Thanks Mich and DeeDee. I know this must be a common response for anyone who discovers that their child will have issues to overcome. Hearing reasoned voices of experience from parents whose kids are further down the road helps. A lot.
I am relieved that we identified the ld's early and she is getting the interventions earlier than many kids are able to. I am also relieved that my happy, outgoing, effervescent little girl is back - the one who brightens every room she enters. (We have been noticing recently that "the DD effect" - we can tell from a distance that DD must be speaking to someone (or a group of people) by the way everyone smiles ear to ear and their eyes literally seem to dance in delight - is back.) I guess I will use that as our gauge moving forward on this journey. When she is happy and comfortable in her own skin things are going well. Not many parents can say that their child is THAT happy. I guess all the rest is gravy - right?
I know you are both right that I need to pace myself, stop beating myself up over what I can't change, recognize that I made great progress in a short time, etc. Intellectually I realize that. But I also realize that I have to be the one on guard - looking for the warning signs and advocating, advocating, advocating. People who see only her reading or writing skills do not believe she has such high level comprehension and can discuss things like subtext, character development, etc in audio books. People who have these sorts of discussions with her absolutely cannot believe she is learning disabled. So far I have been able to protect her from hurtful comments but I know that they will be coming - and probably sooner rather than later. I have signed up for some advocate training sessions that will start this week. Hopefully that will help.
How do you look 5 years down the road though? At this point I don't even know if she'll be able to read independently by then. I know we will need to start working on keyboarding and maybe some text-to-voice technology but the special ed people want to focus first on trying to get her as much of the basics as possible and I guess I agree with that, as long as that concentration doesn't prevent us from doing the other stuff down the road. I can't even imagine her sitting through standardized testing and really can't visualize how that will happen. My gut also tells me that while the public school is all over her now providing special services through her IEP eventually she won't be that cute, sweet, precocious 1st grader - will they be as eager to help her? If we can't also get the enrichment that she needs (and I don't know where we will stand on her admission to the talented and gifted program if her ld's or anxiety interfere with her test performance) then I will again be looking at whether we need to do private school with additional support services. I guess it's the looking ahead part that makes this all so tough - isn't it?
Thanks again for the supportive shoulders � I really appreciate it and am just SO happy that I found this site.
