Growing up as someone with a disability, even an unknown one, gave me a different perspective on things. Kids are mean. You get teased and made fun of even without having a disability, so as you know kids with a visible disability probably have it worse. I lost almost every single friend I had in fifth grade because of mine.
My son turned four this past September. He wanted so badly to be like his sister and go to school. I started searching out preschools for him (something new for me since my daughter didn’t attend it) and found that I just couldn’t afford it! I looked into state funded preschool and discovered I made too much a month. Defeated, I decided to buy some preschool material and do it myself just like I did with my daughter.
Then, I got a phone call from the school district my daughter attends asking me to reapply because they changed the requirements. I did and guess what, I still made *just* a little too much. The preschool office told me they had another program, but it wasn’t for just anyone. I asked about income and they said that this particular program didn’t have a requirement because it’s different and asked if I would be interested in it. I figured preschool was preschool right? They asked if my son was special needs or not. How well he talked, climbed, played, etc. They needed to make sure he would fit into the program. As I described my almost 4 year old, the lady on the phone told me she thought he would be perfect. When I went to fill out all the paperwork, she actually got to meet him. She said she was glad that I brought him with me because she got to see him play and how well he could talk. She said that he was exactly what they were looking for, for this program. He was a “normal” child with whom other children could learn from.
That’s when she introduced me to the Preschool Inclusion Program and honestly, I love it. I think it’s got to be one of the best ideas they could have come up with.
The preschool inclusion program is where children with and without special needs come together in the same classroom to learn, play and interact. All students are in regular classrooms, learning together. Growing up for me, it was unusual to see children with special needs or disabilities within a regular classroom environment. You would occasionally see some special needs children in a group all of their own, but never intermingled with the rest of the school. The inclusion program steps in to stop this.
My son, classified “without” is in a class with several different special needs children. The one who stands out the most is his friend “G”. G is a blind child. My son comes home and loves to talk about his friend. He tells us about his cool goggles and that he reads with his fingers. I asked him what that is called and he said, “Braille”. They had someone from the Braille Institute come out and teach them all what braille was and how it was used. They showed each child what their name was and let them feel it. I didn’t know the culture or anything like that growing up and neither did my 8 year old daughter.
He told us that recently, G got a cane to walk with and sometimes he likes to put it behind his back, but “that’s not how he’s supposed to use it.” He said that he and G like to play in the play house together and sometimes G shuts him inside, but “it’s okay!”
Just last week, my son came home telling me he has some new friends in his class. I asked to find out what their names were and he told me about “K”. K is deaf. K sits at a table near him and he says he really enjoys playing with him. I asked him how K communicated and he told me with his hands. My son then attempted to “talk” with his hands being all sorts of silly.
I absolutely love getting home from work and asking my son how his day was and how all his friends are doing. He loves to tell his stories and he gets very excited for Fridays, which is apparently their “Dance Party” days. My mom, who drops him off most days tell me that when he gets to the classroom every day, all the kids are so excited to see him and call his name over and over again trying to get his attention. It gives me peace to know he’s in a class where he’s comfortable and happy. It gives me happiness to know that he’s making friends and to him, they are all the same. They are his friends.
