A 60-Day Timeline

“It’s a process,” the woman on the phone admitted.  “But we walk you through it.”

I had finally reached the expert in question, the woman in charge of preschool assessments for special education services, after listening to the lengthy directory on the main line of the San Francisco Unified School District and calling three of the numbers I thought might be the right fit — Assessment and Intervention, Special Education, and Other Assessment.

I am not dealing with the City by choice.

There are very good public schools in San Francisco.  A few.  They are spread throughout the City, not tied to a residential address, and they require a lot of lobbying and lottery-entering and commuting across town and going in person to the SFUSD to advocate if you want to get your kid enrolled.  It is a system that demands reform, but I am not the one to reform it.  Not now, at least.  So my kids go to private school, and there they will stay.

My son’s teachers at the new Pre-K are wonderful, sensitive, and realistic.  They have not saddled us (or him) with crazy expectations around Number 2 pencils.  But they have noticed that he is…resistant when it comes to certain fine-motor benchmarks.  Like coloring.  Or writing.  Or painting.  Or cutting with scissors.  It was recommended at our winter parent-teacher conference that we explore occupational therapy, or OT.

I called my pediatrician.  “At his age, we tend to feel like the school should really be the one working with him,” she explained.  “You really need to advocate for yourself on this one and ask a lot of questions.  It’s a very expensive industry and schools tend to be a little quick to prescribe it, in my opinion.  I can give you some referrals but it won’t be covered by insurance.”

I called a woman I once worked with, whose middle-school-aged son has been in OT his whole life and has a team of tutors and therapists who meet with him weekly.  “We went private when he was little.  Then we just couldn’t afford it anymore.  So now that he’s older we’re going through the City.  I know it’s not as good.”

I called a private therapist.  “We start with a mandatory 2-hour assessment; the kids see it as playtime.  Then we  meet with the parents to determine a course of therapy and then we meet weekly for an hour with the student.”
“Okay, that sounds reasonable,” I said.  “Can you just tell me what I’m looking at, ballpark, in terms of cost?”
“The assessment is $700.”
I felt the air leave my lungs.
“Then each session is $120.”

And so it is that I find myself attempting to navigate the labyrinthine SFUSD website in search of a service which may or may not be of questionable quality (and may or may not be necessary).  And all the while I am grappling with the thought that my brilliant, verbal, intense, sensitive offspring may, in fact, have “special educational needs”.  Or, of course, he may not.

There is a 60-day timeline on the SFUSD assessment.  A packet is allegedly winging its way to me as we write, and then we will fill out the paperwork and mail it back to them.  It will take 15 days for the Assessment department to review our application for assistance, after which they allow 45 days to schedule the first of two appointments: an assessment, followed by a meeting with the parents to review the results.

LittleMan will hate the assessment.  Let us recall that he is only 4.5 years old.  He does not warm quickly to adult strangers (nor should he, I suppose!) and he does not warm quickly to activities involving pen and paper (besides mazes — he loves mazes).  I will hate the assessment, too; hate the fact that my barely-not-a-toddler-anymore is being evaluated.  Evaluated. According to whose standards?  I want to shout.  And then what?  And for how long?  And what stigma will be attached?  And how much will he understand, besides that Mommy makes him go practice writing while other kids get to play Legos and ride scooters and go swimming?

How important is this, really?

Coupled with this anxiety is the response of the outsider: introduce the word “therapy” and people get all strange.  “But he’s so smart!” is a common response.  As if the OT recommendation somehow negates LittleMan’s intelligence, overrides his magnificent vocabulary, sense of humor, and keen observational skills.

To which I say: Show me a child, and I’ll show you a curveball.

This is new territory.  And, like all things unplanned and unforeseen on this parenting journey, it’s scaring me a little…even though it shouldn’t.  But for all the times I have doubted myself as a mother (and they are many, too many to count), sometimes I feel like the most ferocious mamma on earth.  The self-righteous lump that threatens to strangle me when I think that anyone is going to judge my child.  The visceral need to do right by him.

The confusion about what, exactly, that means.

I guess I’ll know in 60 days.