An open door...

About a year ago Easton went to the pediatrician (whom I love and adore) for his 5 year old check up. While there Camille went on one of her story telling sprees and told Dr. Thompson all about something or another that had happened earlier that day. As usual, I served as her translator. As we were leaving Dr. Thompson asked exactly how old Camille was. At that time she was 2 1/2. He said for that age her speech should be more clear and we should consider looking into speech therapy from First Steps. Now, I LOVE Dr. Thompson and he is a very hands off kind of doctor. He's not one to prescribe something just to "see what happens". But yet I still blew off his comments.

In the next months I got several other comments about her speech. Enough so that by October I was willing to look into this First Steps program. We called. We did paper work. They tested Camille. We did more paper work. She was approved. She got a speech therapist. Had 4 sessions. Camille turned 3 in December. Everything stopped. First Steps is an early childhood thing and is only good for children 3 and under.

First Steps told us to continue with JCPS. So we had to go through the process AGAIN. We called. Did paper work. Tested Camille. More paper work. Approved.

But I felt a little weird about the JCPS option. The people were telling me that she would be enrolled in a JCPS pre-school (she already was going to Rainbow School that we love and I was not moving her from there), have to wear a uniform, ride a bus, the speech therapist would pull her out from her pre-school for sessions.....it was all too much. They told me that I would be contacted within a few weeks of being approved. No one ever called. And I did not take any steps to call them. At this point I was happy to let her speech progress naturally and see where she was when she got to kindergarten.

But yesterday - I got a call. From the nicest lady. She said that she was a speech therapist for JCPS and Camille was on her list - would I like her to be enrolled for the fall? It turns out that Camille does not have to be in a JCPS pre-school. This lady has 60 children that she services each week and while most of them are in JCPS, she has about 5 or 6 "private school" children. Which is weird for me to think that she is in a private school - but I guess that what it is. Camille's IEP (look at me, being on the other side of an IEP!) suggests that she have 40 minutes of therapy per week. So nice therapy lady and I worked out a time for me to bring her to the nearby school every week. I am welcome to stay and watch, stay in the lobby and wait, or leave and come back as needed.

Her first session is next Wednesday afternoon.