We just returned from our psychological evaluation at Hopkins where we were told no less than 10 times in 10 different ways that our child should be at River School next year. Yes, River School is an amazing place, but frankly the hard sell was off- putting and unwanted. We owe both my sanity (supportive staff) and insanity (hellish commute) to River. Tommy has benefited from parent/infant, speech with Meredith Ouelette, audiological services from Jen Mertes, generous scholarship support from Nancy Mellon, and amazing teachers along the way. If we weren't talking about being in the car next year for 3 1/2 hours per day, and/or Tommy wasn't significantly behind in language skills we would be there next year. The bottom line is that we want to capture some of his areas of weakness now before the academic pressures of kindergarten set in. Oh, and the DHOH preschool is five minutes from our house. We've had a rocky road with County services, but last week at our IEP meeting we couldn't have asked for anything more. I have great confidence in Tommy's "staff" and whether or not we believe in every detail of the model of his new preschool is almost a mute point...pun intended. We know our kid, I know the system, We know what we're doing....telling us to "Expect the best, but prepare for the worst" is not helpful. I'm only happy that we're at a place where we're comfortable with our decision because if we weren't- we would have left Baltimore in tears.
We also have another young son with a schedule and a life of his own that we need to support. It's easy to say from the comfort of a medical office what is best for a child, but put the mother's shoes on for A DAY.
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No matter where he goes, he'll have you and Marty coaching him, cheering for him, and advocating for him. He'll be fine...the only thing that worries me is that you might not be as stressed out once he goes to the DHOH program, which would mean your need for cocktails might decrease. Uh oh....
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