History

In previous posts I’ve alluded to Sam’s traumatic preschool past. Since all is going well in present day, this is a great time to step back and share a little history. It’s a long one with a lot of details so take a break midway through or skip ahead to the next post. I won’t be offended.

By the time Sam was 15 months old, we knew something was up. He wasn't walking or talking and was really spacey. He qualified for numerous Early Intervention services – speech, PT and Developmental Intervention (DI).  He finally started walking right about when the services kicked in (of course!) so the PT stopped as quickly as it started. Speech therapy stopped when his therapist got pregnant and they couldn’t find a replacement so we decided to start private speech therapy and continued DI through Early Intervention.

Sam’s private speech therapist quickly shared that she was concerned about his motor planning. What’s that? I naively asked. It’s his ability to move his body around smoothly. It’s too hard for him to figure out how to get in and out of his chair. He should just sit down and he doesn’t. He readjusts and backs up and moves forward and does a whole dance before he gets his tush in the right place to plop down. It just shouldn’t be that hard. Since we were still involved with Early Intervention, she recommended requesting an OT eval. They tested him and he didn’t qualify. Relieved to hear there wasn’t another issue, I took their word for it and Sam went on with speech.

When Sam was two and a half he started preschool at a local temple. At our first parent teacher conference his teacher said she was concerned with how hard it was for him to move around. It was a struggle for him to get in and out of the police car. Leaning over to pick up a book was more challenging than it should be. Something wasn’t right and she wanted him evaluated by an OT. Sounds familiar, right? As much as I had been thrilled that Early Intervention said he didn’t qualify, the reports from these two new experts were too similar so we scheduled a private OT evaluation.  Springboard Therapy (in Morristown, NJ. I love them there) was shocked that he hadn’t qualified for services and recommended that we start right away. 

It was hard to hear that Sam needed more therapy. He responded so well to speech and was now at age level. I thought he was cured; that we’d solved his problem and that he was now a typical kid. Hearing that there was a whole other issue was disappointing and I started to realize that this was going to be a long road.

As a three year old, Sam was shy. He was uncoordinated. He wasn't as happy as I wanted him to be. We contacted the Special Ed department and asked to have Sam evaluated. There's a public preschool in our town for special needs kids that we thought would be a better fit. He did not qualify. While they acknowledged that he was behind physically, they did not see an “impact on his ability to learn." They did a second observation a few months later and while the disparity between Sam and the other kids had grown, he still knew what he was supposed to know so didn’t qualify. It was frustrating. Of course he knew his colors and his ABCs. We drilled him all the time. He had an older brother who was constantly stimulating him. But knowing that a cow says moo and the sky is blue was not the issue. His problem was his muscle tone, his motor planning and his motor skills.

And he'd made through the first few months of school intact. His two teachers babied the kids and the demands were low. But when they returned from winter break, the bar rose suddenly. With the close of the school year in sight, they expected the kids to move quicker and be more independent.  Sam couldn’t keep up.

His day started in a loud echoey hall that was unbearably loud. I would drive up to school, his teacher would unbuckle him from his car seat, he would find his group and sit down on the floor to wait for his whole class to arrive.  Within minutes, he would lay down. He would roll around. He would space out. I know now that he didn't have the core strength to sit cross legged for that long and the sensory overload was overwhelming. 

Next, his class walked single file down the stairs to their room. Hand on the wall, the teacher said. Sam tripped. His hand was on the wrong wall. He walked too slow. He dragged behind.

When the class reached their room, he had to take his backpack off and hang it up. He couldn’t get it off. He couldn’t figure out where to hang it. He couldn’t get it to stay on the hook.

Next - off with the coat! It was too hard to get both arms out. He couldn’t figure out how everyone else got theirs to stay put. He would leave it on the floor.

Finally in the classroom. They would all sit down on the rug for circle time. More criss cross applesauce. He would lay down. He would lean on the boy next to him. He would start talking about something irrelevant.  He would zone out.

And then their day would really begin. Only 20 minutes had passed and he was already exhausted.  He became disruptive. He would break out into laughing fits. He would act silly. He distracted the class. Kids didn’t like it. And the teacher really didn’t like it. Every day at pick up, as she put him in my car, she would list what he did wrong. I would nod my head, apologize and speed off so she couldn’t see the tears.

Tom and I talked to him about what was going but we never got anywhere (he was three, after all). His teacher tried time outs - she would put Sam out in the hall with the other teacher (the warm and nice one who we loved). He would calm down immediately and tell her how much more he liked it in the hall. Can we stay out here all day? he would ask. One day he got sent to the Director’s office because he was being more trouble than usual. He sadly told her it was raining outside (which it wasn’t) and that he wanted to go outside by himself and play in the rain.

Enough is enough. This was happening every day.  I was a wreck. Tom was mad. Sam was sad. I scheduled another appointment with the Child Study Team. His teacher (who I despised by now) wrote down the details and I walked into the meeting prepared. They agreed to another observation. But under law, they reminded me, it could take up to 90 days. I am not an emotional person. I hardly ever cry. I try not to ask for help. But I burst into tears. He doesn’t have 90 days, I sobbed. They will ask him to leave. Or maybe I should pull him out. And then I just kept crying. They handed me tissues and pulled out their calendars. We can get in next Tuesday. Would that work for you? It did. He got in. The rest is history. I guess sometimes it pays to let people know how you really feel.