Since I have been so remiss with posting, I see that I never mentioned Miles' IEP meeting with our school district. After all the assessments, which took forever to get done as everyone was on summer vacation, I got a phone call from the Special Ed. department letting me know that Miles was not going qualify for going to the county's hard of hearing preschool program. This was a moment of both joy and panic as it meant that he was doing so well that he didn't need the program but it also meant that we now had to scramble to find a preschool for him. Luckily, we were able to find a local program that we liked. We had to take three days a week until they had a full time spot open up but we were able to coordinate with our daycare provider from the year before.
The IEP meeting caused me no end of stress as it started with the determination of whether or not he even qualified for special ed. services. In my mind, I was screaming, "WHAT?!? Do you not see the hearing aids he wears in his ears??? Do you think we do this for fun???" But finally someone said that he would not be able to meet his full potential without support, so he qualified. Then the director told me that to receive speech services through the district, we would have to bring him to the school during school hours.
"Do you not understand that we are both teachers? How are we supposed to do that?"
Happily, the speech therapist that would be working with Miles said that she would arrange a way to come to his preschool to work with him there. And she has. Miles loves her and has made enormous progress.
While I'm pleased with how things turned out, I'm annoyed that they couldn't work out the details any earlier. When the whole process began, we asked that decisions be made earlier rather than later as Jeff and I had to be able to hit the ground running once the school year began.
All in all, Miles is thrilled with his new school, he is making lots of hearing friends and is doing great!
Monday, June 6, 2011
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Been so long...
A friend commented that I've been off the blogging wagon. True enough.
I originally started this a blog to talk about the issues of raising a child who is hard of hearing but Miles has made such progress that it is almost a non-issue.
That is, if you don't count the trips to the audiologist, the worry over ear wax and ear infections, IEP's and inattentive Special Ed Departments. But, really, it has been smooth sailing. Miles is starting to be very aware of pronouncing his "s" sound and is working so hard. He is almost 95% intelligible by strangers and his vocabulary is coming along nicely.
So I guess now I get to turn this into another blog about how wonderful my family is.
I have been surprised by how much of a boy Miles is turning into. These days, he is all about setting things on fire and putting them out, making things explode and shoot out. We recently went to a birthday party at Pump It Up (a party venue that has inflatable jumpy houses, slides and other entertainment.) While the girls were all about the slides, the boys were all about these air cannons that were there. The cannons were air powered and shot out these Nerf type balls that wouldn't cause any damage if one were hit. Miles would have spent the entire two hours in there. We finally convinced him to give the slides a try and, after some trepidation, he was hooked.
He is also all about the roller coasters. We went to Disneyland this spring and he made his mama's heart sing by taking quickly to the "big" roller coasters. Now that he is 40 inches tall, he can ride on Thunder Mountain and Space Mountain. He had no fear. I was amused to see that it was rides like Roger Rabbit that freaked him out.
But he is also his daddy's boy. We went to see Jeff conduct a local choir recently and it was the first time in awhile that Miles got to see his daddy in action. Miles was really impressed and surprised me by being a great audience member through a full hour of performance. When we got home, he wanted me to conduct him singing and then wanted to switch roles. When Jeff arrived home, Miles wanted to try on Jeff's tuxedo.
I originally started this a blog to talk about the issues of raising a child who is hard of hearing but Miles has made such progress that it is almost a non-issue.
That is, if you don't count the trips to the audiologist, the worry over ear wax and ear infections, IEP's and inattentive Special Ed Departments. But, really, it has been smooth sailing. Miles is starting to be very aware of pronouncing his "s" sound and is working so hard. He is almost 95% intelligible by strangers and his vocabulary is coming along nicely.
So I guess now I get to turn this into another blog about how wonderful my family is.
I have been surprised by how much of a boy Miles is turning into. These days, he is all about setting things on fire and putting them out, making things explode and shoot out. We recently went to a birthday party at Pump It Up (a party venue that has inflatable jumpy houses, slides and other entertainment.) While the girls were all about the slides, the boys were all about these air cannons that were there. The cannons were air powered and shot out these Nerf type balls that wouldn't cause any damage if one were hit. Miles would have spent the entire two hours in there. We finally convinced him to give the slides a try and, after some trepidation, he was hooked.
He is also all about the roller coasters. We went to Disneyland this spring and he made his mama's heart sing by taking quickly to the "big" roller coasters. Now that he is 40 inches tall, he can ride on Thunder Mountain and Space Mountain. He had no fear. I was amused to see that it was rides like Roger Rabbit that freaked him out.
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