My Son and Fairfax County Special Ed Preschool

 Yesterday I briefly explained how the Special Ed. preschool program in Fairfax County works. The propose school budget wants to radically cut back on this essential program.

Today I will share how this program has helped so much my son.

My son has apraxia of speech, a neurological disorder. The problem is that the brain signals don't reach the muscles in his mouth to make sounds. This is similar to what people who have strokes and lose their ability to speak have. Our child didn't have a stroke, though. The doctors can't figure out how he got this condition.

My son got the diagnosis last year. Before that, we didn't know what was wrong with him. He wasn't speaking. He wasn't looking at us in the eyes. He wasn't making many babbling noises the way my daughter did when she was his age.

His expression was lifeless. He looked gone or lost. My wife worried because she knows so many mothers whose children have autism.  He certainly displayed many autistic behaviors, although several other behaviors seemed at odds with the condition. In any case, we felt like we were losing our kids little by little.

He wouldn't react to our voices. He wouldn't turn when we called his name.  

He wouldn't respond to loud noises. I was in the Mall during Roaring Thunder with him, and he didn't turn at all when the bikes went by. He wouldn't react to sirens on firetrucks.  He would put his ear next to the vacuum cleaner. My daughter would cry when I vacuumed. There was something wrong.

My wife took him to a series of specialist. He got a series of early misdiagnoses. At one point some believed that he may have autism. At another, they believed that he could be deaf. All of this was ruled out. For a while they just called him a puzzle case, since he didn't fall under any specific illness criteria.

The specialists finally reached the conclusion that he had apraxia of speech. The outcome is good if my son would get a lot of therapy at an early age. Because he is so young, he could gain a lot from therapy.

Also, because he is so young, the lack of proper treatment could have a big negative impact in his mental abilities because so much of our intelligence is tied up with language.

Local and state early intervention specialists recommended that we should apply to our local Fairfax County Special Ed preschool program. My wife did so. After several screenings, they accepted my son to start the program in October of last year.

After a few months of going to special ed. preschool, he improved a lot . My son began to make more sounds. He began to react to his name and to loud noises.

And his gaze change. He would now look at us in the eyes and smile. He looked like he was there. 

He can't talk yet. He can't make /b/ sounds yet.  But he is trying now.

He now uses some basic sentences. It sounds very garbled, but it is an improvement of not making any sounds before, and he is getting a lot better at it with every day.

And we can communicate with him. It seems that he understands everything that we tell him. He makes himself understood through gestures, grunts, short words and phrases. Sometimes he will take our hands and guide it to what he wants us to do, such as tickle his tummy or give him juice.

Before, I would get home and he would be staring at the wall or at some toy and wouldn't acknowledge me. Now, after a few months in the special ed preschool, he turns around, smiles, and runs towards me with hands extended to give me a hug.

It does take a village to raise a child. There have been a lot of people helping us with my son and who made this possible. And a vital component of our village have been the great teachers in the special ed preschool.  

If you live in Fairfax County, please call your district School Board members and the At-Large members and politely ask them to keep the special education preschool funded.

I, and the many parents of special needs children, will be eternally grateful. 

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