To those last first steps and that last first words. But every milestone is a blessing. And you are helping this child grow into an amazing adult that will have their own little or big impact on the world. That makes any of the sadness worth it, I think.

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How My Son Got Into Preschool: The Interesting Journey through Early Intervention to Preschool

This is a continuation of sorts to my previous post, to which I will summarize for those who didn’t catch it. I was anxiously awaiting the decision of my son’s fate being able to continue services through our local preschool’s special needs program. My son started into this journey because he barely spoke one or two words by the time he turned 1. After nearly a year of Early Intervention services, he has come so far though he is still much behind other kids his age or even a bit younger. I see kids younger than him that have an easier time expressing themselves and communicating, and I feel guilty that I have somehow failed my toddler. It isn’t true though; I didn’t fail him. He only missed 3  weekly sessions between both specialists in the past year, due to illness. I sat by diligently observing the sessions to see how I could help him, and listened to every piece of advice I was given to help. At age 3, he would be able to receive these services no longer and our only hope to continue these types of services was through the local preschool.

The meeting went pretty much as I had predicted, which I will get into. The evaluators were the school psychologist and the speech pathologist. The psychologist started speaking quite frankly to us. “I witnessed some worrisome behaviors”. “He has incredible attention and focus issues and is really unable to sit still for any amount of time”. “He is quite brilliant”. I was all over the place with what was going to happen. Not that I didn’t understand what she was saying; I understood everything she was saying. But it was all mixed signals. I felt I knew where this was going though. The speech pathologist also remarked how intelligent he was, but noted that she did not feel he had a speech delay. (This point was argued by my son’s actual speech pathologist, stating that not giving him specialize services could be detrimental to his progress, as she feels he may be diagnosed with apraxia, which can’t be diagnosed until 3.)When that happened, my heart dropped. This experience could have been good for him. It could have helped him.

Finally, after the evaluators stopped talking, the head of the special needs program spoke and mentioned it was decision time. She informed us that she had a checklist she needed to go through to see if he qualified. She asked the speech pathologist if there was a speech delay, she said “no, not significant enough”. I remembered thinking it was easy for her to say after only spending 20 minutes with him. The special needs lead said “cognition and social delay”. The psychologist said “absolutely yes, to a point of hindering his speech and possibly his future education”. After a the rest of the list was “no”, I had started to give up hope that this was going to happen. The lead circled another item or two on the list, and looked up saying “your son qualifies for services, so we’re going to draw up the IEP”. The moral of this story? As I had predicted, he would not get in on his speech. Also as I predicted, he got in based on his overly energetic, mischievous, curious and often troublemaker behaviors. (It was later joked by my husband that they took so much pity on me for having to spend so much time alone with him that they figured they would give me a break.) Their reasoning? He would learn structure and be able to learn how to control his often wild inhibitions and channel that energy into focusing on his learning, which they feel would help him be significantly more intelligent than he already is. If they can get him to settle down, focus, and start paying attention, it will improve his speech, and earn them a medal in my book if they can accomplish that enormous feat.

They started to write his IEP. “He is not to be left unsupervised at all; he will escape and do what he wants”. Fact: they are right. “May need breaks from the classroom to release some of his overabundance of energy”. Also fact, though it’s been my experience that he has a never-ending flow of energy. My kid will be the one having his hand held in the line because he won’t walk in it, and my mother and speech pathologist have correctly identified that it is better this way as he would probably lead a group of rogue toddlers away from the group and go to the playground by themselves. I will not complain. All that matters to me is that he got into preschool, with a guaranteed and free slot through the special needs program. He will get a positive start in his education that I would never have been able to afford. The speech pathologist said that they will quickly learn my son’s difficulties with speech and change his IEP to include services. There is no negative here. The system worked, and I couldn’t be happier.