A New Attitude

After I almost jumped off my roof yesterday, a good friend helped talk me down and helped me get some clarity to this whole situation with Christian's IEP. I feel a sense of relief, and honestly, for the first time in a LONG time, I slept last night. This friend also happens to be a school psychologist who sits through 3 hour IEPs frequently. And, she knows how crazy I get. As I was going on and on about the possibility of him not have access to music and arts in his next preschool placement, she stopped me and said "He's fine. He's not even 3. He's still a little guy!". She's right.

The fact of the matter is that this IEP that we have coming up is really timed poorly. The ONLY issue that can be addressed at this IEP are the itinerant services that Christian is going to receive once he graduates out of the Infants and Toddlers program on his 3rd Birthday in February. Because Christian will be staying at his current school through the rest of this academic year (which is also a private school that is not even in our state), there is not much that the county can even address. We know we are going to get some sort of itinerant services (the frequency and the actual teacher will be determined at the IEP), and I am ok with that. I am going to request once we have Christian's preschool placement worked out that we have a IEP review. Then we can worry and stress about his specific needs.

I've been working myself up so much worrying about the great unknowns, and by talking this whole situation out with my friend, I realized that maybe I've been making this whole IEP process more about ME than about Christian. I get all weepy just thinking about losing our Early Intervention teacher who has been with us since Christian was 9 months old. She is a part of our family. My stomach turns about the possibility of us not returning to his current school next year. I am stressing over a back-up plan preschool in the event that we don't return next year. I don't want to leave our nice little comfort zone of our amazing service provider and phenomenal school.

I am NOT good with change, but Christian IS. No matter where he goes to preschool next year, he WILL be ok. I just need to breathe, deal with things that I really have no control over, and take a step back. This IEP really is just a changing of the guard. As long as he receives itinerant services in the form of perhaps 4x monthly visits to a Teacher of the Deaf, we'll be fine. I need to just focus on Christian and what he needs to succeed.