home

No School For You!

No, there’s no school today (which is nice, because Tad gets to play with his best friend Danny today and is very excited about it).  But really, this post is about Rerun and preschool.

Or lack thereof.

Registration has just begun for local preschools, and the Webmaster and I had to come to a decision on whether or not Rerun would start preschool this fall or not.  This was not as easy a decision to make as it had been for the older two kids.  With Ane and her late December birthday, we knew we had to get her into preschool as soon as possible because a) she was asking to go and b) we knew she would kill us in our sleep if we didn’t send her.  Okay, not really, but it did feel like that at the time.  Because her birthday fell so late in the admissions cycle, she was quickly approaching 4 when she started the 3 year old class in preschool.  She was fully potty-trained and raring to go.  And when school started, she was quite possibly the happiest girl on the face of the earth… until Mom came back to pick her up.


Ane’s first day of preschool, September 2007

With Tad, the question of when he would start preschool was pretty much out of our hands, thanks to the Early Intervention program that we were a part of due to his speech delay (with the root cause, autism, not being identified for almost another two years).  Once Tad turned three, he immediately qualified for the special education preschool in the school district, and the EI program helped us handle all the paperwork to get him there.  And because Tad has a mid-August birthday, he was only a few weeks past his third birthday when he started preschool.  Which is something that blows my mind now.  He was so little.  How on earth did I send him to preschool as a brand-new three year old???  I remember that was the main reason that he didn’t ride the school bus that first year – I could NOT contemplate putting my little boy on a school bus at age three.  By the next year, he wanted to ride the school bus, and that was fine.  But that first year, I just couldn’t do it.  But as far as sending him to preschool – he needed the continued intervention and therapy.  I knew then, and I have the benefit of hindsight now, that we made the right choice for him.


Tad’s first day of preschool, September 2008

But now we get to Rerun.  It’s hard to make a decision now, when he’s about six weeks shy of his third birthday, that will affect him next September, when he’s three and a half.  A lot can and WILL happen in nine months, not the least of which being the arrival of his new little brother.  So, this was not an easy call for us to make.  The only preschool that Rerun currently qualifies for is Ane’s (not that there aren’t other preschool options out there, but we decided to limit our choices to the programs that we knew and trusted, and because Rerun is neurotypical and is not special needs, he can’t attend Tad’s preschool until the year of his 4th birthday), which would be a two-day-a-week program.  The preschool itself has moved from its previous, more centralized, location (when Ane left preschool, the church where it was held had decided to use the space themselves for a school) to their elementary school campus slightly further out of town.  It’s still a doable distance, but it does add a couple more miles – and minutes – to the trip.  And Rerun would have to be in the afternoon program, because the morning program starts at 8:30 am now.  I can’t get him to school AND get the older two on their school buses in the morning all by myself.

So, knowing all those details, we added in what we know of Rerun right now:
1) He still takes an afternoon nap (no matter what he may think)
2) He is interested in the potty, but he is nowhere near fully potty trained (a requirement for preschool)
3) He is not the most “mature” almost-three-year-old we’ve ever known
4) His speech skills, heavily influenced by Tad, are improving steadily, but still hard for people outside the family and close friends to understand.


He is flippin’ adorable, though.  Especially when he collapses after a no-nap day.

Now, a lot of things can change in nine months.  Rerun could become fully potty trained by the end of this coming summer (which I am hoping for).  The arrival of the new baby may suddenly trigger a burst of maturity as he realizes he is a “big” boy now.  His speech skills could drastically improve (since he is constantly parroting everything that he hears, and because he is neurotypical, that is going to happen eventually) to the point where complete strangers could understand him easily.

But these are all maybes in a world where a preschool demands a non-refundable admissions fee with your application.  And then that you start paying tuition in July for classes that start in September.

And did I mention that we are having a baby in March?

So, the Webmaster and I had a long talk about it the night before the admissions period started.  And we decided that we would keep Rerun out of preschool for the 2013-2014 school year.  He’s a bright little cheeseball and he’s already got the entire alphabet down and can almost count to 20 on his own.  He’s learning shapes and his fine-motor control is fantastic.  He can already write the letters W, M, O, Q, T and I.  He’s not asking to go to school, like his big sister.  He’s not needing to be in school, like his big brother.  He is perfectly happy here at home, being an almost-three-year-old.

Next year, we will make plans to send him to preschool, especially since we know that because of his March birthday, he will be starting kindergarten as a five and a half year old.  So next year, we will decide if we send him to Ane’s old preschool (for three days a week) or to Tad’s old preschool (for four days a week, and where he would be a peer model in a special education class).

But that’s next year.  The cheeseball can age for another year here at home.

2 Responses to “No School For You!”

  1. Ressis
    January 21st, 2013 18:12
    1

    Well, cheese is better once it has aged.

  2. Nana
    January 22nd, 2013 08:30
    2

    This blog should be framed or put into their baby books because of the pictures alone. It also tells how much love went into deciding when each one was going to start school. They are blessed, and so in turn are we.