Thankfulness

"Stand right here, Bud, while I take your picture."

"How about if you just stand with your hands in your pockets."

"You're excited, aren't you? Show me some excitement!"

I'm so relieved. It seems like the school year is off to a great start. All summer long I planned to write a blog post about the decisions we made regarding school for Jonah, but a busy summer stopped me from sitting down to write.

I'm sure some of you remember my dilemma. The whole school day was too much for Jonah. In May I sat down with the principal and commended her for everything the school did to accommodate Jonah. "But it still wasn't enough," she said. She was right.

So I was looking to homeschool and was excited about the possibility. I think my excitement came in the form of relief. No one would be keeping a record of Jonah's wrongs. I would be around to meet his sensory needs. We could RELAX a bit with everything.

The problem was that if I removed him from school, I felt like he'd never learn to function in that environment.

A friend made a suggestion to me. Could he attend school for some of the day and homeschool for the rest? I remember my exact words to her, "That's profound."

After meetings with numerous people at the end of the year, it was official. His IEP reads that he'll attend school part-time. We determined the exact schedule a few weeks ago. He arrives at school at 8:15 after students are settled in their classroom (to avoid the chaos of the morning) and leaves at 12:15. He has reading, writing, grammar, and math at school along with recess and lunch. He comes home for history/geography and science.

After two days, I think this may be the answer to our prayers. It's going very well. We've been riding bikes to/from school which is great therapy for him. And homeschool hasn't been overwhelming at all. It's nice to know if things start to go sour at school, I can just add another subject to our home repertoire.

He has his same aide from last year. I like her. My goal is that, other than his aide, he won't be "different" from the other kids. Maybe that's asking too much. He needed to play with therapy putty during class today, and the other students wondered why they couldn't play with some too. We'll see.

For now, I'm feeling good.

And that's a really good thing.