We have enrolled Kai in the public school's developmental preschool program. This is what they call the early intervention program, or the special ed preschool. We had real reservations about this, but the decision really came down to his speech delays. He can be very difficult to understand sometimes, even by Tina and me who are with him more than anyone else. So we met with them last spring and got him evaluated. He didn't qualify on speech but they didn't really give him a full evaluation. He did qualify though for "cognitive delays". The teacher is a friend of ours from college and she has been great to work with. She knows we want him there for speech, so she is doing what she can to get him help in that area. Trying to get the speech therapist to work with us however has been much more difficult. Last spring when we met she kept referring to Kai's as an ESL student (English as a Second Language). However, ESL is a classifications for children who are speaking a language other than English in the home. Kai hears only English in the home. She kept saying, "legally he would be considered ESL." After that meeting I said to Tina, "If she says 'Legally' one more time to me I'm going to tell her that if we're discussing a legal issue we should all get our lawyers in here to sort this out."

So today we had a parent-teacher conference. The main teacher (our friend) invited the speech therapist come in to discuss our concerns. Again, her mode was to go over a litany of reasons why Kai isn't eligible to receive services. It was very frustrating, because what we want is a valid assessment to determine where he really stands. I realize that developmentally there is a broad range of what is considered normal for speech development, but if you compare Kai's speech patterns to any other child I know his age he is significantly delayed. Are his delays within range of what's considered normal developmentally? I don't know, that's her job to determine, but she kept coming back to his Chinese language. At one point she pulled out a text book that listed the different sound that are present in English but not in other languages. She pointed out the hard G sound (which Kai can say so it's moot) is not present in Mandarin according to this inventory. I told her that was wrong, the word for dog is "gou" and the word for big brother is "ge ge". She looked at me and pointed to the cover of the book, as if to say sorry, no, not according to the book. He omits the closing sound on most words. "Does Chinese have hard closing sounds?"

I finally stopped her and said, "I feel like no matter what we say here, you are coming back with every reason you can think of to tell us he won't qualify." This finally made her stop and she apologized. Her point is that she doesn't want to label a child incorrectly and that developmental delays are over diagnosed. I can appreciate that, but I really felt that her mode was very confrontational, and very carefully crafted to put us off.

After she left the main teacher actually thanked me for saying what I did. She said it is our job to advocate for our child. I am still hoping things might move forward for Kai in this program, but I am guessing that there will be several more rounds between me and the speech therapist before this is over.