Tag: special needs

Posted in musings

parenting towards inclusion

Posted on by kristinabean

Inclusion begins with honesty.

If I gloss over the differences between people, my child will be confused by the discrepancy between what he sees and what he hears from me, and will intuit that difference is something shameful, something not to be spoken of.

Inclusion begins with knowledge.

Last week we watched a friend’s three children for a few hours at our home, one of whom is severely autistic. One of his favorite things to do is to take things apart (things like Duplo creations)… which was understandably frustrating for Rondel, who is very particular about his creations and gets worked up if anyone even gets too close to them. They were building together when the inevitable happened, and when I separated them Rondel told me that he didn’t like his friend “at all.”

But when I explained to him why his friend was behaving that way – that his brain was developing differently and he was in a lot of ways similar to Aubade as far as impulse control and the kinds of activities he enjoyed – it made sense to him, and he was able to adjust the way he played to accommodate those differences. Having that knowledge helped him to more fully include his friend.

Inclusion begins with presence.

One of the reasons I offered to watch my friend’s children (besides the fact that she needed someone urgently at the last minute) was that I want my children to spend time with people who aren’t like them: people of different ethnicities, people with physical disabilities, people with neurodivergences, people of different ages. It isn’t actually inclusive to sit around and talk about equality and opportunity and diversity if you aren’t living it out by filling your community with all types of people. I want my children to know from lived experience that even people who face incredible physical and mental challenges are just people, with their own needs and preferences and personalities, with their own unique strengths and weaknesses and quirks.

Inclusion begins with me.

Because my attitude and my choices determine the environment in which my children grow up, I have to shape it into one of acceptance and love. This is not necessarily easy for my introverted self, but I believe it is critically important for the future of our society and communities for inclusion to become part of the fabric of our everyday life and personal relationships. It begins here, in my home and in your home.

Posted in family life

holding open doors of possibility

Posted on by kristinabean

Rondel loves the zoo. I think he would want to go there almost every day (some days have to be for Grandma’s house) if possible, and he never wants to leave no matter how long we’ve been there. There are always more animals to see, more wonders to explore, more facts to learn. As much as he enjoys the splash pad, he always asks to see another exhibit instead, despite the heat, until I mandate a water break on behalf of his siblings.

So I thought to myself, I wonder if the zoo is doing any summer camps? Rondel will probably still be too young, but I can still see what’s available. Blithely thinking these things, I went onto their website and discovered that Rondel is not too young by any means, and would be eligible to attend a half-day camp focusing either on animal stories or animal art.

Part of me leaped up in excitement! He loves the zoo! What a great opportunity! How awesome would it be to get to spend that much time at the zoo, talking about animals, looking at animals, surrounded by people who also love animals! What a chance to try to integrate with a group of peers, in an environment without a parent, to stretch his comfort zone and expand his social skills! And oh… what about dealing with loud groups, bright sunlight, the challenges of speech articulation delays, and the anxiety of the unknown? This is, after all, the boy who struggles in a typical Sunday school classroom even with a personal aide, and the boy who cries at the park if he turns around and can’t see me – even if I haven’t moved from where he left me. Would a summer camp be an adventure or a nightmare?

My husband had the wisest words about this dilemma, about the dichotomy between excitement and fear: that if we, as Rondel’s parents, make a decision for him based on our fears of what might happen, based on what we think his limitations and struggles might be, than we are placing that limitation on him instead of giving him a chance to grow and soar and potentially surprise us all with his abilities. We would need to plan well for it, obviously, to give him the best possible chance to succeed and to give him a way out if it proved to be too much, but it would be foolish – especially in the long-term – to simply close this door because we fear he will fail.

It reminded me of a passage from (you guessed it!) Differently Wired. (Reber really seems to have covered everything. I promise I didn’t begin writing this post trying to sneak a quote in!)

