Preschool

We visited the preschool Monday morning. It was much bigger than I thought. Everywhere you look there is another building, another play set. We got to see a few classrooms that my son would be in. We saw other children with autism who were functioning pretty normally. Talking and playing. Sitting next to other children. Interacting. I was told many of the children came in to the preschool nonverbal. Most of the children are graduating from that classroom and moving on to another because of their progress. There are four students to one therapist/teacher. There are over 400 children at this school. I found out that half of them have special needs, and the other half are normally developing children. They mix them up to provide learning experiences for the special needs children. The normally developing children are chosen by lottery. They will call to set up an IEP meeting with us soon. August will come and my son will be 3 and going to preschool. I want to hear him talk. I want to hear him call me mommy. I've been easily frustrated lately. I keep on getting overwhelmed by all the things we have to do. I worry about my daughter. I don't know how I could do this with two. It would be so much easier to have a normally developing child. I don't even know what that's like. I don't know what it's like to have a child tell me what they need or want. I don't know what will happen if Angela is a normally developing child. It will be like becoming a parent for the first time again... only skipping over the stuff we've already been through such as first steps. I still have to wait and see. What a way to learn patience. I've never had it. Having a child with autism is the way to learn patience.