Changes

The past few days have been a whirlwind.  Bear with me as I try to gather my thoughts and form coherent sentences here.

Thing1 has had a life of change.  Every single thing in his life has changed.  He has not even had the consistency of parents.  Most kids have one solid, consistent throughout the entire lives, from birth to death: parents.  Thing1 has not.  His parents ‘changed.’  Then we had the changes of the past year: selling our house and moving to an apartment, Armydad leaving, getting new doctors near us, moving all the way across the country, living with Armydad again, many more new doctors, 2 schools in less than a week.  (I am sure I am forgetting a few things as well.)  My point is: he has had too much change.  At some point, his body and psyche are just not going to be able to handle anymore.

Which leads into the place we are at now.  I met with his teacher yesterday.  Basically he is failing at this kindergarten thing.  He is significantly behind the other kids and does not know what is going on.  His teacher thinks he needs to be pulled out of kindergarten and placed in pre-K for another year.  I tend to agree.  However, I don’t think I can do a third school and teacher for him.  I think that is just too much.  And my fear is that we pull him out, enroll him in preschool somewhere, they finish his testing and discover he qualifies for special need services through the school.  Then we would have to make the decision of whether or not to pull him out of preschool and put him back into the school system in a special needs environment.

It is just too much for one 5 year old boy to handle.

So, then, what is the plan, you ask?  We are not 100% sure at this point.  Right now, we are leaning towards sending an official request to have him tested by the school system.  During the time it takes to do that, we would pull him out of school and I would home school him.  If he qualifies for special needs services, then we could enroll him back in school in a couple months once the IEP was finished.  If he does not qualify, he would stay home with me for the year and we would re-evaluate next year.

This parenting gig is so hard.  We talked a lot about whether or not to start him in school this year.  Our fear was that we would regret it is we did not start him.  So, we started him.  Now, we are regretting that decision.  I just want him to love school.  I loved school so much as a kid and I want that for him.  I really hope we did not ruin his school experience.

So, there are more changes coming, both for him and me in the coming weeks and months.  Keep us in your thoughts as we both struggle to adjust to these changes.