I want to apologize for the gap in posts. It’s been a very busy few weeks.
Bella recently had a very important evaluation done where they determined that she’s making minimal progress with the classes that’s she’s taking right now. It was rather heartbreaking to hear it, but a part of me already expected it. Due to some of her behavior in the class room (climbing, running and escaping the room) they’ve decided that she needs a one-on-one aide. Also, because she’ll be turning three before the end of the school year, she’ll also be transitioning to the 3-5 program.
This is where the catch 22’s come into play. In order to get her into these programs, she needs an official diagnosis. She has a preliminary one right now, and Kirsch is the only place that can give children like Bella a diagnosis. Unfortunately, in order to get into to the Kirsch Center to get that diagnosis, she needs to be registered for those specific programs. So… we had to figure out what to do here.
The only other option we had is to get her registered for disability. If she’s on disability, she automatically qualifies for those programs which will make it possible to get her into the Kirsch Center to get her diagnosis. The official diagnosis will also make it easier to get her enrolled in some extra classes and programs that will help her greatly.
So, the last few weeks, we’ve been scrambling about, collecting paperwork, signatures, evaluations, letters from her speech therapist, teacher and doctors… all in an attempt to get all of this done as quickly as possible.
We’ve got our appointment for SSI and as soon as the paperwork gets sent back to Kirsch, they’ll call us for an appointment.
It’s a long, stressful process and it’s barely just beginning. It doesn’t help that our property managers are giving us a hard time about the few things we’ve requested… which by state law, they aren’t supposed to be able to reject. It just involves a lot of paperwork (that they don’t seem to want to deal with). We are really considering moving, but that’s just another long, stressful process that we’re not really in the mood to deal with at the moment.
I have no issues being a loud-mouthed, unmovable advocate for my child… I’ll fight for the things she needs until I’m blue in the face… I just wish that those I’m up against would be a little more understanding so I didn’t have to advocate so much.
Bella loves going to school, and her teachers and therapist are trying to make sure she stays in the same classes when they redo her schedule. I love that they care so much!
