Two Views of Transition

At age 3, James will transition out of the Early Intervention program into the Preschool program run by the local school system. (This is not an actual preschool and is not related to the boys' preschool; it's just the name of the division that serves children ages 3-5.) So, we had our first meeting with the Exceptional Children staff on Tuesday.

I found it really stressful. Mike didn't.

The meeting included our early intervention coordinator, the Preschool program coordinator, their teacher of the hearing impaired, the evaluation person, and James's current hearing therapist, Karen.

We were informed that he qualified for what is called a 504 plan due to his hearing loss. This means the school system pays for accommodations to help him hear in the classroom (for instance, an FM system for his teacher), but does not provide any therapy or other educational support. In order to qualify for those kinds of services, he would need an IEP (Individual Education Plan), and get that, he apparently needs to have a demonstrated delay or effect on his ability to learn in a regular classroom. James's current therapist disagreed with that; she said that those requirements were not intended to apply to hearing impairments, and that other counties had interpreted the regulations differently. So apparently they're going to check into that.

According to the Preschool coordinator, he would have to be a year behind in his skills to qualify. (That seems really ridiculous to us, and I think the staff there kind of agrees, but they have to follow the state rules.) Karen instantly said that there was no way that he was going to test that far behind; she hasn't completed her current evaluation of him, but at the last one he scored above average. Apparently there are some other possible ways to qualify (e.g., if he's not saying age-appropriate sounds clearly), so they're going to do a full evaluation to see what happens. I had the strong impression that these folks do their very best to get kids qualified for services if it's at all possible within their guidelines. Even though the atmosphere was a little adversarial (in the most polite way), I think they're all very nice people.  (However, I was really glad to have Karen there being such a strong advocate and cheerleader for James!)

So, I found it stressful because it feels a bit like a lose-lose situation.  Either the school system doesn't provide James with therapy that he would probably benefit from, or in order to get it, he gets slapped with a label, which makes me very very uncomfortable.  So on the one hand it would be okay if they found some problems that qualified him, but on the other hand I don't want him to have any problems!  I mean, it's clear to us that his language skills would be more advanced if he were consistently hearing well, and there are definitely some things that we worry about, but I suspect that he's still pretty much age-appropriate with maybe some gaps here and there. 

Mike, on the other hand, went into this meeting having already concluded that James wasn't going to qualify for anything, so it didn't much matter.  (And that's true; James is still going to get whatever hearing or speech therapy he needs, we'll just have to go to Durham and pay out of pocket to do it.) He was just happy to show James off and have everyone say nice things about him (which they did).

So, we'll see how it goes.  The first step, though, is to get his hearing back to his usual levels; the evaluator doesn't want to do any testing until he has "clear ears."  The ENT doc is out of town until next week, so hopefully we'll know more about a plan soon.