Launching into Kindergarten

We recently had Hudson’s yearly CPSE (Committee of Preschool Special Education) meeting. This is a meeting where all his therapists, teachers, parents and Director of Special Education all get together and discuss his progress. I always dread this meeting, which is silly because Matt and I had just met with his therapists a few weeks prior to discuss what would be said. However, it’s not exactly easy to listen to a group of people discuss where your child is struggling, either.

This meeting was also different because Hudson is going to Kindergarten next year. He will transition from CPSE TO CSE (Committee of Special Education) which also means losing all his therapists that he’s had for years and getting all new ones. Next year he will now see the therapists who are employed by the school. The school Occupational therapist, Speech therapist and Psychologist all had to evaluate Hudson individually to see where they believed he should be for Kindergarten and what services he would need. While I work with all of these people (and they assured me he did great when I saw them in passing) I was still nervous they would find something in their evaluations that we were unaware of and bring it up in his meeting. Honestly - with all of these evaluations and tests - it was bringing me back to when he was officially diagnosed, which isn’t exactly my warmest memory.

However that didn’t happen. In fact, everyone had nothing but positive things to say about Hudson. They told Matt and I how "fun he was to work with" and "how smart he is." They did discuss how his gross and fine motor movements set him back, and how he needed more work in OT and PT, but Matt and I were aware of that and we felt prepared to hear those things.

We knew he would need to continue most of his therapies, but one was in limbo that we were unsure of; Speech. We know he has a great vocabulary and that he has been hitting all his speech goals, but his pragmatic skills still need help. So we were eager to hear the Speech therapist’s thoughts on where he stood. She started in and told us how much she "loved working with Hudson for the hour she evaluated him" and that he had earned a game to play with her.

Then she read her report.

Hudson had placed in the 97th percentile and she said was "one of the highest kids she had ever tested." In her tests it had been found that he was testing at a 6 year old’s level in sentence comprehension and an 8 year 11 month year old's level for word structure.

These results brought tears to my eyes. It felt like we had come full circle. If you know our story, it all started with Speech. Hudson only had a handful of words at 18 months and then lost them all at 20 months, which prompted us to get him evaluated by Early Intervention. From there, his SE-IT (Special Education therapist) suggested we test him for Autism. I remember crying at his test after they had told us his diagnosis, asking the doctors if he would lose all the speech he had gained, only for them to say “I don’t know.”

As you can imagine this feels like a huge victory for us! It’s not bragging because I know we have a lot of work to do but I’m so incredibly proud of Hudson. He has been putting in the work since he was 21 months old and it is paying off. He is the hardest working 5-year old I know!

I’m also so incredibly grateful for every single therapist he’s had as they have all had a hand in this. I’m grateful for my best friend suggesting Early Intervention and my husband for constantly trying to come up with new “games” for Hudson to play to help with his speech.

This journey certainly hasn’t been easy but it’s moments like this where you know it’s worth it and what we’re doing is making a difference.

And just like that, Hudson is launching into Kindergarten!