...we are really upset that our school we had found an hour away just isn't going to work out for a number of reasons - the teacher was very good and very willing to learn about Sensory Disorder and 2e children - she said that my little 5 year old was extremely bright and well above the older children but the commute was proving too much for him and would mean he would lose his Speech and OT services....so no go there.....so he asked to go back to look at one of the local Montessori Kindergartens in our area - we took him and he decided that he would like to try it....I had already visited a handful of times and the teacher seemed very open to working with a Sensory disorder/gifted child....so we enrolled him.....

My son was so excited about his first day and he started out great only to go down hill pretty quickly (they allowed me to stay and work in the back room as a volunteer so I could hear what was occuring in the classroom)- it was very loud and very chaotic (which for a sensory disorder child is like 24 hours of listening to fingernails on a chalkboard for a normal person)...the teacher took him to the side while the other children got to pick their work for the morning....my son questioned why he couldn't pick a choice for work (he has been in Montessori for 3 years now)...she said he needed to prove to her that he was able to do many of the lessons before he could do anything on his own (despite the fact that I had given her a very detailed list from his old teacher of the lessons he had from his old Montessori school)...so she plopped a math sheet in front of him on a skill he had already mastered in his old school (skip counting) and told him he needed to complete it - my son has a very hard time with writing and the OT we met last week did an assessment concerning dyspraxia on him (waiting for the results)...he had a minor meltdown because he said he already knew how to do skip counting and that he really wanted to complete where he had left off on his bead chain work but she would not allow him....so he completed the sheet despite the fact he kept telling her that his hand was tired and that he could just tell her the answers. Then she gave a math lesson and I could hear him giving all the answers -as the day progressed, he had more and more meltdowns and I could name a reason for every single one of them...his sensory needs not being met. She met with me at the end of the day and said that he very clearly was extremely bright and was well above the other students in the K group but that he had gotten all of his skip counting sheet incorrect and that she was concerned about his melt downs throughout the day (daddy and I looked at his skip counting sheet and every single answer was correct she just didn't know how to read his handwriting and we showed her and then asked her if she had asked him to read the answers to her - no of course not)....we are now a week into the school and nothing has changed - he comes home wanting to know why he keeps getting the easy work and not being allowed to pick work he would like to work on and the teacher's reply is that he has to prove to her that he has fully and completely mastered the beginning/early lessons before she will allow him to continue at the level he was at his old school...and as the more days go by, the more completely bonkers he is when he comes in the door - like he has been trying to hold his litle body together all day long due to no sensory needs being met and when he walks in the door, he just goes bananas letting it all out :-(

Why is it so hard to find an educational setting for 2e children??? People that have worked with our child and are meeting his sensory needs while working with him, are really surprised to hear how difficult he is being in a classroom setting because he works so well for them. He is such a totally opposite child when his Sensory Disorder is not dealt with and he is quickly being labeled a behavior problem because he keeps having crying episodes.

We have found amazing schools in other cities all over our state that deal exclusively with Sensory Disorder children that are not on the spectrum, but they are over $20,000 for a year or are too far to drive...why is it too difficult for our public schools to recognize this and offer a setting for children like this?? He does not qualify (and shouldn't be in a special ed class), they do not offer any gifted programs for early childhood and he clearly is having issues with being in a regular classroom....so all that is left for us is homeschooling which I am not thrilled about. Here I have this child who is dying to be in a classroom with other children, he is dying to learn everything and anything and we can't find a teacher who has any clue how to teach to a 2e child. Any one else with a 2e child feel like you are looking for a needle in a haystack concerning appropriate schools?