Is that of being a parent. Don't get me wrong, I never thought it was going to be easy. But when we decided to adopt, we talked about parenting practices and what we would do in this situation or that - meaning how we would react to his different behaviors over the course of his childhood. What we really didn't give as much thought to was his education. I'm not talking about the "is he going to go to college" or "are we going to pay for his college" questions. I'm talking about "should he really be attending two different preschools in order to get him caught up with his peers, when it actually might be keeping him back" kind of thoughts.
Nicky has so much going on, with attending two preschools and Occupational Therapy (for his fine and gross motor skills) once a week. Three days out of the week he has mornings that are 5 hours long with only 2 hours spend doing actual school work.
Nicky's public preschool teacher tells us how wonderful he's doing in school, and how she's "extremely impressed with the progress he has made this year." His private school teachers say "he's the sweetest kid they've ever met" but that "he has a hard time concentrating and staying on task in order to complete his work".
We agree that Nicky has come a long way. He's talking a TON more, but most times it seems like although he is talking a lot more, he's really not saying much more. Meaning that he's just building upon the words he already knows instead of learning new words to go in their place - leaving him sounding like a stuttering caveman! (New development - he stammers a lot/stutters when he tries to get his thoughts out - very painful to listen to).
Most days he knows his shapes and colors; others he will respond quickly (with an incorrect answer) just because he knows that we require an answer of him. At home he will mostly answer "who" questions with a "what" answer; "what" questions with "where" answers; and so forth - yet at school he tends to get them correct 70% of the time. He gives up easily if he cannot do something - even things he's mastered in the past, but for whatever reason is unable to do so on that particular day. Is this a cognitive issue? Is he just not wanting to work on those days? Is he worn out?
We've spoken with his public school teacher (who is awesome, by the way) and she's going to give him a language assessment to see exactly what words he does know and understand (it's a non-scoring test). This will help her with formulating his new goals come re-evaluation time with the ARD committee in April (they meet every year on the child's birthday to see how much they've progressed). At that point, we will have a big decision to make: 1) do we keep him in both schools and hope that it's not too much for him; 2) do we pull him out of public school and just have him attend the private school where he'll spend his entire day, every day, with one group of teachers so they can monitor his behavior and progress; 3) should be start him back with the OT to continue the fine tuning of his motor skills to reduce his frustrations; or 4) any combo of the above 3?!
I suppose this all means we'll have to wait to see how the next year goes and go from there. If you had to ask us what we would do right now, it would be to just send him to private school and therapy. But, if he is making such progress with his public school then how can we take that away? What to do?!
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