The Meeting for Special Ed

So, here we were, MJ was in this new school in an advanced class of 1st and 2nd graders and yet we got the letter home asking us to come to a meeting to discuss special ed services. I remember looking at the letter and thinking, "What is this? He's in the gifted class? What do they mean for special ed?"

We went to the school and met with his teacher, the speech pathologist, and the special ed teacher. And then it was like this out of body experience or dream or something where they began telling us that "something is wrong with your child" and they didn't know what but we had better go get it checked out.

Yeah, they knew he was smart, but his teacher was telling me that he was having a terrible time with speaking and writing, and it wasn't just something that she thought was normal. She said when she watched him write it was as if he physically could not do it like it was all shaky and forced. And then she was saying how awkward and clumsy he was when he walked. Also, she was saying that his stuttering was so bad that the other kids in the class weren't making any sense of what he would say because all his ideas were so stuck.

The special ed teacher and his teacher began throwing out things they thought was wrong like a previous brain injury and all this other major things and we were sitting there in almost a shock thinking WHAT?!

Mainly they were wanting to set up something for speech for MJ, and then they also wanted to have an occupational therapist check him out, and the special ed teacher wanted to do all these tests, but they were saying, why just put him in speech, when they thought there was an underlying reason behind the problems.

We left with his teacher telling us we should take him up to the children's hospital and figure things out for ourselves.

So, with that---that is what we did. We first called our pediatrician who referred us to a pediatric neurologist and we made our appointments wondering what would they would say.

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