“Choosing fear equates our child with their diagnosis, rather than seeing them as creative beings who are here to shake up the world in their own magnificent way. Choosing fear is the very thing that keeps us stuck. Choosing fear creates a culture of apprehension and anxiety in our families, and affects the way our children, many of whom are already highly sensitive and anxious, feel about themselves. Operating from fear leads to more limited thinking and fearful energy, which both we and our child will feel, and less chance of our child’s uncovering and experiencing their extraordinary possibilities. It’s the epitome of a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Instead of choosing to direct my child away from opportunities and experiences because I’m afraid they’ll be too hard for him, I am choosing to present him with the options and let him come to his own informed decision – and then, I am choosing to support him through the results of that decision, even if they prove to be difficult or unpleasant. That is the process that will help him grow in self-awareness and confidence, that will help him develop autonomy and independence, and that will therefore help him grow into greater possibilities instead of holding him back in a box created by my own anxious and limited imagination.

If you liked the quote from Differently Wired, read my brief review of the book here and check back in June for the giveaway!

Posted in family life, musings

the value of a diagnosis

Posted on by kristinabean

As we proceed with Rondel’s diagnosis (since the school district is unable to provide an actual medical diagnosis in their evaluations), we’re using an innovative diagnostic app developed by a local children’s hospital, which involves capturing multiple videos of Rondel’s actions and interactions in specific situations. I like the concept a lot, as it lets the doctors see into Rondel’s everyday life and observe him unnoticed for far longer than would be possible in an office setting! However, as I’m going through the videos to trim and upload them, I keep wondering if the specialists will see the differences that we believe are present – or if they will tell us that his struggles are due to something like poor parenting. Maybe if I were stricter, or reinforced acceptable behaviors more consistently, or provided him with a more stable routine, or cleaned up our diet, or or or or…

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…then maybe he would be fine, maybe he would be normal, maybe he would fit in with all the other kids instead of sticking out uncomfortably.

He just isn’t so significantly different that it’s obviously a medical problem to a layperson. His differences are hidden, partially masked, behind his gregariousness and intelligence and creativity, until he’s used up all his energy on coping and he falls apart. So when people see him melting down or acting out, it’s easy for them to assume he is doing so willfully, or to think that he is simply being “spoiled” and “self-centered.” Even I, who see him every day, wonder sometimes if the difference is truly there, all the way down, no matter what, or if I could find some parenting technique that would work better for him and “catch him up” to his peers.

But I wonder that about myself also. Do I fail to maintain relationships or engage in neighborhood community-building because I am selfish, lazy, and don’t care about other people? If I were a better Christian, could I overcome my introversion? Many people do, after all, and are able to make time to recharge themselves. So am I guilty of using my social anxiety as an excuse to cover up for my vices or inadequacies?

Similarly, before I was diagnosed with depression (and honestly sometimes still), I would tell myself that if I just tried harder – if I prayed more, exercised more, ate better, spent more time in self-care, spent more time with close friends, practiced the right mental exercises, etc – I could get through the negative feelings and be fine. Getting the diagnosis was one of the best days of my life, because of what it meant to me: that I wasn’t an awful person taking advantage of the people around me, just a sick person who was trying as hard as possible to find joy and light but needed some extra help.

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And my hope is that a diagnosis will be a similar gift to Rondel: a confirmation that his differences are real, and valid, and significant; a reminder that some things will be harder and it will be ok to seek and use help and support; and a shield against the barbs of guilt and shame that always accompany deviations from social and cultural norms. The alternative – refusing to acknowledge and name the neurological differences that give rise to his behavioral differences – is only a recipe for disaster as he grows older and begins to notice his differences without a framework for comprehending and addressing them. How much better to provide him with a framework of informed understanding, acceptance, support, and unconditional love!

Posted in musings

thoughts on humanity

Posted on by kristinabean

The single most important thing about any person is their humanity.

No matter what other characteristics define them – their race, gender, age, neurotype, health, sexual preference, career, level of education, immigration status, religion, whatever – every single person is human, and by virtue of being human they are entitled to respect and dignity.

Years ago, I stumbled across a few MRA and white supremacy outposts online; I remember reading through their blog archives in a kind of shocked daze, disbelieving that people could actually hold the opinions presented there. Authors attempted to use social and biological science to prove racist tenets, or to claim the superiority of the “alpha male” type over women and more “feminine” men (often just decent and courteous men). Careful rational examination of their source material could show where they were wrong, but the sheer volume of output would make that a full-time job – with little or no reward, given that they’ve already shown their disregard for real science or actual facts.

