Who would have thought that while we are still navigating these uncertain times, we would be so busy and not have time to write about what we are doing. The best decision we could have made in the year 2020, was sending Little A to school. He goes to school three hours, three days a week and is loving it! He has the routine down pat that Dada drops him off and Grandma picks him up. I recently learned, it will confuse him if you make a slight change to that routine. I had taken a day off of work for an appointment, so decided to go with grandma to pick Little A up. As the toddlers came out of the building with their teacher, I was standing there waving at Little A, but he was not running towards me like I expected. He was just frozen and staring at me and probably thinking “where is grandma?”. His teacher and I were laughing and it wasn’t until grandma stepped out of the car too that Little A was ready to walk and get in the car. Going to school has accomplished what we hoped it would. He is talking more at home, but we are still working on talking to his teachers at school. He loves music time and you can catch him singing songs while playing. While he is talking more at home, he isn’t always talking to his teachers. He will let them know, usually by pointing, if he needs their help reaching a toy he wants, but he doesn’t let them know when he needs a new hearing aid battery. At home if he can’t hear out of it, he will pull it off the band, bring it to you and say “new battery”. One day at pickup after his teacher was telling grandma that Little A was not a good listener today; that’s when Little A told grandma he needed a new battery in both hearing aids...his teacher felt horrible. We assured her it is ok and that we are trying to teach Little A to tell her like he tells us at home. Even though he wasn’t always talking to his teachers or other kids, Little A still got more comfortable as the school year went on and came into his own there. He was doing “typical” two year old things such as making a mess with friends and ignoring his teachers. He loved to follow a little boy Leo around and sometimes get into some trouble. They would bump their little tikes cars into one another. There were times when Little A’s hearing aids worked just fine, but he wouldn’t do what his teachers’ asked him to (usually this happened around diaper change time). Eventually he would do the task for his favorite teacher. Naturally grandma would tell Little A if she gets a good report at the end of the day there would be a chocolate treat for him in the car. This helped him become a great listener! We did often get a report that Little A would be a great helper, especially during clean up time. (I wish he would clean up his toys at home). He would be so proud of the stickers he received on his shirt and show them to us all when he got home. He made friends even though he is still a shy kid. We have been told a few times that someone is always looking for Little A on a day doesn’t go to school. When we took him to a birthday party for a little girl in his class, everyone (including a lot of the parents and a grandma) knew Little A. Little girls took him by the hand and brought him to the playhouse to play. It just warmed my heart to see him with his little friends. Reminds you that at his age kids don’t judge each other. As long as you are nice, don’t hit and know how to share; people will like you. Needless to say, I can’t wait to see what the 2021-2022 school year has in store for Little A!
Since it has been about a year since our last post, a lot has happened on the covid-19 front. The biggest thing: everyone except the children are vaccinated in our family! This means we are one step closer to normalcy. At first, we only did outside gatherings still in order to protect the little guys better, but now that school is over we are allowing some inside time too. He gets to play with his cousins without wearing his mask all of the time. We are starting to allow him to come on an errand while wearing his mask. He knows he can’t touch the cart until it is cleaned and that he has to use hand sanitizer or a wipe afterwards. The excitement on his face when you tell him he is going to the supermarket is priceless. Thanks to vaccinations, speech therapy is back in person! It started off just one of the sessions and now is only in person. Oh what a difference it has made...Little A gets to interact with his therapist and is doing much more talking with her than he ever did on the ipad. He is showing her the silly side of his personality. One day while they were playing in the yard, his hearing aids fell down, Little A proceeded to run around saying “I can’t hear you!” This will be a productive summer for Little A’s speech--the last couple of months working with this wonderful speech therapist!
When a child turns three they start to transition from early intervention to CPSE (the school district you live in starts to cover services). Since CPSE services are not offered in the summer for all cases, when you first transition you have the option to defer the services to the fall and continue E.I for the summer. That is what we are doing so Little A can spend more time with his current speech therapist. The CPSE process required Little A to have three evaluations: Speech, educational and psychological. I know you are probably thinking the same thing we were--how do you do a psych evaluation on a three year old. Basically, for all of the evaluations the person played different kinds of games with Little A and looked/listened to how he responded in order to assess him. Just as we expected Little A showed how smart he was and his trouble area was just his expressive speech. The speech evaluator’s report said that Little A was able to string three to five words in a sentence, but not all of the words were intelligible. In other words, they could tell he was forming a sentence and talking about something, they just didn’t always know what that something was. Since I am a former special education teacher and know the process, I was ready to fight for whatever services I thought were necessary, but I quickly found out the school district we live in must understand the importance of providing services at a young age. They answered every question I had on my list before I even got the chance to ask them. Little A will continue to get to see our favorite audiologist Dr. Ben every 2 months. The only difference is only the visit will be covered starting in the fall and all of the batteries/accessories will be out of our pockets now (we were spoiled with how much NYS E.I covers--so we won’t complain too much). While at school, Little A will continue to receive speech 2x a week with a new therapist and he will also have a teacher of the hearing impaired 2x a week. This teacher will not only work on goals similar to his speech goals with Little A, but will help the teachers understand the workings of his hearing aids. We look forward to seeing how these services continue to help Little A grow and are so grateful for everyone who helps him grow along the way of his journey.
Before we worry about the fall, we have a fun summer together! After the longest school year of my seven year teaching career, I am looking forward to spending quality time with my little boy. We have had a great first week of summer so far. Little A loves the pool and enjoys swimming with his cousins at grandma and Pop-pop’s pool. He knows he has to have his puddle jumper life vest on and an adult before going close to the big pool. He spent hours in the pool to the point that his fingers and toes were wrinkled like raisins. He only got out for a few snacks and thought it was funny when we allowed him to snack in the pool while on the pool float. The hardest part about the pool is he doesn’t have his hearing aids on, but he has learned to adapt. If you yell loud enough you may be the right frequency for him to hear or he holds his head to your lips while you talk. He had a 5 minute long conversation with grandma this way one day. It does make me nervous though when he is around the pool and can't do much, so we just keep extra eyes on him. One day we were invited to a friend’s town pool. This kiddie pool was awesome. It had 2 little water slides and those mushrooms that make a shower of water. He loved going down those slides over and over again. It also had a splash pad with all kinds of squirting features and one of those buckets that dumps every few minutes. To my happy surprise, he loved it all. Little A is my little water baby and it is hard to get him out of the pool. At home, he even pretends to play “pool” all of the time. A big bean bag chair is the pool, and the trampoline is the ladder. He has a blanket that is the pool cover that he takes on and off and he uses a strainer to “clean” his pool. Little A even tells you that he is Pop-pop and taking care of the pool. We also purchased a small splash pad that you hook up to a hose for the backyard. He had a lot of fun exploring it the other day. Besides swimming and water activities all summer, I just signed Little A back up for Gymboree class. I am sure he will have a blast on all of the equipment there and hopefully it tires him out too! We plan on more playdates with friends and family this summer and maybe even a trip to an amusement park. It will be a summer full of fun--I just hope it doesn’t go too fast!
