Sunday, September 29, 2013

Another Kindergarten Update - Time for Compromise

If you haven't read the past posts here are the links so you can understand the background to this post:

1st day of Kindy

Kindergarten Update - Frustrated

As soon as I started to suspect that Longvida Curcumin may be responsible for K's defiant behaviour I immediately took her off of it.  Within in a few days I started to notice a return to her usual behaviour - Whew!!!! so glad to have my same old pleasant kid back!  I was about to rip my hair our for a while!

In the meantime, we were already going into the 3rd week at school & the teacher, in light of K's defiant behaviour, was becoming very concerned. One of the other problems they have had twice in these first few weeks is K being a little too independent.  One warm afternoon when the kids were playing on the playground K was too warm & went inside the school & sat inside the door to cool off.  While that was a reasonable choice, she didn't tell the teacher first.  This has never been an issue in preschool but I think with the number of kids the teacher is busier so K just didn't bother. It could also be that this summer we really didn't expect K to check in with us much at all.  If she wanted to go outside or anywhere in the house she had the freedom to just do it so it could be just a return to the rules/structure again. This sort of thing has happened twice now at school & while we have dealt with it now, I can understand how they can't feel certain that it won't happen again.  The cut off for getting coding in place is the end of September & while I'm certain the K is back to herself & I did explain the situation I can't help but completely understand their concerns.  I'm so frustrated at the timing of this situation but feel I need to compromise.

One of the biggest reasons we were not coding K was so that she could get local speech therapy services.  This is the only therapy that I want the school to provide for K.  Her neurodevelopmental (ND)program does cover speech but I think this skill is so important that I feel the more practice she has the better. Kids who are coded have a consult type system with someone who travels from a few hours away & I really want someone local so I can be more involved & I think there is also a little more accountability.  Not only that, they would see her much more often & therefore would be able to do a much better job assessing her speech. The other huge reason for wanting local services is that the SLP that K would see is familiar with ND programs!  I never thought I'd find that in a mainstream therapist! Her daughter was greatly helped by a ND program several years ago so she is totally on board & interested in K's program.

So, K will end up being coded this year but they are able to get an exception & she can have the local speech services that we want for her.   I do want the 1:1 for speech so she will be pulled out for this but that is the only time she will not be in the classroom - not for PT or OT which she will likely not get anyways.  Some of the funding  received will be used for an aide for a portion of the day - I'm thinking it will be for a couple of hours in the afternoon but am not completely sure. The aide is to act as a classroom aide & only give K the minimal amount assistance when necessary. She will be there more as an extra set of eyes so that when the current classroom aide is working with one of several other kids who need speech the teacher will have help because of the number of kids in the room.

As an aside, K's fine motor skills were on par until the last year or so.  While a tad on the messy side, her printing can usually be read. K's program covers fine motor really well so if they end up doing any OT I don't want it during class time as that is so well covered at home. I do think that it may be helpful if they learn some ideas to use with the whole class but don't want OT to interfere with K's classroom time.

One thing that I am requesting is a vision assessment.  A vision consultant will be coming out from the CNIB to assess K's vision & give suggestions.  This will likely be much more helpful for myself as print in kindergarten tends to be very large anyways.  Even if some things are written in a smaller font, they won't be long paragraphs & K can manage to read even very small print in small amounts.


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