Since then, the hidden (and not-so-hidden) biases against the old and sick (e.g., assisted suicide), the LGBTQA community, the homeless (e.g., park bench design), illegal (and often legal) immigrants, and Muslims have risen and fallen through the headlines of the news cycle. Every time there is a group of people who try to make themselves appear and feel superior and, more malevolently, entitled by virtue of that superiority to demean, belittle, and discriminate against groups they deem inferior. We, the employed, do not wish to see or even think about the unemployed; we can provide for ourselves, they cannot so they must be lazy and shiftless, and thus do not even deserve to sleep on a bench where we might see them. We, the citizens, obviously deserved to be born in this nation with all the opportunities we have; those immigrants who were so stupid as to have been born elsewhere shouldn’t be allowed to come here and steal our opportunities. We, the heterosexual, are so uncomfortable with trans and homosexual individuals that we must clearly be the only natural and moral beings here – never mind our promiscuity and infidelity, we are the ones following God’s sexual plan for humanity, and those who disagree should be silenced and kept apart from each other.

And recently, as I’ve been reading through the online communities dedicated to respectful parenting and disability advocacy, I’ve begun to encounter childism and ableism in all their ugliness.

This week, when the horrible story of the Turpin family came to light, the comments I read on the New York Times were straightforward and predictable: this is why homeschooling should be prohibited, or, at least, more strictly regulated. My own coworkers have made the same comments in response to the simple fact that Arizona requires no academic testing of homeschooled students. Similarly, in the past, when horrible stories of bullying or sexual abuse perpetrated by teachers have surfaced, or when poor curriculum choices are exposed, the comments in the homeschooling community are equally predictable: this is why you should never send your children to public school! The issue at the heart of many of these comments is: who is entitled to control children. Does the state get to control children’s activities, in an attempt to create productive future citizens? Or does the family get to control their children, as the creators of and providers for those children during their development? In other words, both sides are coming from a position of childism, even as they claim to have children’s best interests at heart.

The whole philosophy of unschooling, in contrast, rests on the premise that children are not partial persons, or potential persons, but full persons deserving of the same respect and autonomy as adult persons (recognizing of course their individual needs and limitations). As fellow humans, they should have freedom to pursue their own interests and develop their own talents, instead of being forced into a one-size-fits-all standardized education or into the molds envisioned by their parents. They should have the liberty to use their time as they choose, to eat the foods they like when they are hungry, to sleep when they are tired, to play outside learning to control their own words and actions instead of sitting inside following adult directions all day.

(If you instantly picture children running wild, gorging on junk food, playing violent video games, watching stupid cartoons, and staying up all night, you may have some internalized childism or an incomplete understanding of unschooling. Children who are exposed to beauty and goodness, and given the opportunity to develop maturity and moral character, will resonate with those things just like adults will, since they are equally made in the image of the God of beauty, righteousness, and truth.)

But even in the unschooling community, there is uncertainty when it comes to children with special needs. Since my son most likely has autism or another developmental disorder, I noticed the number of parents commenting that they were unsure of how to maintain that level of freedom and respect while making sure that their children accessed all of the “services” and therapies needed to help them fit in and appear neurotypical. I noticed it even more in the public school setting, where an extremely strong emphasis was placed on accessing services now so that my son would be “caught up” to his peers in time for kindergarten. I picked up on it in the special needs ministry at my church, when the parents’ support group had a meeting about “grieving” over your child’s autism diagnosis as if there was some loss to you in not having a neurotypical child. And I discovered it for myself when I found a thousand support groups for parents of autistic children but hardly any communities for autistic adults. Their voices went unheard.

And in some dark corners of the Internet, some people made it even worse by painting adults with Asperger’s/autism as narcissists and psychopaths, incapable of parenting without emotionally neglecting or abusing their children, and inherently capable of committing the next mass shooting. Maybe they vented some frustration or boosted their own sense of self-worth by saying these horrible and untrue things about others, I don’t know. But I don’t really care. I think of Morenike, the autistic mother of autistic children who loves and advocates for them fearlessly and tirelessly, and who almost had her children removed several years ago, and I wonder what role this type of ableist stigma played in her situation.

