All Rileyed Up

This was The Boy’s calendar picture for April. I love the umbrella. There have not been many showers this month in Cali, but I suspect we will still see flowers nonetheless. In fact, I’ve received my first bouquet of virtual flowers from none other than The Boy’s recent IEP meeting.

Last year, at The Boy’s IEP meeting, I was very frustrated by the triennial review. What bothered me was the school psychologist’s assessment of The Boy. It was as if she was talking about someone else. Her assessment of The Boy was so foreign from the Boy as I knew him, and I honestly suspect it had to do with the first time she met him.

The first time she met The Boy was when he’d just started preschool and was still scared of attending. Not so unique, right? Plenty of kids go through a transitional period. The difference between The Boy and typical kids, though, is that he has severe eczema. And when he gets upset, the first thing he does is scratch. Everywhere. Face, arms, legs, anywhere he can touch, he will scratch. The first time the school psychologist met him, he was crying and scratching nonstop. I admit, it didn’t look good.

So at last year’s IEP, they recommended Special Needs Kindergarten. I debated back and forth on whether I was going to sign the IEP or not, whether I would fight for General Ed Kindergarten with a shadow or the Collaborative Kindergarten where half the kids are General Ed and half the kids are Special Needs. After meeting with the Special Needs Kindergarten teacher, I decided to agree to their recommendations. This is partly due to the fact that a personal friend of mine who was a teacher at the same school gave me the dish on the Special Needs Kindergarten teacher and how amazing she was and how she’d had students from the Special Needs Kindergarten with better handwriting and reading skills than General Ed because of just how wonderful this teacher was. Strong words, no?

So that has been this past year. Special Needs Kindergarten with the woman who turned out to be the world’s best teacher. I love his teacher. I hope all future teachers are just like her. And what I like the most about her is that she sees The Boy as I do. I just attended The Boy’s annual IEP, and she said she’d read the assessments of The Boy from the previous IEP and felt that they didn’t sound like The Boy as she knew him. The rest of the IEP was just like that. The therapists, the teacher, and the General Ed Kindergarten teacher, all saying what I’ve always seen: The Boy is in league with his peers and doing well. His test scores aren’t topping the charts and he is a tad slower to complete a task than his peers, but he is academically on par and with that in mind, they recommended he mainstream into General Ed the rest of the year.

The Boy came home from his first day of General Ed talking up a storm about his new teacher. I emailed the new teacher to see how things went, and he said it was no problem and that The Boy just dove right into the new class full of people with no hesitation.

Fittingly, The Boy camped at Joshua Tree National Park over the weekend with Y-Guides and among other things, climbed to the top of some very big rocks. I am reeking of Proud Mama because, well, look at him:

Stand tall, son.