Moving along

On Friday the nice lady from the Speech School who is going to coordinate the acquiring and so on of services to Douwe came over to talk to us. She seems very nice.

Paul did most of the talking and periodic translating, as otherwise I come off entirely insane. It is difficult to explain how we got where we are today to people who are used to things going a certain way if, well, they did not go that way at all. It has taken me some time to work this out.

Here's the certain way: Child goes to school. Teachers or doctor notice something a bit odd. Teachers or doctor mention this to parents. School-associated specialist is called in. Some testing perhaps, conducted by the school. Meeting with parents at which recommendations are made. School fills out paperwork with some input from parents. Recommendation is made for in-place special ed support or referral to a school for specific special needs. Decision is made, yes/no. If yes, parents are given informational interview regarding options, teachers and specialists meet and decide on services to be provided.

Here's our way: Parent goes to school to tell school about child's issues. Teacher dismisses concerns. Several weeks later, teacher notes that indeed there is something odd. School associated specialists are called in. Some testing conducted by the school. Meeting with parents at which recommendations are made denying speech services and recommending special needs school. Parents entirely reject recommendation and instead seek private speech therapy. Many meetings between parents and school (and evidently at school about parents and occasionally even about child). Parents decide to change schools. Parents locate special needs school in the area they think their child has a problem. Parents fill out paperwork and arrange testing. Schools fill out paperwork at request of parents. Decision is made. Informational interview is scheduled.

This nice lady called up Douwe's teacher (who by rights should be the one coordinating the application for special needs support) who said something to the effect that, "Well, I'm not sure he needs any. We could use some advice in dealing with him in certain areas, but he seems to be doing just fine. What are we supposed to do again?"

So then she called us and came over. And I said something to the effect that "Well, his fine motor skills are good, but he has real issues with fine motor planning and also visual motor integration. One of the great ironies of being Douwe is that he has a strongly auditory learning style but he also has a language disorder. So he falls back on kinetic learning. His visual memory is good but not terrifying; his auditory memory is terrifyingly good. His phonics are pretty iffy when tested, because he has a bad way of crossing up his languages. But his reading skills are good. He does rely a great deal on nonverbal information so if he cannot see your face and upper body you have usually lost his attention. But I have no real idea what services he needs in the classroom as I have never had to try to teach him anything in a room with twenty some odd other kids in it. I do think he needs to be taught to read by a person who reads Dutch better than I do, because I am teaching him to read in English right now and it does help".

Poor lady. Luckily for her I didn't get to say that all at once as there were translation issues.

She did say that she feared that if I taught him to read English he might at some time confuse the grammar of the two languages; so maybe I ought to stop. Uh huh. You now, everyone fears that at every step of the way but it never actually happens. Well, anyway, if he does, then I'll stop. *Whoops*, then it'll be too late and somebody will just have to teach him to read dutch so he doesn't confuse them any more.

And the big recommendation of the day was to sign him up for some kind of activity. Like a club or something. Because....? I never got that, maybe there was a because I missed. Because it will give him new people to talk to?

However, this lady will not actually be providing the services as I understand it; her job is organizational and so on. She helps get the Plan of Action written as I understand it. Next she meets with the teachers and principal of Douwe's school. Then we all meet together and write up the Plan of Action. Then we'll see what happens where the rubber meets the road.

But I have this feeling I am going to be written up in yet another file as a pain in the ass mother. Maybe not. We'll see about that, too.