And I am thankful beyond words for Ally Grace, another autistic mother of autistic children, who is an unschooler on top of that, and whose stories have helped give me the courage to let my children develop at their own pace and in their own way, with the pressure of needing to conform to some external, arbitrary, socially-defined metric – as well as the courage to be an unschooling parent despite my own social limitations.

I think as all the different “-isms” of discrimination come to light, society will slowly be forced into being more respectful and more accepting of those who are different, of those who may need more help or accommodation given the way the world is set up, but in the meantime there is a fairly vicious backlash of those who seem to think accepting the other somehow diminishes their own status or worth. They are the ones who create the websites in the dark underbelly of the Internet, and they are wrong. To receive another human being with dignity and respect, with courtesy and kindness, regardless of the differences between you and them, allows your own humanity – the image of God within you – to shine forth in beauty and power, even as it elevates their humanity. We can ascend together; we do not need to climb to the heavens on the downtrodden backs of the other.

Posted in family life

dance to the music no one else can hear

Posted on by kristinabean

So now, having just explained in great detail why I think special ed preschool could be a great help for Rondel despite my misgivings about the public school system in general, I am going to argue the other side against myself. Hopefully writing this out will help me make a decision! And if not, hopefully it is helpful or interesting to someone else in a similar spot.

First, you should know this about Rondel.

When my son is in a highly stimulating, fun, chaotic environment, his energy ratchets up so high that he can’t always control it. Simultaneously, especially if he is hungry or tired (or if another kid is pushing his buttons), his anxiety often escalates as well. Either of these things could be a struggle independently, but when combined they can make situations very difficult for him. His body feels out of control, his emotions feel out of control, and his external environment feels out his control. In response to that, he will often take actions that on the surface appear irrational or bizarre: he may get overly aggressive in his play, wrestling after his friends have asked him to stop; he may try to run away to escape the chaos; or he may break down into incoherent tears.

Birthday parties, amusement parks, playgrounds, noisy restaurants, music class, movie theaters, and other noisy places can all cause sensory overload and meltdowns. Vigorous physical play may be avoided because of concerns about falling, sensory overload, and the potential for explosive outbursts and aggressive behaviors due to fight-or-flight reactions. Perhaps most unfortunately, the kinds of things done by the teachers who work hardest to make their classrooms fun for most kids – busy, colorful places with lots of “activity stations,” fun music, dancing, games – may be precisely the things that aggravate kids with SPD. As a result, these teachers may find that the harder they work to make class enjoyable and to involve these kids, the more they shut down or overload. It’s hard to imagine a more potent recipe for frustration and misunderstanding on both sides.

Brock Eide, The Mislabeled Child

Second, you should know this about me.

One of the greatest struggles in my life – a struggle that I have heard countless times in the lives of my friends and family as well – is feeling that I don’t belong: that there is no group of people among whom I can be completely myself and at the same time completely loved. It is out of this struggle that my parenting philosophy was born. My goal as a mother is to give my children a relationship (and ideally a whole family community) in which they will be listened to, understood, and unconditionally loved. Whatever societal forces are pressuring them to fit into a certain mold or to act a certain way, I want our home to be the safe place in which those forces have no power.

Now, I also have hopes and expectations for my children. I want them to be thinkers and readers; I want them to be wise and compassionate; I want them to love deeply and speak kindly. But even the wisest person has moments of foolishness; even the kindest person has words they regret. In those moments, I want my children to know that my love will not cease or waver, that I will always love them for who they are even as I help them grow and mature. And I want them to know that the rate of their growth is never a cause for shame, regardless of how slowly they may be progressing. The direction and the effort are the things that matter.

With both of those things in mind, putting Rondel in a special preschool designed solely to help him acquire certain skills by a certain deadline seems antithetical to my whole concept of parenthood. He is not a flowering bush that I can freely manipulate by well-timed applications of different fertilizers or hormones; he is his own person, uniquely designed and gifted, with his own path and timeline to follow. It is helpful for me to know the ways in which he is different than “normal,” so that I can anticipate his struggles instead of setting him up for failure, learn how to help him through difficult situations instead of flailing about in the dark, and access the accommodations he needs to thrive – but it isn’t helpful to focus on those differences as things that are “wrong” with him and try to fix them or train them out of him.

