He is visiting a 1/2 day program near the house on Thursday.

It is a 12 kids with 3 adult program. Unfortunately it is not intergrated with regular ed kids. So no model for him to follow.

Might be okay if we do afternoon activities 3 times a week so he can have models.

Have to ask if we can wait for the full day program.. Think I will try to sit in on his regular ed class to see what is going on in there. Yikes....


He is doing so well in so many ways. No happy...

By Conni on Wednesday, January 14, 2004 - 09:26 am:

Bless your heart Feona. As a mother of a special needs (severely ADHD) child of my own, I feel your pain. I know you are so worried about your ds and want to do what is right for him. It is so hard to know what to do sometimes. Just keep praying about it and keep your chin up! The main thing is that you stay involved in his education and advocate for him just like you are doing! You are doing a great job MOM!!!!

By Kaye on Wednesday, January 14, 2004 - 01:22 pm:

Just because is isn't a mixed class, doesn't mean he won't have models. Just like your son has moments where he is just a typical child, all special needs kids have that. It is a tough decision though. I think the adult kid ratio is great!

By Feona on Thursday, January 15, 2004 - 06:53 am:

Snow day! No visit to the special school today!

We were in gymnastics yesterday doing a make up class. 5 of 14 the kids were out of control for at least part of the class.

Ds started out very very "good". They did 20 minutes of stretching... and ds sat through that. The teacher must be crazy stretching for 20 minutes with 3 year olds.

Ds usually does pretty good on the Monday class where all the kids are really "good". He never gets a time out.

So in the class with the five kids misbehaving. DS got kicked out of class 2 times. This is what I am talking about... When he is around well behaving kids he does much better.

By the way two other children had two time outs too and there I had seen them in the well behaved Monday class doing really really well. No time outs.


I guess all the kids were tired and the class was really boring that day. I am afraid the teacher isn't very good.

All the mothers were complaining. The kids were there for the exercise not to be olympic champions.

By Feona on Thursday, January 15, 2004 - 07:05 am:

Anyway my point is that if there are distracted children in the class ds is like a sponge for distraction. He catches the distraction and acts up and doesn't listen. I really don't think he would do well with a class of distracted three year olds in a special setting.

The up side to the special school is they have continuous classes all summer instead of just 6 weeks like his regular ed school.

They did say that he is a different child then the one they looked at in March of last year. They were recommending 8 kids in a class and now he has improved to

12 kids in a class... that is really a great improvement. The bigger the class the more likely the kids can handle regular ed classroom.


Really his regular ed teacher has been alful to me all year but I see an improvement lately and feel if they would keep him in the regular ed classroom he might be better of there. I think he is behaving better lately.

The speech teacher said to me he is making very good progress were he is though she thinks he would do better in the special setting. He wasn't doing well in the special setting before so I think they are all crazy. He was just distracted.

The assistant director says I should keep him were he is.

By Kaye on Thursday, January 15, 2004 - 08:45 am:

Feona, I have been here. I completely understand your frustration. My child was in a reg preschool for 2 years before I put him into the special ed one. What I finally figured out is that although my son is distracted by the "bad kids" a good teacher doesn't let that happen. In the reg ed setting, all they did was redirect him, talk to him, ride him, etc. Now honestly I had to come to grips with the fact that he was the issue, the 11 other kids were doing just fine, mine was not. The teacher certainly could have handled it better, but he was tough. As for the other kids in the class, I bet their mom's wished he would not take up so much time, no one ever said that to me though. So when we put him into the sp ed setting I was torn. He was happy and mostly "normal", this seemed so extreme. It was such a good experience for us. His teachers loved him, his quirks were just one of those things they worked on. they knew how to do that, when to do that and they had the whole class in line. He had a couple of very severe children in his class. I think in his class they really raised the bar of what they expected, issues or no issues, this is how you behave. My son in back in reg ed for kinder, he is doing much better. He still is tough, next year will be hard, we are trying to decide what to do. EAch year with a special needs kid is tough, you have to let go of all the hurt feelings, preconcived notions and really just look at all the options with an open mind. I have to remind myself of that almost weekly.

By Lauram on Thursday, January 15, 2004 - 10:01 am:

I think Kaye is right. Rather than view it as special ed vs regular ed, you have to look at the individual environments and ask yourself a lot of hard questions. Once you "solve" it, you need to keep asking those questions AND keep reevaluating the environment. I'm alos not sure about that "modeling" thing that you are concerned about. I know that is true of an autistic child, but is that your child's diagnosis? It sound more that he needs an enviornment with less distractions. Good luck.

By Beth on Thursday, January 15, 2004 - 01:44 pm:

My son was in what I would call the special ed class his first year of preschool. I will admit when they first brought that option up instead of the reg class room. I was upset. It just didn't seem to me that he was as bad off as the other kids. I mean some of them could not walk or talk ect... My son had problems with speech and he did recieve physical therapy but only for some slight delays. It just scared me to think that they thought that he needed what seemed to me as such a low level. But I look back now as the best thing they could have done. Yes he was higher functioning then most of the kids. But he needed the structure they provided in there. Ds was somewhat quirky. He didn't do well with change, and was very set in his ways even at 3. He became somewhat the leader and I think it made him strive to do better. By the second semester he was mainstreaming and the next year he went to the reg preschool class. He is in reg kdg this year with lots of support. He may repeat kdg and that is fine with me. He was 5 the day after class started so he is one of the youngest in the class. I guess bottom line is I would not rule it out right away just because it is a special ed class. I would look at the program and the teachers ect... Each class is different and I think its important to take it one year at a time.