Earlier this week Archie got a call from the woman we’re working with in Special Services. She has recommended moving Riley to All-Day Kindergarten.
In essence she’s saying “There’s something going on, she does have issues – but we wont’ give you an IEP or diagnosis yet.”
The reasons were….
1) All-Day Kindergarten is for children that “need more attention.”
2) All-Day Kindergarten would give her more time in the day to evaluate her.
3) All-Day Kindergarten would give Riley more time to adjust to her day and settle in before it’s all over.
4) All-Day Kindergarten has a smaller class size – less chaos, more individualized attention.
All valid points. All reasons to go for it.
But then there’s…
1) All-Day Kindergarten lends toward more chances for Fire/Tornado drills (oh won’t that be fun).
2) All-Day Kindergarten means lunch. Riley can’t handle the chaos of snacktime in a classroom – you think she’s going to handle lunch in a crowded cafeteria?
3) She loses her comfort zones – her teacher and her best friend J.
4) All-Day Kindergarten means all day. Means behaving to the best of her ability all day. Means putting all that effort into being good at school – what unholy hell will we be unleashing upon ourselves by asking her to do this?
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Well, we’re taking that risk.
I’d be lying if I said the thought of All-Day Kindergarten didn’t scare me on a number of levels…
But the thought of them having more time to evaluate her and getting this all out of the way is what’s holding me together. I still am not confident in the school’s ability to get this done – but at this point it’s our only hope. With the changes in insurance, getting her evaluated at the hospital is totally not in our pocketbook’s reach.
(And yes, it totally pisses me off that because of sh*tty insurance we have to rely on the school for Molly’s evaluation and diagnosis…and no, the geneticists diagnosis is NOT enough for us to get the insurance assistance we need. I’ve tried it before. We need one from a psych…thus we are dealing with the school…but that’s a totally different post that I won’t write for many reasons.)
I can see why you’re on pins and needles with this one. If it’s any consolation, our daughter thrived once she got to Kindergarten and hers was an all day program. The structure of it all was really good for her, so even though for your daughter, there will be very stressful times, lunch, etc. once she gets into a rhythm, maybe it’ll work out nicely. And like you said, hopefully they can finally get the IEP and diagnosis in place so you can take advantage of more services for her.