And my fear is that he will think just that: that we believe his way of being is inadequate or wrong, that we don’t accept him as who he is, and that we are willing to put him in an environment that stresses his sensory and emotional systems to the point of overload in an attempt to change him into someone else. It’s hard to think of a better way to demolish a child’s confidence in himself or to damage his trust in his parents’s love and understanding. When the music plays that only Rondel can hear, I want him to dance to that beat with freedom and fullness, holding nothing back in his pursuit of the calling for which God has designed him, no matter how strange or awkward that dance may appear to those who are deaf to the song. Speech therapy we can get at a private clinic, without needing to compromise our ideals in the process; the other skills he needs for life will grow in time, as he learns their value, in the context of love and peace and belonging.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in musings

when tools come with tainted memories

Posted on by kristinabean

I grew up hearing horror stories about public schools.

Every time we drove past one, my dad would comment on the chainlink fences, the buzzing alarm bells, or the thick small-windowed walls. He would tell us about Mrs. Weinstein, his fourth-grade teacher, who was so nasty as to apparently have burnt a traumatic scar into his memory. He would regale us with the tale of how in elementary school he would ask for a bathroom pass and just scream in the bathroom at the top of his lungs because he was so bored/pent up/overwhelmed by the classroom environment. He would call them “jails for kids” (although my mom would always gently reply that it was hyperbolic to go that far).

My mom didn’t have nearly so many negative things to say, but I knew that she dropped out of high school and worked her way through community college and university to get a master’s in engineering, and considered self-directed, intrinsically-motivated learning to be far more valuable and efficient than teacher-dictated, extrinsically-demanded education.

After I met my husband, I learned how he had been bullied through elementary school, to the point of being anxious, angry, depressed, and aggressive as even a young child – his innate friendliness met with rejection, and his self-confidence and self-esteem dealt crushing blows that he still sometimes struggles to overcome.

And so when the supportive, understanding, encouraging women in the special needs ministry at my church encouraged me to seek an evaluation through the public school district, to see if Rondel qualified for any free services, I was apprehensive, wary, and unsure. Now that his evaluation is past and I know that he does qualify – now that the registration and enrollment paperwork sits in front of me on the table – I am still all of those things.

The woman who would be his teacher is, from what I can tell, an energetic, passionate, and intelligent person, who deeply cares about her students and all their unique ways of being (of which there are certainly many in a special ed preschool!). Her classroom and schedule are well-designed, full of all the things young children enjoy and all the activities that strengthen and challenge their developing skills. She even told me that based on my description of Rondel she would ask the OT to do a sensory consult for him in class and potentially give him access to occupational therapy for his sensory difficulties and their emotional sequelae. My concerns do not rest with her, but with the whole philosophy of standardized, forced education in general.

During our IEP meeting, the evaluators kept mentioning that this or that skill would be “necessary for kindergarten next year.” To succeed in kindergarten, Rondel would have to learn to sit and pay attention, to be quiet and listen for the majority of the time, to participate in group activities instead of sitting on the edges doing his own thing, to hold a pencil or crayon with enough finesse to write letters and numbers, to respond to directions, and to speak intelligibly. And critically, he would need to learn all of those things by August. To succeed in life, it will be useful and courteous to know how to sit quietly and pay attention to other people; it will be beneficial for forming friendships to be able to engage in group activities and respond appropriately to social cues; it will be helpful to be able to write and draw, but not necessary in an increasingly technical world; and it will be of great importance to speak so that others can understand, particularly for a child who loves to talk as much as he does! But there wouldn’t be any deadline on his acquisition of those skills. Without the impending shadow of kindergarten hanging over him, there would be no rush for him to develop those abilities in his own way and at his own pace – with the exception of his speech.

