Oh, Mama!

He bounds out of the door before we are even halfway across the courtyard. Holding up a sheaf of papers, he calls out, "Daddy, look! Some of these are for you."

We've reached him by this point and can now see that the papers are a stack of drawings. He shuffles through them to show us one in particular. Proudly, he points out the details of two characters from his dad's latest book. My husband had shared the illustration for the cover of the book that morning, explaining who the characters were and what they were holding in the image. Our son had not only recreated the characters, but he wanted to share them with his dad.

Whilst our son was accomplishing said feat, his father and I were attending the transitional meeting I wrote of the other day. I had no idea what to expect, but I was pleasantly surprised, again, at the options open to us.

We were most intrigued by the idea of full-day kindergarten, only accessible by lottery and a monthly fee in this area. (In other states, full-day kindergarten is the norm.) His current program is full-day and has worked out wonderfully. (As if you haven't heard!) The idea of him going into a half-day (2.5 hour) program wasn't that appealing. He just needs too much structure to his day. Too bad it would be left to a lottery to decide...or would it? Chatting with his teacher after the meeting, we were told that they are working with the district to get the extended-day SE students "grandfathered" into the full-day program! She agreed that it would be silly to put him in a half-day program and said they try hard to avoid that with this particular population. It would be awfully hard for him to get any services in just 2 hours! Hooray for the IEP! Now wouldn't it be terrific if the fee were to be waived because of his special needs too??

* "Oh, Mama!" is a quote from a book my son has been obsessed with lately. That particularly phrase, used in the story as an exclamation, intrigues him to the point that he brings me the book quite frequently, pointing to the phrase, and asking about its usage.