Another speech day for Jonathan. Today it's his regular teacher plus the speech pathologist. Apparently, there is a subtle difference in what they do/look for. Specifically, his teacher told me that the SLP will be listening for things like whether he drops the beginning sounds of words, (which he does -- "No" is "oh", for instance) and then will hone in on the issues and work on fixing them. The teacher just works on getting him to say word approximations... basically any attempt will do.
Also, his regular teacher just got back from a big conference and wants to use Jonathan as her guinea pig to try out a new technique she learned. I told her to go for it. I forget what it's called, but it involves me taking a LOT of photos of everything he encounters in a day. Anyway, all in the name of science. Sounds fun.
No dice on the other little preschool. Because of how the program is set up, he would absolutely have to do both days. So... we'll see how Two and You goes. At least I know the county program is always a possibility if regular preschool were to be a miserable failure this year, which neither of us foresee, but you never know. I keep reminding myself he is SO young. This late-ish birthday thing is going to be a monkey on my back for several years, I think. I mean, not only is he a boy, which automatically puts him at a disadvantage, but he has a speech delay and is on the hyperactive end of things. If I keep him on the school track for which he is technically eligible, he'll forever and ever be the absolute youngest in his class. Knowing him, I just keep thinking this is setting him up for failure... behavior issues from not being as mature as most of his classmates, mostly. But, we have some years to consider it and see how he is. It's just on my mind a lot lately.
This is not to undermine the progress he has made, which is substantial... or the progress I'm sure he WILL make in the next six months or so, which honestly should get him basically caught up to his same-age peers. He's really coming along well.
It's just hard to not compare him to his brothers at the same point in the year... and I have to keep reminding myself that they were five months and 3-1/2 months OLDER than him in September of the year they were two years old and even those few months are so huge in terms of development. If I compare him to Ben at the exact same age, there's isn't a whole lot of difference. I have to take Simon out of the equation though because holy geez that kid was a talker. I had kind of forgotten the extent of how much he could say until I stumbled upon a blog post of mine for him the other day and had to double check the date to make sure it was actually his second birthday I was reading about. He was just in a totally different ballpark that way... Three kids down and I still can't get over the whole "inborn timetable" thing... how they just do what they'll do when they are ready and how not much you do can really change much about the "when".
No comments:
Post a Comment