And it is because of the integrated speech therapy that I am considering preschool as a viable option for Rondel at this point, despite the negative backstory I have for public schools, and despite my plan to homeschool. No matter where the rest of his life takes him or what learning and education look like for him, he will be able to do better, with less frustration and fewer tears, if he can communicate his needs and ideas with the people around him. I want to give him this opportunity now to learn the skills he will need to do that, while he can still do “school” for only 7.5 hours a weeks instead of being expected to fit his life around an all-day, every-day schedule of external demands and schedules. If he grows in his other areas of weakness along the way (especially in social and sensory areas) – so much the better! One fewer hurdle to overcome later!

And if it triggers his sensory issues to the point where he has increased anxiety and meltdowns, we can pull him out. Trying the system out, in an attempt to help Rondel, does not mean we are tied to it forever – or for any arbitrary length of time, honestly. It is all about what works best for him, at this moment, in this context. If to him it feels like a “jail”, if all he wants to do is run away and scream, if it feels like his heart is being crushed – well, unlike my parents and my husband, he won’t have to stay in that environment for years while it molds his character and personality. For us, it can be just another tool in our toolbox.

Posted in information, Uncategorized

preschool special needs screening

Posted on by kristinabean

On Wednesday, Rondel had a special needs screening with our public school district. Because I wasn’t able to find anything about what to expect before we went, I thought it might be useful for someone if I wrote up a description of the screening, along with some context as to how it fits in to the whole process of qualifying for special education services.

Important qualifiers: this information is specific to the Mesa Public School District (although from what I can tell it is fairly similar across all Arizona districts), and pertains specifically to the preschool/early education screening, without any prior early intervention services.

The Overall Process

Requesting an Evaluation

The first step in accessing special education services is to call the district and request an evaluation for your child. We did this after the incident at church that resulted in Rondel joining the special needs ministry there, as the director of that ministry recommended it as both free and most likely faster than a developmental pediatrician. When you call, you’ll need to provide your address and contact information as well as your child’s name, and they’ll let you know the time, date, and location of the next screening. (By law, this must be within 45 days of your request. Our district does screenings weekly but there can be a lot of demand, so your wait time may be short or you might end up waiting a month or more like we did.)

Screening

The district uses the screening process to limit the number of children receiving in-depth, individual evaluations, for obvious reasons of time and expense. So the screening is designed to determine which kids qualify for that additional evaluation (which is the next step towards receiving services). You’ll receive a brief questionnaire in the mail ahead of time, and it is worth your time to fill it out as completely as possible to ensure that all of your concerns are addressed. The special ed teachers carrying out the screening will read it thoroughly and bring up aspects of your input during the screening.

Evaluation

If your child is determined to qualify for an evaluation (there are several different criteria which I’ll go into later), you will schedule it at the screening. Unfortunately, there will be a bit of a lag time here – Rondel’s evaluation is set for almost two full months after his screening – so it is beneficial to start this whole process as early as possible.

IEPs/504s/etc

This is the part of the process we haven’t reached yet 🙂 Your child’s needs and strengths will be considered in great detail at the evaluation, and if those needs are believed to require additional assistance in the classroom or special services outside the classroom (like occupational therapy or speech therapy), a team of people will work with you to get those services in place. That can be done through the structure of an IEP (individualized education program) or a 504 (federal disability law). This is where you’ll get into the minutia of how to best capitalize on your child’s strengths, accommodate his weaknesses, and teach him the skills he needs most. But like I said, I don’t have personal experience here yet!

A Typical Preschool Special Needs Screening

The Criteria

At the screening, your child will be evaluated in six different developmental areas:

  1. Sensory Skills (hearing and vision)
  2. Cognitive Skills (thinking, concepts, reasoning)
  3. Motor Skills (fine and gross)
  4. Speech and Language Skills (articulation, speech patterns, understanding)
  5. Psychosocial Skills (social/play skills)
  6. Adaptive Skills (eating, dressing, toileting)

To qualify for additional evaluation, a child must score below the cutoff in cognitive skills or in any two of the other skills areas.

Sensory Skills

The first portion of the evaluation is a brief hearing and vision test, to make sure that no physical problems are interfering with the rest of the evaluation. For the vision test, the Welch Allyn spot machine is used; this machine can detect a number of visual abnormalities and if any are flagged, the district will refer your child for a full eye exam. Rondel failed the vision test because the machine detected his anisocoria (that is, one of his pupils is larger than the other; this is sometimes associated with disease but is often just a variation of normal), so a failure here doesn’t necessarily mean something is severely wrong. It’s more of an alert than anything else.

