Yes or No to "Disabled Preschool"

My experience with special education services has been as a case manager and counselor not a parent (my kids are 2 and almost 5 so not in public school yet). I worked with a child that was in a similar situation to what you describe. He had been diagnosed with delays at 3 but was making very good progress. At 4 he was adopted into a home with parents who had already raised a special needs child and was in the special needs preschool program. He made so much progress in a year he started Kindergarten in a regular classroom with some support services. I met with the boy weekly for 6 months (for adoption counseling) and by the end his delays were barely noticeable.
As a case manager I saw in on the special ed evaluation process several times. It is usually harder to get services in the first place than to phase them out. I'd be inclined to tell you to put him in the class unless you observe and see something you aren't comfortable with.

I am an educational advocate for children with disabilaties. If you son qualifies, he probably needs the services they provide.

You may be surprised, these are not wearhouses for kids, they are classrooms, and your child would have an IEP that was based on his needs. The classrooms are not disabled, children have disablities of various kinds, he may be one of the higher functioning children there, but that does not mean that he will suddenly become less so if he interacts with children who are of a lower function. Be careful with your thinking here...you may find yourself defending why your son should be in a program at some point in time, because the parents of the "advanced" kids fear that he will hold them back. It really does not work that way. The children who benefit the most from being with kids who have diverse needs are the most functional, at leas that is how the data shakes out.

At this point, it is a moot point, unless he is diagnosed with a qualifying disablity by the developmental pediatrician, or is able to qualify as "noncategorical" which simpley means that the school sees that he needs the services, and does not have a diagnosis, and in that case, you have a whlole lot more to be concerned about than a minor delay in speech and motor skills. ECI is not the source you should be depending on to tell you what your son needs and does not need, and really, neither is the school district. You should never know less about his needs than any public agency (both are funded through IDEA.) Get that private evaluation, then supplement any service he gets from the state with private therapy.

If he does not qualfiy for a full program, he may qualify for speech, but not OT. OT is a related service to special education, so he must be in special education (fhe full program) to qualify for OT, even if he needs it. So, you should absolutely get him private OT. Speech is an instructional service that he may qualify to recieive without qualifying for special education.

I am going to say something very frankly, and that is that children with mild delays now tend to have greater difficulty, when they have difficulty, than children without those mild delays. If you have the chance to get your child into a special education preschool class in the local elementary school, and you turn it down, you may very well be kicking your self in the first or second grade when you are asking for help and nobody sees anything wrong. If you get in on the ground floor and he does not need it later, he can be dismissed from special education, but there is probably little chance that your son would be admitted to special education until the end of 3rd grade, even if he needs it, because that is going to be your next best chance to show that your son has an educational need. It is a pattern I see played out over and over again as an advocate. If schools offer, your child needs what they offer, and then some, so take it.

Log on to www.wrightslaw.com and learn about school advocacy. This will be a very helpful site for you as he enters school, especialy if he has more than minor issues once he starts learning to read and write, and especially, once he needs to write and read to learn.

And, as for my own experience, I have one child who qualified for these serivces. She did great, and the teachers we had in preschool programs for kids with disablities were some of the most caring, best educated, and most experienced we have ever had since.

M.

Hi Beata, I worked in a Special Needs Preschool for many years. We had many different classes, most of which would have struck you as an ordinary preschool class had you not known a number of kids in it have various different diagnosis. It's unlikey your child who only needs minor speech therapy will be in a class with many 'severely disabled' children.

I personally think a parent is best off taking everything we can get! Help like this now means fewer headaches later.

I totally agree that you go visit the school/class in question. Then you'll have a feel for it.

To me as a parent, it would be worth it to have even minor challenges addressed the younger the better!

Good Luck!

