I can't believe how much progress Velcro Boy has made in the past 4 months (just under anyway). I had an actual conversation with him the other night. In itself this is not remarkable. What IS remarkable is that I understood every.single.word. It actually moved me to tears (and is again as I type :). These types of conversations are happening on a more and more frequent basis and I love it! It allows me to see just how smart he really is and how much he's absorbed over the years.
He still has a lot of errors, but he's working and trying soooo hard that progress is being made. We need to work on speed and volume (he's too fast and too quiet - those that know him in real life will find this hard to believe :). He'll be going (probably) to therapy over the summer, 30 minutes once per week. We still don't know what the schedule will be, which is making it hard to plan the schedule for the rest of the family. Therapy will also continue over the next school year, 30 minutes per day 4 days per week. Since he'll be there so often and it'll be hard to coordinate everything else around the sessions, we've decided to put him in Kindergarten full-time. The plan is to homeschool him after Kindergarten is done. It's my deep down hope that he'll make so much progress in therapy that he won't need to be there the whole year and I can bring him back home. I'm not holding my breath though.
This was a really tough decision to make. I've recently begun to see just how much I've taught him and seeing some light bulbs coming on in incredibly rewarding. I'm seeing some early addition and reading skills starting and it's amazing. His fine motor skills are developing rapidly and he's doing very well tracing letters and numbers, coloring, doing puzzles, etc. We'll continue to work over the summer, but I'm nervous about bringing him along too far and him being ahead of his classmates. We'll continue religious education here at home, of course (though he answers questions about his brother's 2nd grade book.
I dread the time away from him, and while I worry about the influence of public school, it is only Kindergarten. How much damage can they do at that age???
Oh Kelly, I'll keep you and your son in my prayers. That is such a hard decision as a parent. You are such a good mother to try to provide for him the best help. There has been so many times with our family driving to and from therapy, siting in the car with school books in tow. Maybe he'll soar high with his summer therapy sessions.
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