Thanks K'sMom. I noticed that experience of K and 1st in many stories of posters here, and it led me to consider that maybe the least-painful option for the next couple of years would be to go ahead and do preK and then do K next year, then try to skip 1st. Our preK would be half-day, and K is also half-day here, so that would still give us half days for the next 2 years to do our own thing. However, this assumes the school district would let us skip 1st, so it is a risky plan.
I am pretty biased against having the kids labeled by the school if at all possible, but I am starting to come around to the fact it may be inevitable for A. DH is much more in the camp of, again, letting chips fall where they may, going in with our 2/2008 diagnoses, and getting an autism IEP for both kids. He says get what they need now and worry about later, later. But I feel like once we have that label, expectations will be permanently lowered, and teachers will not try to challenge them. I have seen some of it already with our old school district, who knew of A's diagnosis and had her for special ed preschool ("well, she is doing SO well, considering...") It seems 2e is not understood very well, if at all.
