Just over a year ago we came home from Eastern Europe with this precious little boy, now our youngest son! Since then little Zephaniah has learned to walk with his prosthetic leg/foot and to say words to communicate his basic needs and wants. Our plan has always been to homeschool all of our children - but we feel at this time that Zeph will really benefit from the local special preschool class. He's developed to about an 18 month old level (some areas less and some more) and then has sort of hit a brick wall, just having a hard time learning in many areas. Seriously - I was unsure - unsure they would really care, would really be able to teach him (I have tried SO hard this year to help him learn very basic concepts that he still just isn't able to grasp - YET - we are not giving up!).
So I took a step - and a deep breath - set up the IEP meeting with the school, including a speech therapist and child psychologist, the district's nurse, the special ed preschool teacher. They took time - 4 hours all-together - observing, testing, interacting with him, interviewing us. They caught things others overlooked but that we've tried to explain - they got to see it plain as day. They want to help! They are all trained in ABA (applied behavior analysis) which we've seen him respond very well to! Thank You, Lord! He gets to ride 5 minutes down the street on the bus - another thing I was unsure about but just as I needed direction a trusted Christian long-time family friend who used to drive a school bus randomly showed up on my doorstep and encouraged us to go ahead with it.
It took a couple times to get used to but now it's routine and he gets excited and loves going on the bus and to school. We've seen some orphanage behaviors come up as well as more aggression at home with siblings but we are hopeful it's just taking time for such a big change and the teacher is working with us to help him redirect orphanage "survival" behavior into more social functioning behaviors that will serve him better at home and school. It is just awesome to have her on our team!
