Jam is currently almost 5 years old.
I'd been hearing about the developmental preschools offered through our local school system since Jam was diagnosed at 2.5 years. But suspecting that Jam, in all his SPD anxiousness, wouldn't fare well in the loud, transition-heavy public school environment, I had written them off early on. Then we decided to discontinue with the cooperative preschool system and a Montessori-inspired preschool.
Jam's occupational therapist recommended pretty strongly that if he were going to go into a formal school environment at some point, he should be in some sort of structured peer environment now. To build up social and classroom navigation skills. Being that he was already 4.25 years old.
Leaving no stone unturned, we finally decided to check out the developmental preschool system. I'd known some parents with kids who had flourished there. But first Jam would need to be evaluated. And evaluated he was. By a nurse, a physical therapist, a speech therapist and a school psychologist. It was uneventful. I listened to the whole thing from the other side of the half wall. No surprises. In fact, after Jam qualified for services, I showed his OT the evaluation and she said they nailed it. With the exception of one big area of concern he didn't qualify on and that was gross motor skills.
Actually, he missed the gross motor services cut-off by .6. That's point six! Maybe he was just having a 'good' gross motor day. And the cut-off has to be somewhere. I get that. But still- .6?! He did qualify, though, for services in self-help/life skills, social/behavioral skills and, of course, fine motor skills.
And therein lay the first of a few big problems.
Jam really did not care for the physical therapist who administered his evaluation. The same therapist who would be providing him his 15 minutes of physical therapy twice weekly. She was definitely not the warm, joyful type Jam performs well for. At first, I just thought that maybe she put on a stern exterior for testing purposes, but she was the same way in the class I later observed and the same way during the IEP meeting. Just kind of...unhappy. Possibly burnt out- she has a hard job! But I already knew she wasn't going to get much out of strong-willed Jam in the way of cooperation or effort.
Another issue was that class was five days a week. It had been challenging to make it two and three days a week the last go around with preschool. Five days seemed highly unlikely. And we would have had to cancel most other therapy activities to attend. And, unfortunately, class would have been in the afternoons. And for a kid who had just dropped naps on his own two months earlier, afternoons were not his time to shine. Or focus. Or participate. Or learn anything.
Also, looking over the first round of individual IEP goals for Jam, I realized we could probably accomplish the same things on a faster, yet less anxiety-inducing timeline with the personalized, one-on-one attention I could give him.
I think the nail in the coffin, though, was this. Jam has a mid-summer birthday. And it would take a minor miracle for him to be comfortable and ready for kindergarten 'on time'. And the IEP folks were pretty clear about not holding kids back from starting kindergarten 'on time' unless there were extremely compelling reasons. And also that if Jam didn't go to kindergarten in the Fall, he would be too old to continue in the developmental preschool. So we would have transitioned him to this program mid-year for 4 1/2 months of services. Followed by a summer break with no services. And then he'd need to transition elsewhere until he was kindergarten-ready.
It wasn't a hard decision.
I'm glad we went through the process and that the option is available to those that need it. The teachers seem wonderful and caring and the program is most definitely a life-saver for some. But I have no doubt that Jam wouldn't be progressing like he is had we decided to go that route.
It was time to close the door on the idea of preschool.
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