:)

Are we talking about a preschool that is ONLY for children with special needs? Many public schools have an integrated preschool program with a percentage of special needs children and a percentage of children with no special needs, and a percentage of low income students. See if you can find out everything your district has to offer, an integrated program would be great, but very hard to get into! They may also have a program just for kids with greater special needs.
Make an apt with your son's present teacher and get her opinion, she is the only one who sees him in a school setting with a group of children and she should have lots of experience with kids his age. What does she recommend?

mine is hard of hearing and i am opting to send him when he turns 3 he has obviously severe speech problems and hearing problems and I would feel better with him there cause they can teach him more sign and expect the temper tantrums and they will have more patients for him i am assuming. mine has a habit if he doesnt want to do anything you tell him to he just lays on the floor. i want a daycare who can deal with a disability cause you cant punish for that. disabled kids will just do that. but with yours only being moderate and hes happy there ask if they can help him get caught up if so leave him there. if not some of the eci preschoolers only do 2 days 4 hrs a day. then you can do both. where mine will get 5 days 8hrs due to severe disability. if you can do both i would. otherwise it might set him back to pull him from the one you have. if it is moderate I say use your gut. the hours a week that they go is determined by the severity of the disability. ask more questions. get more straight answers. make an educated decision. but that is my opinion

My son had the same issues as yours. I will not go into great detail b/c you've already got a lot of great advise. I had the same concerns as you. We decided to send him and it was a wonderful experience for him and us. Be prepared that your son will probably not need services through the school system up until he starts KG, since he's not far behind. that's when we had to scramble to find a good pre-K program, to keep him up on his skills. I wish i would have prepared myself for that and started looking earlier.

My friend's Grandson, is in a class like that in our local school district.
He started when he was 3, and is now 4.
Previous to that, he was receiving Speech Therapy (from our local Early Childhood Intervention organization) for a speech delay... which that program is only up until 3 years old. As well.

He, is fine.
It did not harm him being around the other kids with developmental concerns.

My son, had a speech delay too, and was in our ECI program up until he was 3. But I opted not to enroll him in the continuing special needs class at our local school. His Speech Therapist, said he was fine and did not really need it. My son, was not far delayed either, but was also advanced in other developmental areas. My son is now 4 and he is perfectly fine.

As you said, your son has "Minor" delays/issues. So, it is really up to you.

Many times, "special Ed/needs" classrooms are 'feared' because a parent may think that the other kids are retarded or so disadvantaged... but that is not always the case. And, for my friend's Grandson who attends a class like that, it is really great for him. It also at the same time, gives him a 'school' experience... so that once he enrolls in Kindergarten, he is already used to 'school' and socialization. So this is a side-benefit of it.

Remember, the Therapists only 'recommended' that for your son. Who has 'minor' concerns. It it in the end, up to you, to continue with it or not.

Ask the Therapists SPECIFICALLY what your son, is needing help with.
What areas?
What ARE is "sensory issues?" Being picky, with textures, sounds, what specifically? How is he SOCIALLY?
As you said, your son does well, in Preschool.
DOES your Therapists, know that?
That he IS doing fine in regular Preschool?

all the best,
Susan

My son qualified for the pre-school but like you doesn't have any diagnosis except for 'development delay'. Our school has a peer system and many parents out there pay for their kids to attend the pre-school. It is far more developed than most pre-schools out there because they havehighly educated teachers and they have a very structured learning schedule.

Because the school system was only 3 days a week I had my son in daycare the other two and I think that helped him too keep his contact with the children he had already bonded with.

It is really worth it and they will identify anything that is needed to help your son be ahead when he starts kindergarten.

Plus it has taught my son empathy he might not have otherwise learned. There is only one child with severe physical and mental capabilities in the class. When I was trying to get my son to limit the amount of kids he was inviting to his birthday party (because we were at 20) I was trying to get him to understand a close friend as one he chose to play and hang out with so I used Fred (not his real name) as an example. I said, but Fred doesn't run and play with you on the playground, so are there friends like Fred who go to school with you but aren't your best friends. My son looked me right in the eye and said 'Fred doesn't talk or play with me like my other friends but he is still a good friend'. Shut me right up and of course we invited Fred.

Dear B.P.,

I pretty much have had this exact experience! I'll recount it briefly below, but please bear in mind that I'm describing issues I had with the school district in my town. Yours may be nothing like that at all.

