CB gets to walk to our local neighborhood public school every morning! He may not be super-excited about leaving the house each morning at 7:10am but once he gets outside, he is ready to move and explore. He loves being outside and the walk to school is perfect. Flowers and plants to explore, vehicles of all shapes and sizes driving by, and new friends to potentially walk-with – what more could he want? He jabbers the whole way to school talking about everything he sees and shares this not only with Olem and me but with anyone walking by. CB talks with everyone which makes him already well-known at school. It’s also garnered him several play dates with a couple of friends from the neighborhood whom he encounters on the walks to school. Beaming mama face (on the other side of this computer)!
CB lucked out this year as his kinder class only has 16 students and he shares an aide with a couple of students in the class. Socially, he is about on par with his peers. Last year he attended the 5 year old program at a nearby university program. It was play-based and allowed him to grow in his confidence and with his social skills before starting kinder. Surprisingly, eating in the noisy cafeteria with his peers has not proved to be too much to handle. Providing tasks for when he finishes eating is helping to keep him from getting into too much mischief. His headphones have also not been needed, so far. Behavior challenges have surfaced, which is to be expected, but at a lower level than we anticipated. Academically, he struggles with fine motor, math, and coordinated movement skills and his pre-reading skills are coming along, just at a slower pace. Currently, he gets 45 minutes of speech at school weekly and limited OT. He also has other accommodations and modifications based off his IEP, Individualized Education Plan.
All-in-all, we are quite happy with his kinder experience and glad we took a chance with the neighborhood school! I think we will re-assess each year, but for now, all is good.
For this school semester, PT was dropped from CB’s schedule. With the lengthened school day compared to the university program, we wanted to provide CB with some extra unstructured time for playing with his younger brother, play dates, or for swimming with HB and me. Private speech therapy and occupational therapy are still fitting into his schedule 2x a week each.
Hard cheeses and baked goods with milk are back in CB’s life. We will need to run new blood work to ensure vitamin levels are the same but behavior and digestion seem totally fine. It turns out that some dairy causes urinay and fecal incontinence. We haven’t figured it all out, but yogurts have remained off the table. It may be related to the bacteria in them, but if he has yogurt 2 mornings in a row, then that evening or the next day, he will have an accident. It is very strange and I don’t fully understand why but it has been repeated on 3 occasions. We will try other types of dairy when we are feeling brave.