Yeah!! Congrats on your success. I love hearing success stories.
That is so great! I'm really impressed with your son's skills, compared to where my son was at when he started school at age 6.
My son never got early intervention, because he wasn't diagnosed until age 7. He'd often try to escape circle time (mentally or physically), and he needed prompting when talking about his weekend during circle time on Mondays. He couldn't read until age 8-1/2.
I hope all continues to go well for you. Thanks for sharing your success story.
That's promising as Anthony's schedule is what your son's was last year.Well, my son just finished his 5th day of mainstream Kindergarten (no aide) and all is well. I talked with his teacher today to get her first impressions of how things are going and she had only positive things to say. She indicated he's following directions well, is raising his hand to answer questions, is engaged with what's going on, and doesn't "stand out at all" from any of the other kids. In fact, she indicated that in some ways he's doing better than some of them; such as putting items from his cubbie into his backpack at the end of the day. I think she's probably heaving a big sigh of relief at this point as she had no idea at the beginning of the year what type of "spectrum kid" she was getting.
All the teachers did some Kindergarten readiness skill testing earlier this week, and his teacher indicated he did great on it. I felt especially proud when she told me he did really well during his sharing time today. Each kid is assigned one day each week to bring something in from home to talk about. They are to place it in a bag and provide the class with 3 clues about the item. I actually wrote the clues on a card for him, which he read from. She said he used a "big, strong voice, read all his clues, then responded to questions. She was pretty impressed.
So far I feel really good about everything; the school, his teachers, his ST. He's only going in the AM, which gives us plenty of time in the afternoon for fun. I have to say, I really do feel like I'm coming out of the darkness and into the light . Last year was so hard with all his therapies; ABA, two pre-schools (one a public early intervention education program, the other a private NT school), scheduled playdates, private ST. It was such a crazy, busy year. However, I can see that it's paying off in spades now. He's come sooooo far in this past year it's truly amazing.
All to say, I hope this provides those of you who are still in the trenches some encouragement to keep plugging away. Early intervention can make such a huge difference. There is absolutely no way he would have been ready for this without all the intervention he's received the past two years. I would have never guess in a million years at age 3.5 (which is when we started to suspect something) that we would be at this point 2.5 years later. I feel extremely hopeful about his future and am starting to believe he's going to be just fine.