Just Simply Jen

My son is now in kindergarten.(Insert pathetic sniffles here) He loves school. He has a wonderful teacher and just really loves the whole experience. He even gets excited about wearing the t-shirt they wear Monday through Thursday. Today was his first full day and he seemed happy enough but exhausted by the end of it. Tomorrow he gets to ride the bus home. Can we say nervous Mommy here.
Wednesday afternoon we met with the Speech Therapist,Student Services Coordinator, Kindergarten Special Education teacher, and his current teacher. It was basically a discussion to figure out if my son's behaviorism and speech warranted farther evaluation. It was unanimously agreed that it did so for the next month he will have three evaluations as well as his teacher's daily observations. After that we will be sitting down again together to discuss their findings and recommendations. The big concern right now is both his speech and his constant need for one on one, hands on attention to get his work done. His teacher is wonderful about that, but she has a big class and can't spend all of her time with him.
Today was a very big realization of that for me. I went to pick him up and as I was walking towards his class, I saw him wondering around the grassy area near his class. I honestly believe he would have headed into the parking lot had he not seen me when he did. This scared me. His teacher had no clue he was out of the classroom until I told her. Not the most comforting feeling. He apparently went out the other open door she wasn't standing at. She promised she would keep it closed to keep it from happening again. My sister said that I had no reason to blame the teacher at all, but I feel differently. It is her job to know where my son is until I pick him up or he is on his bus. I trust her wit that. Should my son have wandered off when he did, no and he was punished for it. To me that doesn't totally exclude her from blame. She has told me for the past three days that she had him about his tendency to wander off on his own when left unattended. Knowing this, I feel she should have taken the precautions to keep it from happening or at least checked once in a while to make sure he was still in the room. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong, but it bothered me all the same. I need to know that he's safe there. I have enough of a hard time with him being there to have to add worrying about if he is going to wander out of the cafeteria and into the street while no one is looking. They leave those doors open all day.
On top of agreeing to the evaluations, they strongly suggested that I push for a referral from his doctor to a behavioral psychologist to pursue the matter more than they can. We have had several people mention over the past year that he seems to have characteristics of children with a certain disorder and I honestly would like to just have everything ruled out. I don't want my son to be labeled, but I do want to be able to help him. I want to be able to teach him and talk to him without feeling frustrated. I want to one day be able to have a conversation with him where I'm not piecing in the words and trying to figure out what really happened or if he's off in his own world again. I just want to learn how to be better with him and maybe not feel like I'm failing him so much.