Hey all. Thanks so much for reading! I took a break to talk about feelings last week. I hope we all agree that it truly is okay to feel. It's human nature. But I do have to get back to my story.....
We were last at Jump Start and excited about JB's first word....butterfly......but at age 3, students must leave this wonderful preschool. At 3, students enter the world of the school district. I was initially very scared of this change. Would he be cared for the way he was cared for at Jump Start? But, the district came to my home to learn about JB and eventually his teacher came. This was important to me. It made me feel like they wanted to know JB.
During this time, we were also finally getting ABA set in place. ABA is such a different animal. After testing, they determined that JB needed 25 hours of therapy. This meant 12 hours of preschool and 25 more hours for therapy. That's 37 hours a week of work for a 3 year old child. I get early intervention, but I also know that kids need to be kids. Because we didn't know any better, we went with it. You want the best for your kid. And you believe what you are told. So JB went to school from 8:30-12:00, then had therapy from 3:00 to 7:00. It once again left us with a crazy schedule.
I took JB to the bus, my hubby picked him up from school and took him to daycare on his lunch break. He had to be off by 2:30 to get JB home for therapy. I came home from my job as fast as I could so my man could go back to work.....that's when therapy took place. It was insane. Too insane. My husband and I got to a point where we really didn't know if we were coming or going!
This schedule went on for 2 years and eventually really cost my husband his job. They couldn't work with our schedule anymore.....so, we spent 7 months on unemployment. That's a whole different animal and story in itself. One I will share when the time comes. But for now it's about JB, so I will get back to that.
Between school and ABA, JB was struggling. We were struggling to have a family life. We started questioning things and asking when JB was going to be allowed to be a kid. We knew therapy was important. We knew we were seeing great changes....but at what cost? We were asking a 3-4 year old to "work" really for almost 40 hours a week. Once my husband lost his job, we really started thinking about what was happening. For our family to survive, we had to take charge. It's so easy to let the ABA tell you what to do because you don't know. But, they work for us. Not the other way around. It was then that we made a choice.....to cut hours.
I would like to say that I am happy this happened. I am to some extent but....every year there was something more. The question of how to get JB where he needs to be. That question of schedule still came up. I thought that when Kindergarten came around, all would get easier. It only posed new questions and yes, new problems.
A story for another day.....
TTFN
Martha
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