And so it begins...

Transitions, I keep telling myself, are a normal part of life. I have had many thus far and have survived them all. I've transitioned from city to city and school to school as my family moved during my childhood, from high school to college, from college to grad school and then into the working world. After several years in the "real" world, I made another transition when I realized I wanted to go to work everyday and SEE the impact I was having right in front me. I went back to grad school and emerged into my new life as a special education teacher. I've also transitioned from single, to dating, to married and to parent. None of these transitions have been without setbacks, but all have been full of rewards that made them more than worth the effort.

On Monday at noon, I will be making my newest transition. This will be the first in a long time that I did not actively seek and which would not have been my choice. It is also a strange convergence with a choice I did make 10 years ago when I switched careers. In a meeting at the school where I am the Special Education Coordinator and which my two oldest sons attend, I will move from the teacher side of the table to the parent side and help to draft my son's first IEP.

I would like to say that my years in the SPED world have made this transition easier and I'm sure it has in some ways. I understand all the terminology coming at me in a non-stop stream, which makes it less overwhelming. I also know how hard the teachers at our school work to help every child achieve, which gives me comfort. But on a basic level it makes no difference at all. This is the child that I gave birth to and rocked to sleep and have taken care of when he was sick. Every parent reaches a point where there is something for their kids that they can't fix with a bandaid and a kiss, but it should not come this early.

Is it a surprise? Probably not. C.J. was different from birth, harder to manage and a constant challenge to our parenting skills. We sought help when he was two, looking for new strateigies to use with him and that helped. For the last two years, we've been living in the "maybe he'll grow out it" world. We've celebrated every milestone that seemed to indicate a change for the better and worked harder on areas where he didn't seem to be making progress. When things spiraled at school this year, we made behavior plans and talked to his teachers about ways to help him cope in an room with 17 other Pre-K4 students. When things came to a head with incidents that could not be written off to 4 yo high spirits, we signed the consent form thinking that more information and strategies could only be a good thing.

Over the next few weeks, we prepared ourselves for conversations about behavior modification and a recommendation for further testing when he is 6 if there was no significant improvement. We did not, and I think could not have, prepared ourselves for the report that came to us showing a 40 point gap in his IQ subtest scores or the label of Nonverbal Learning Disorder that came with it. The high probability of ADHD and recommendation for a neurological evaluation was less surprising but still not easy to hear.

Is this the end of the world? Definitely not. He is young and testing on children under 6 is by its very nature imprecise, I believe, because they are still developing in so many ways. This gives us a snapshot of where he is now but is not determinative of where he will be in 2 years, when I will insist he is completely reevaluated. It doesn't define him for us or take away all the wonderful things that make him who he is and it will never negate the joy I feel watching him sing and dance around the house with his brothers or the comfort of having him snuggle into my lap for some love.

It does give us insight into why he acts the way he does and gives us and his school a whole new set of strategies to put in place to help him now, which can never be a bad thing.

Transitions, I keep telling myself, are a natural part of life. That they occur is not significant, but how we respond to them is. On Monday at noon, I will become the parent of a student with an IEP. But I have always been and will always be the mother of a wonderful little boy first.