Special Ed gets on the short bus!
because today, the boy is officially old enough for special ed preschool, courtesy of the taxpayers of the great state of iowa. he's made decent progress in his weekly language therapy with a speech pathologist at the university hospital - about 5-6 months worth of progress in the last 4 months. not awesome, but good enough, i think... we've spent the 9 months since he got his tubes placed wondering if the deafness was all that was wrong with him or not. some days, it seemed like there was something else going on; other days, there were sudden esplosions of progress. over christmas, for example, he was suddenly speaking in near-sentences, like "turn key open door please!" (referring to the sun porch where some of his favorite toys are stored) and "don't throw baby!" (referring to his baby cousin, whom it seems he'd really like to throw, at least when he's occupying my lap.)
at this point, we've pretty much decided that his language skills - which now stand at the skills expected for a child of one year and nine months of age - are the result of 1) catching up after not being able to hear from about 9 months of age to about 27 months of age, 2) missing a critical window of learning how important it is to use language to get shit done; he instead developed other, nonverbal strategies that he now has to unlearn and replace, and 3) the fact that he's an incredibly stubborn butthead who doesn't give a flying fuck at a rolling donut about your goddamned expectations, thank you very much.
so. today was his first day of school! he got into an absolutely awesome special-ed classroom that has 2 teachers that specialize in speech and language difficulties, a max of 7 students (currently just 4 students,) it meets 5 days a week from 8:30 to 11:45, AND is the only special ed classroom in a really nice community daycre center, so for two hours of his 3-hour school-day, each of the 3-year-old special-ed kids gets paired up with a normal 4-year-old "buddy" to talk and play with. awesome, right?
the unfortunate part of all this is that his three older brothers also start school at 8:30. my choices are a) drive MB to school while his brothers walk to school alone, or b) continue to walk his brothers to school, and have MB ride the special-ed bus. if my 4th-grader just had one 1st-grader to walk to school, i'd let them do it. but two? uphill, two blocks, in the snow? some days, i could just about throttle them for screwing around and dragging their feet. and i've watched other big/little sibling pairs walking to and from school... and it's not always pretty. the little girl who dragged her feet - so her big brother dragged her by the scarf... the 5th grade boy who, charged with walking his 1st-grade brother and 3rd-grade sister home, managed to piss them both off so badly that his sister ran back inside the building, wriggling out of her backpack and slamming the door in his face as he failed to tackle her; and as he ran in after her, the youngest brother watched for a moment, then shrugged and walked home by himself after they failed to return after five minutes... the 4th grader who forget his brother in kindergarten and had to turn around and go back for him 20 minutes later...
it's not that any of them are bad kids... every one of those kids is actually a really GREAT kid: nice, smart, good. but. they're just kids. and when you put kids in charge of even smaller kids, hilarity ensues! so, yeah. i'm not even going to try that one out, because i have a pretty good idea of where that's headed. a 55-pound EvilGremlin in charge of 90 pounds worth of brothers is not a fair contest. so, the short bus it is!
of course, i can only do so much to explain all of this to a kid who can barely talk. so he knew i was talking about school, and he knew i was talking about a bus, and he knew his new backpack was awesome. so here's the little man with hot fudge sundae pop tart still crusted around his mouth, and no idea of what's about to happen:

and here he is wondering why the hell EvilGremlin is trying to put his backpack on his back (where he can't even SEE it! i mean, come ON!):

and here comes the short bus:

he was cool with walking outside. he was cool with the bus. then he realized i was putting him on the bus and not coming with him, and he was definitely NOT FUCKING COOL.
so. he cried the entire bus ride. but, having cried himself out, he apparently was almost all smiles for the first two hours of school. he laughed. he painted. he played with his new friends. he scooped rice in cups at the "rice table" and thought that was the shit. he was tired by 11 AM, and occasionally started to tear up and suck his thumb... and when he came around the front of the building at 11:45 and saw me, he was laughing and crying at the same time and just about lost his shit, because hey... that was the first that he knew that i wasn't getting rid of his ass permanently!
so! so far so good! he's in school. he may not be that impressed with the fact that he's expected to do it again tomorrow, but it's looking like he'll get the hang of it pretty quickly. also? we're now going on 3 hours of nap and counting. whee!














