12 August 2005 - Back to School

The boys have been back in school for a week now, and so far it's going great. Zack started Kindergarten, and Nicky started first grade.

Zack was completely at ease because he was already familiar with the classroom and teacher. His kindergarten teacher is Sara Price, Nicky's teacher from last year. I walked him to his class the first day, but since then Nicky has been doing it; I just drop them off at the curb. Such a difference from Nicky's first days in Kindergarten! Zack says he misses last year's teachers, but seems to be doing okay with Sara. I hope Sara is doing okay with him! I'll find out next week at our first parent-teacher meeting.

Nicky himself has had plenty of time to understand that he won't have Sara as his teacher anymore. We started talking about it last year, and mentioned it every time we looked at the calendar through the summer. Four months ago, he couldn't stand the thought of another teacher. But on meet-the-teachers day just before school started, he was eager to find his new classroom, get his desk set up, and talk about all the things he would be learning this year. He says his new teacher, Paula Shuhart, is nice. The only thing that upset Nicky was finding out he'd still be participating in ESL classes this year. He doesn't like being pulled out of the regular class for the ESL small group, but he still needs it. Although his English is growing by leaps and bounds, all of his peers are continuing to develop language by leaps and bounds, too. If the other first graders could be frozen in time for a year, Nicky would be mostly caught up. Alas, they aren't standing still, so Nicky needs some extra help.

Zack started speech therapy at Callier Center for Communications Disorders (run by the University of Texas at Dallas). His therapist, Tasha Anderson, knows all the right people in the Plano School District, and has the perfect clinical background for helping Zack. She's working through a series of standardized tests to form a baseline now, and will begin actual therapy soon. Zack has a mixed receptive-expressive speech disorder, and although it's most noticeable when he speaks, he's still over one standard deviation low receptively, too. Tasha and I are confident that he'll improve quickly with appropriate therapy—I saw quite a bit of improvement last year, when Christie worked with him at our house. At what point does pervasive developmental delay become a disorder? At the point where it becomes maladaptive—that is, where it interferes with learning or daily activities. Zack's right at that point now. In Kindergarten, he'll have to be able to express himself well enough to demonstrate he understands what the teacher is saying, and he'll need to be able to communicate with the other children. Remediating his deficiencies now will make learning other skills much easier when he's older, too. And no matter what else, he'll be much happier when he can understand others and talk to them.