Update on School Choices

There's a slight possibility that I haven't been handling the stress of this whole IEP process very well. OK, that's an understatement, but I did want to take the chance to attest to the fact that God gave me a greater peace than I expected on Friday while visiting the other classroom choice and in our meeting that afternoon. If you were praying for us, you helped bring about that peace.

After visiting the two classrooms, we are fairly certain that we will request that he attends the school run by Special School District. The teacher and one of the teacher assistants in that room have been working together for 18 years. We talked with the teacher for about 15 minutes and her words were full of examples of lovingly pushing kids to do more. This is what Isaiah needs...to be held to high expectations and patiently and consistently pushed to live up to those expectations. I have failed a bit in this area, but look forward to possibly learning what this looks like from this experienced teacher. I'm not knocking myself here...I just have been convicted that I'm overly confused when it comes to figuring out where to push and where to let things go with Isaiah.

Our main concern in both classrooms is that the most verbal child is moving on to another classroom next year which may leave Isaiah as the most verbal one in the group. Obviously, it would be best for him to have some verbal role models in his classroom, but it doesn't appear that this is an option at the moment. However, I know the teacher at the special school will push him to use his verbal skills and the augmentative communication resource area for the entire Special School District area is a couple doors down from this classroom. That could prove to be a great resource for him.

We are continuing to be encouraged by how much his current preschool staff cares for him, all the way up to the director of the program who emailed me that she was praying for our decisions. The meeting on Friday was a bit difficult to take in because there was so much information from test results on speech, cognition, etc. Some of it was sad to hear. However, we were continually encouraged by the words of his preschool staff and the evaluators who thought he was very fun and engaging, even while he tried to thwart their attempts to get him to cooperate. These special teachers and therapists truly have a gift of love.

This week it seems God wanted to give us some hope while knowing that we were going to hear some difficult evaluation results. In the last ten days, Isaiah has had a verbal explosion. He is trying to repeat almost everything he hears and labeling things all around him. Friday night at dinner he said a very clear, "amen" for the first time at the end of our prayer. I had been trying to figure out if we had made any diet changes or anything that may have brought about this verbal increase. His "amen" helped me realize it was a sweet gift from God.