For the hearing test, a earbud-type headphone probe is inserted into each ear, one at a time, and a computer sends sound waves out and records the child’s response. I’m not 100% sure how it works as I was more focused on keeping Rondel from pulling the earbud out before the test was complete. The audiologists running this test were, at least in our case, very understanding of squirmy, sensitive, preschoolers and even said it would be ok to skip the second ear after the first one had passed; however, since he has speech/articulation problems, I had them test both ears. And they both passed – so that was a relief, at least!

I don’t think this kind of test would pick up something like central auditory processing disorder; it is, as far as I could tell, looking purely at the physical mechanisms of hearing. So if that is a concern for your child, you should be aware of that, and potentially address it at the subsequent evaluation or at a private audiologist. Any medical forms like the results of an audiology or eye exam should be brought to the evaluation and will be considered there along with the district’s own observations!

All The Other Skills

After vision and hearing tests are complete, you and your child will meet with a special ed teacher who is going to ask your child some questions and give him some tasks to do with manipulatives and pictures. The teacher will also ask you questions about his self-care and social abilities. There were sorting tasks, stacking tasks, instructions with manipulatives to test understanding of prepositions (e.g., “can you move the bear out of the circle?”), fine motor tasks like drawing and folding, gross motor tasks like walking on a line and hopping on one foot, timed “I Spy” kind of tasks looking for items within a picture, and more. For each task or question, the teacher scores 2, 1, or 0 for a great response, partial response, or inadequate response. The questions and tasks span a wide variety of skills and activities, so you don’t need to worry that your child won’t qualify because they have one really strong area, or that they will look worse than they are because of one really weak area. It seemed rather balanced, especially for simply being a short preliminary screening.

If your child’s speech and understanding seems off, the teacher may call a speech pathologist over to assist with the evaluation, to ensure that articulation difficulties don’t lead to an incorrect assessment of your child’s skills.

Behavioral struggles can, however, lead to lower scores than your child is actually capable of, because there’s no way for the evaluator to know if your child can complete the task and is just choosing not to, or if they are actually unable to complete it. On the other hand, if your child’s behavioral struggles are interfering with following instructions and even carrying out fun activities like some of the manipulative tasks, then they probably need special services anyway and ought to be qualifying for further evaluation! An inability to sit still for more than 2 minutes at a time, or to be quiet when others are talking, or to express frustration in non-violent ways, will definitely make education more difficult for your child, and that needs to be addressed and accommodated.

Summary

While they say to give yourself at least 90 minutes for the screening, it only took us about an hour. They were moving fairly quickly and we were one of the first people in, which probably helped. I’d say the whole thing felt kind of like taking an IQ test adapted for preschoolers… if I had to describe it in a way that my preschooler could understand, I’d tell him that he was going to get to answer questions and show a teacher how smart and capable he was at doing different kind of things like building and sorting and jumping. I’d also tell him that it would be a somewhat noisy, stimulating environment with a lot of other people around, and that he would be expected to control his body and his words as if he were in a library, so that he could be prepared for that.

What I’d tell you, the parent considering taking their child for a screening, is not to be anxious. The evaluators are therapists, special ed teachers, and speech pathologists; they don’t have to worry about the bottom line of the budget, and they genuinely want to see the best possible outcome for your child. The sincerity, compassion, and helpfulness of everyone I encountered blew me away. Even if you are unsure of the educational path you’ll be taking with your child, it’s worth the time to get them evaluated so that you, the parent, have a name for your child’s struggles and recommendations for how to work with those struggles. It can help you adjust your expectations of your child to a more realistic standard, and give you the perspective you need to approach them from a respectful, relational direction instead of from a paradigm of discipline and punishment.

So if you have any concerns about your child’s development, especially if someone outside your family can corroborate those concerns, don’t hesitate to call your school district and request an evaluation! The earlier you know what’s going on, the earlier you can structure your child’s environment in the most helpful way possible for their development. I hope this gave you a more complete picture of what to expect at the very beginning of the special education process!

