Speech Therapy Begins

Well after much deliberation we've opted to pay for private speech therapy for Grace. She had her first visit from her "special teacher" on Monday. Cammie Hefflin is a licensed therapist and works for Marshfield schools AND goes to our church so I called her up and she agreed to meet with Grace on her own time. The best part is she'll go to First Kids and meet with her there so no travel is involved for Grace and she's in an environment where she's comfortable. Cammie said she did great and was a riot. Well of course! :) I asked Grace about it and asked if Cammie showed her any pictures and she said no. I asked if she talked to her and Grace said, "A LOT!" Pretty funny.

The whole school system thing was not working out to my satisfaction. They wanted her enrolled in their preschool (understandable) but it's only a 3 hour program from 8:30-11:30 am. How was that going to happen? If I was a stay at home Mom or just unemployeed then sure, but not the case for us. They had agreed to allow their resource officer to transport Grace to daycare after the little preschool program was over, but I wasn't too keen on that. Too much possibility for stuff to happen. It made me very uncomfortable. Another problem was I can drop off Grace from 6 am - 6 pm at First Kids but usually get her there around 7:30-7:45. They were going to have the cooks at the school watch her at Niangua for an hour before school started...what? I don't think so. To their credit, they did "try" to come up with a solution, but I'm not leaving my 3 year old in the care of the cooks and the resource officer. Crazy. Of course all that would have been FREE and now it's going to cost about $50 a week for her therapy but I'm thinking that it is money well spent.

I don't know what I'm going to do when she actually starts school in Niangua. They are just now getting a grant for the first time for an afterschool program. They previously haven't had any afterschool care. What are working parents supposed to do? These are problems I had never considered before having a child.

I'm looking forward to seeing some results for Grace because she gets so frustrated when I don't understand what she's saying. This morning she said SOMETHING I could just NOT make out and I asked her two more times and finally she just said, "I'm not talking to you anymore, cause you don't know!" I understood that! I'm sure it won't be fast, but the sooner the better for us all :)