, Help...Need Your Opinion On Preschool for 4 Year Old Daughter Like Tanner

[Guest guest]

Hi ,

Our almost 4 year old daughter, Rose, was diagnosed at 2 years

old with all the same conditions as your Tanner. She has oral and

verbal apraxia, sensory integration dysfunction, hypotonia, motor

planning deficits, and she has also had many issues with constipation,

and was an extremely colicky baby.

She has made great strides with private speech and OT therapy, and

fish oil supplements recommended by you and Dr. Agin. At this time

last year, she was saying very few words and we were told she was

significantly delayed. Thankfully, her speech therapist at Children's

Hospital-Milwaukee was able to diagnose her rather quickly and she's

continuing to respond well to all the therapies and supplements.

Last year at 3 years old, she qualified to attend a self-contained

early childhood special education class in our school district located

inside the elementary school she would eventually attend. It was a

small class (7-8) with children who have speech delays or are

completely non-verbal. Her special education teacher is wonderful and

we were told in her IEP evaluation that she is pre-academically ready

but needs to learn more about social interaction with peers (i.e.

initiating play, give and take of conversation, etc...). My feeling

is that she's doing all the talking because those around her are

non-verbal. She was retested at Children's and tested high normal for

expressive vocabulary and overall tested in the normal range for 4 out

of the 6 tests given. She needs help with auditory processing

(listening skills) and sentence structuring (pronouns, adjectives,

positional concepts, sequencing, etc...).

I would greatly value your opinion on what we should decide to do for

her next school year. She turns 4 on July 12, 2008. She does qualify

again for the same self contained special education class (this year

at a day care where they will " interact " with " typically developing " 4

year olds, they aren't even sure how this will work because this is

new for school district).

Do we send her back to the special education class with mainly

non-verbal kids, or do we send her to a preschool with other 4 year

olds who are " typically developing " and she would be exposed to the

social interaction her current teachers advised (she would qualify for

therapy services wherever we would choose to send her and we are also

committed to private therapy as well). I would truly appreciate any

advice you would be able to give me.

Tanner is truly an inspiration to me. And I've tried to emulate your

tireless efforts on his behalf with my daughter. I know this age

window is so important and I'm so worried about making the right decision.

Thanks so much for any help you can give.

Carpenter

Brookfield, Wisconsin