Posted in family life

a run-in with special needs services

Posted on by kristinabean

A few weeks ago, while I was nursing Aubade in the mom’s room just off of the church sanctuary, I received a text on my phone asking me to please come to where I had dropped Rondel off for class.

This was highly disconcerting. I have known for years that Rondel struggles sometimes in the class environment; I’m not sure if it is the structure, the people, or the noise, but something about it can be difficult for him. Some weeks he’s protested about having to go to church at all, and threatened to hit or kick the other kids; some weeks he’s come out of class and told us about all the things he didn’t like. Other weeks he’s come out full of excited news about the toys he played with or the snacks he ate, however, so it has never been all bad. And this particular Sunday I wasn’t expecting anything to happen, because Rondel had told me on the way in that he was going to do well in class and was looking forward to the story.

When I reached his classroom, a woman I’d never met before introduced herself to me as the leader of the special needs branch of the kids ministry at our church, and told me what had happened: Rondel, perhaps overwhelmed by the chaos of class, the lack of individual adult direction and attention, or the noise of the worship music portion, tried several times to run away from the classroom. Since the kids were in the big music room at this point (all the older classrooms come together for a worship time in the middle of the hour), this woman had been present as well and had assisted Rondel’s classroom leaders in keeping him safe by taking him to the sensory classroom until he was able to calm down. By the time she showed me to that classroom, Rondel was happily and calmly playing with one of the pastor’s daughters, a sweet little girl with autism.

This triggered a cascade of events. Rondel’s teachers told me that they are normally able to accommodate him in the regular classroom because they typically have three adults and one can focus more on helping Rondel cope with the structure, the stimuli, and his own emotional reactions. Apparently this week it was especially difficult because there were only two adults in his classroom, and while the adult to child ratio was the same, they weren’t able to give him the focused attention he needs. So while this is the first time he’d actively tried to run away and needed to be diverted for his own safety, he doesn’t handle the classroom environment like most of the other children can. I’m sure that was hard for his teachers, and I’m equally sure it was hard for him, and was contributing to his complaints about church. Something needed to give.

J., the woman who directed the special needs ministry, set up a meeting with us the following week and asked us to fill out a questionnaire online. After talking it over, we agreed that for now we’d like it if Rondel could continue going to the sensory classroom each week, so that he could still hear the story, learn about God, and engage with other kids, without the stress and discomfort of the normal classroom getting in the way. The last thing I want is for him to associate church with anxiety and stress – and if he’s having to work that hard at emotional regulation the whole time, he’s not going to be learning anything else anyway. Eventually we’d like him to try to integrate back into his regular classroom with a “buddy” – a designated adult volunteer who helps prepare him for class beforehand and stays with him the whole time to help him with focus, impulse control, emotional reactivity, stimulation, and so on. We’re waiting for a few more volunteers though; I think we’re the third family in line for a buddy 🙂

In the meantime, I’ve already seen a marked change in Rondel on Sunday mornings. I asked him which classroom he’d like to go to and when he answered that he’d prefer the sensory classroom I asked him what he liked about it. After describing the swing and how he can push himself, the beanbags that he can crash into, and the Duplos he can build with, he said, “And I like the other kids there.”

I’ve never heard him say that about a group of children before, besides his cousins.

In just two weeks with this ministry my little social boy, my hypersensitive extrovert, had finally found a place where he could be himself around other kids and still fit in and make friends. He had gone from threatening to hurt and fight with the other kids to telling me how much he liked them, even remembering one of them by name.

I don’t know how all of this will play out in the long run. It’s made me simultaneously more worried and more reassured – worried, because what if something is wrong inside Rondel’s brain that is going to make his whole life more challenging for him; and reassured, because it feels like validation of what I’ve been feeling Rondel’s whole life, that something is just a bit different for him, and because I know there are people on our side in this, rooting for him and supporting him. Whatever does happen in the future, however, Rondel and I are abundantly blessed in this moment to be receiving the unconditional love – giving, serving, and non-judgmental – of the body of Christ through our local church. And for that I am unequivocally thankful.