A little piece of heaven

I am getting ready to go through the transition process from Early Intervention into school and we will soon be determining the best classroom for Nathan.

My question is – has anybody placed their special needs child in a typical classroom?

I’m hoping maybe some of you that are ahead of me and have done some research might be able to give me some guidance about what to consider when deciding placement.

The school district wants to place Nathan in a class with kids that have multiple disabilities.  On the one hand, this would be good because they would understand his needs and work with him on functional skills.

On the other hand, I feel that if he is in a class with typical children he will be stimulated more and will learn more and quicker.

I believe in “self fulfilling prophecies” and believe that children learn as much as they’re given a chance to learn.  So part of me wants to put him in a situation where he will be stimulated to learn more, but the other part of me wants him in an environment which is more supportive and understanding of his needs and limitations.

I’ve called a local Waldorf school and am hoping to talk to them as well.

Thanks so much for any help/advice!

One of the questions I had for Dr. Kenny when I last saw her was if my body was ready for me to be pregnant.

And guess what the answer was?

YES!

So no, I am not pregnant yet – but I plan to start trying soon!  So watch out for a happy announcement in the near future 🙂

Let’s start with a few laughs:

Did you notice how Jackie’s entire body fits in Lucas’ mouth?  At some point today Lucas picked Jackie up by the neck and carried him outside.  How cute is that!

Today we woke up late because of DST so things started off pretty hectic.  After Nathan’s PT with Julie he ate a quick breakfast and Mary did ABR with him for an hour.  Then we ran off to Napa as I had already made the appointment and wanted to keep it.

Nathan watched “A Goofy Story” in the car on the way down and was totally happy.

When we got to Napa Center, we met up with Genie, the Tomatis practitioner, who got him set up and hooked up right away.

Here’s a video about Tomatis:

This one is in Spanish, but it gives you a visual about what it looks like:

We left Nathan with Genie and walked away just waiting, just waiting for the howl of complaint…but it never came.  For an hour and a half Mary and I sat in the room next to where Nathan was, just waiting for a cry, a complaint, a whine, anything.  But he was HAPPY!  He spent an hour and a half with the headphones on his head, calm, content, playful.

It was AWESOME!

He came back to me very happy – so I think this program is a GO.  I don’t know how to explain it, but there was something about his vibe when he came back that felt very good.

After we came home, we snuggled up for a nap and I took a cat nap while Nathan continued to sleep.  He’s been happily asleep for 2 hours now.

We are going to see Genie 2 more times this week, and then at the end of the week, we will decide when to go back, and how often to engage in this therapy.

Genie’s goal is to teach me how to do this at home with Nathan so that we don’t ahve to continuosuly drive an hour for the program, which I think would be wonderful.  I have recently talked to a few moms whose kids did Tomatis and they all told me that their language started developing very quickly after some sessions with this method.  But apparently Tomatis also works with neurological organization, so hopefully we will see some improvements in both of these areas.

I am going to be reading/learning more about this method and will write more about it as I learn!

Until tommorrow.