School Meeting

As a mom of a child with selective mutism, there are a lot of lows mixed with some really sweet highs.  Sometimes it seems that the difficult days greatly outweigh the good days.  If you are anything like me, you question why things are the way they are and if you are doing enough to help your child.  It is a constant struggle, but when you have a really great moment or a breakthrough, it is all the more sweeter.  Today was one of those days.

I was so nervous about the child study team meeting.  I prepared for it for days, with notes, handouts for each member of the child study team, etc.  I knew that having Thomas enrolled in the school's preschool next year was crucial to his later school success.  Now I had the task and pressure of convincing this team.  I met with the school psychologist, the SLP and the social worker.  To my surprise they all had done their research on SM prior to our meeting and blew me away by how much they understood and were willing to work with Thomas. 

For those of you dealing with SM, you know all too well, that it is not well known, often dismissed as shyness, and misdiagnosed!  I just have to say this meeting was such a breath of fresh air.  Ahh to feel understood!  I went in with the stress of wondering how I would communicate the tremendous depth of SM in a few short minutes, to being able to focus specifically on Thomas's strengths and weaknesses and our goals for him.

What came out of our meeting:

1. We are going to put an evaluation on hold, because they would recommend immediately placing him in the school's preschool.  Although this is what I wanted more than anything for next year when he is four, we all felt that pulling him out of his current private preschool in the middle of the year would not be a good idea.  He will be evaluated in May or June before the end of the school year.

2.  He will definitely be eligible for the school's preschool next year!!!!

I left feeling great and so proud of myself for setting up this meeting and working towards what is best for my son.

I rarely toot my own horn, but today I feel like a kickass mom and I'm gonna run with it.