Nearing the end of the chapter

In less than a month, Aaron will be 3. I'm amazed at how far he has came in the past couple of months. Yesterday he said an 8 word sentence and it warms my heart.

We had his evaluation with the public school. To say I was stressed, is putting it mildly. I knew he would qualify for speech, there wasn't anyway he wouldn't, but I was unsure if they would see his potential, if they would see his amazing ability to communicate without words, if they would see his feelings about not being able to talk, if they could see that it's just not speech that he needs.

They told us that he definately qualifies for speech services. But, then they just kinda looked at each other and said "we don't know what else to give him." It was repeated many times tha this case is hard, that there is something else he needs, but they weren't sure how to provide that. He's not delayed enough to qualify for special education, not talking well enough to be okay without a supplemental program and because of his birthday, it would probably be hard finding a place that would take him.

Why I doubt God, I don't know, but I did. I stayed up worrying about how we would find a preschool, what would happen if he didnt get a preschool, that somehow in 2 years we would regreat whatever decision we made. Why didnt I remember that God had it under control. The evaluators may not have known what services he needed, but God did.

Jon and I knew what we wanted. We wanted a small group setting preferably under 15 kids who were talking age appropriately. We wanted a group that wasn't focused just on academics, but introduced the kids to some. We wanted teachers who would accept Aaron for where he was at--encourage him to talk, but not let him get lost among the other kids just becuase he couldn't talk. We wanted a place 2 days a week at a place we loved. Our first choice was the preschool CJ was at, but we were under the understanding that they couldn't take him because of his birthday...so I stressed. All weekend I stressed, cried and second guessed any idea I came up with.

Then Jon went Monday, talked to the preschool and not only do they meet all the criteria, the teachers are more than willing ot sit down and talk to the speech therapists--working together to give Aaron what he needs, finding out ideas to encourage him, and the bes tpart is that this will be the same preschool he'll be in until he starts Kindergarten.

It's not set in stone--we still have to sit down and have an official meeting and schedule his speech services, but now I can rest easy. We are leaving behing our early intervention family, but we are getting a new family, a new group of people who will love Aaron and fight for Aaron, a new group of people that will rejoice with every new word.