Caden ~ Kindergarten Screening/registration

Yesterday was our Kindergarten registration and screening for Caden. Those of you that know me, know this is something I’ve been struggling with for months. SO much so that I wasn’t even sleeping for a while because of it. Lord knows I can’t afford to miss anymore sleep, since I am already lacking so much in that department. Kindergarten in NYS is not even mandatory until the child reaches 6 years of age. I’ve thrown all sorts of things/ideas around for the past few weeks. Thinking I’ll keep him back another year to have him gain much needed confidence, however by doing that, he wont’ be in a program at all. He ages out of his therapeutic preschool and although he would continue to get services and therapy at home, it would not give him a structured environment that he is used too, as well as daily interaction with peers. So in the end, after talking, crying, worrying about it for weeks, discussing with school, we decided to just do what is best for him and send him to kindergarten and hope they have a proper program to put him into.

With that being said.Caden does NOT want to leave his school. He was so scared at screening, I had to go in with him and he squeezed my hand that entire time. It ripped my heart out. I stayed happy and positive for him the entire time and kept telling him all the good things, he kept saying, too big, stay in my school. *sigh* so he ended up scoring a 58/100 on the screening. He obviously had a very hard time with the speech part of it. He wasn’t able to articulate many things, which is no surprise. He also doesn’t recognize numbers, but yet he can count them. In his motor testing he got an 11/19 and in concepts he got a 23/49. Overall, I was pretty impressed that he did as well as he could. I know he’ll need A LOT of help to get through next year, this doesn’t surprise me. He’ll also need to continue with his speech and OT, and we have our district meeting next month to discuss what type of setting to put him in. I am hoping very much that they have an 8:1:1 at the very most. If not, I think it will be a lot for him to comprehend - Time will tell.

We also had the chance while at the school to visit a classroom. Courtney’s old 2nd grade teacher, who I became pretty close with way back when, now teaches kindergarten. She was SO happy to see us and asked about the family and Courtney etc. So after we were done, I told Caden I wanted to walk down the kindergarten wing, so he could see what it would be like. Mrs. Wilson (Kristen) poked her head out and invited us in to her room. She asked all the kids to say hi to Caden and showed him the bathroom, sink, the round tables and where the lunches go etc. It was really nice of her and I thanked her so much for doing this for us. Unfortunately he wont’ be able to be in her class, but I also know that she’ll keep a good eye on him for me. While in there we asked him if he liked it and wanted to come there – His answer? “No ~ too big!” J