We were invited to join in the special ed class today where DS4 would most likely start going soon and after that almost 2 hour visit, I am more confused and scared than ever before
. I thought the 2.5 hrs/day preschool would be our answer to getting him ready for K next year, given it's a small group (10 kids) with a teacher, teacher's aid, and OT and ST coming in to work with kids individually. But seeing my son there today, I just feel more lost. The first half was ok for him because it was mostly free play and he could go from one station to another and just explore, so of course he LOVED it, didn't care for the other kids, would stand away from them (which is one of our ongoing concerns) but had fun ... but then they moved to little table time, drawing pictures, etc. and he started getting anxious, but still handled it ok (other than a meltdown over not getting a marker and only getting a crayon ... and then when he got a crayon, he had a meltdown over having marker on his fingers! lol) ... but then the last 20 minutes or so were sit down story time and that's when he started getting out of hands, climbing the chairs, trying to run away, looking out the window, trying to do headstands on the chair, then tried to join in the conversation about the book (Thomas ABC book) but the teacher and the kids were learning the letters in the book and reading it, while DS4 wanted to tell them the story (which he totally made up), while the other kids didn't understand why was this strange boy talking when he's supposed to be quiet and listen he was upset that nobody cared ...
basically, in the second half of the class ... the "structured" time, he was bored out of his mind. I'm 100% sure he'd be sitting quietly and listening had it been circle time showing him how to do some sort of scientific experiment ... but an ABC Thomas book certainly wasn't gonna cut it.
I know I need to stick with it now, send him to preschool and see how he does ... maybe he'll surprise me and will adjust well. But my gut feeling is telling me otherwise. I got to see very clearly today that BIG part (not all but a lot) of his issue will be caused by pure boredom and only a small part will be related to his sensory and pdd-nos issues. He would absolutely thrive if I could throw at him new exciting information he could absorb every 5 minutes ... but I just don't see how this will do it for him. I'm not expecting him to learn anything ... I need him to learn the social interaction he has huge problems with ... but I'm still not convinced this is going to work once we are passed the first two or three weeks when it will be all old news to him.
I DID like the teachers, I liked the school and the classrooms ... I'm just sure I like the "system"
