Mikail's Journey

Mikail has been in Preschool for five months now. He loves it!

It's taken me a bit longer to get used to the idea of me not being there for his therapy sessions and as a result I feel like I am 'in the dark' a lot of the time. As time has gone by I have learned more about his programing. He receives whole group Speech and Language in the classroom setting four days a week. I was able to go to an evening where snippets of a day in preschool were shared by walking through a typical day with the kids. I was quite impressed. Besides this, he gets pulled out of the classroom for 30 minutes of 1:1 Speech and Language Therapy twice a week. This is awesome. This is 8 times as much 1:1 professional speech time he received before starting preschool

Because Mikail has a motor speech disorder (Childhood Apraxia of Speech) it is essential that he does some form of speech practice every single day. It's taken a while for us to receive homework for him to do, but now we are in full swing.

One great thing about the Preschool he is in, is that there are parent sessions you can sign up for to help you with your child at home. For us the need is Speech and Language related, but there are sessions for other needs as well. Because this is a government funded program, we have to take part in 3-5 sessions per year. There are so many great ones, I think I signed up for ten. You bring your child to each session and learn, hands on, activities to do with your child to help them succeed. It's really quite something.

The main reason I love these sessions is that I am the type of person who hungers for knowledge in helping Mikail. Yes, the internet is full of ideas, but truthfully the internet and the bloggers and the websites out there don't know my child. I feel as though I need to be gleaning the knowledge I need to better assist Mikail from the people who work with him and know him.

At home we strive to create a language rich environment. We do this through stories, through play, through technology and simply through conversation and modeling. I am truly amazed at the strides he is making. So wonderful. I am so proud of him and the hard work he does every day. Not to worry, he is still a typical three year old and challenges us as parents in all the areas a growing preschooler challenges adults as he tries to make sense of his world and place in it.

The learning is never ending.

And that is how it should be.