Okay. I originally requested an EI eval for my son when he was 2.5 because his preschool teacher was concerned about a speech delay. By the time they did the eval, though, N. had gone through an amazing "language growth spurt" and didn't qualify on that basis. However, he was approved for EI on the basis of his social development, since he was terribly, painfully shy and wouldn't play with his peers at all.

EI, in my opinion, neither helped nor hurt. However, it automatically "triggered" a special ed eval at our local elementary school, which I had never consented to. I did go through most of the eval, though, and the experience was terrible. The so-called professionals there started using diagnostic language about my son basically the minute they saw him -- there was no way they had enough data to come to a conclusive diagnosis. All this was right in my little boy's presence, and he was devastated. He was too young (at right around his 3rd bday) to understand the social context, but he did understand, very clearly, that lots of important adults were standing around him saying that more or less everything he was doing was wrong. My little boy was heartbroken, and that experience had negative repercussions for months to come. Some of the subsequent evals we did were conducted very professionally and appropriately, but I remained extremely uncomfortable with the chief administrator, who seemed to be pressuring me strongly to enroll my son in this class (like the one in your district, this was a "segregated" class, not an integrated developmental preschool). However, she basically refused to answer any of my questions, and she responded very negatively and aggressively when I asked to observe the special ed class before making a decision.

Long story short, I cut short the evaluation process before I found out whether my son would qualify. I did, however, switch him to a Montessori school ,where he has absolutely thrived. He's socially quite confident, though he still shies away from the rougher kids. He's clearly gifted in math, and he's fascinated with all sorts of science topics.

So, that's my experience. In my efforts to be succinct, I'm probably overstating how horrible that administrator was, but not by much. I was really uncomfortable with how hard they seemed to be pushing me to enroll my son in that program, especially since there was never any suggestion that he had a global cognitive delay. If your son is thriving where he is, it's hard for me to see the benefits of moving him. I've also learned that it's fairly common for gifted children, particularly boys, to have some delays, *particularly* around sensory issues and speech, when they're very young.

Good luck, whatever you decide,

Mira

The public preschool is integrated the kids he will be in are the same children he will be in kindergarten with. My son is like yours and did not qualify but he did get a slot as a peer. It's ran just like any other typical preschool.

Well, I have to say I was very reluctant to send my son ( now age 3.5) to the public developmental preschool at first. I was worried about all of the same things. I was worried it would "hold him back" and that he might learn behaviors from other kids. His speech delay is mild/moderate but it has caused delays in other areas, like social. Both my twins were in EI because they were preemies, one qualified for school district services at age 3 and one did not. After some finagling, I got my other son in as a "peer model" and I am so glad I did! They LOVE the school so much. A bus comes to pick them up and drop them off, it is so conevenient and they think the bus is the coolest thing ever. BOTH kids have benefited from the program. They attend a "regluar" preschool one day a week and that is great too.

If I were you I'd check the classroom out for. My middle son was in public preschool and he had 2 severely disabled kids and the rest had minor issues or none at all. My youngest is in the same preschool and if you were to walk in the class you would never know it is for disabled or delayed kids.
Both my kids have had speech delays. My youngest worse than my middle but he is getting so much help that it is worth it even if he did have more severely disabled kids.

I have a daughter with Down Syndrome - so serious delays and special needs. Only this year (grade 3) has she been in a normal classroom and she has grown and blossomed so sososossoso much. I would highly recommend visiting the classroom, but then send him to a normal classroom. Ask the speech therapist he works with now to train YOU to work with your son and before school starts in the fall, write a letter to his teacher introducing your son - with his strengths first, of course. Then mention what he needs a little extra help with and give a few examples of things you do at home - requiring him to form a complete sentence before he can get what he wants, might be an example. Then the teacher will be up to speed with him before school (so you don;t have to wait for a quarter at a parent teacher conference). I'd definitely say go to a normal school - 30 -45 minutes private speech therapy won't replace hundreds of hours with normally developing peers.

My twins had some sensory issues, speech delays and needed a little OT and PT. They went to regular Montessori in a regular class. They got speech and OT right at school. Our school district did an evaluation and provided the services for free. They are now in a regular kindergarten class and are doing fine. If your child has only minor delays, doesn't seem to make sense to put him in a class with severely delayed kids.