When I was 14 months old, I was diagnosed as “developmentally delayed.” A rehabilitation center had a daytime program called infant stimulation and decided I was eligible upon evaluation. They did different activities with me that dealt with speech and articulation (I can vaguely remember my parents working on improving the range of motion in my legs on a daily basis too).
As I progressed to language development, I was surrounded by other children with behavior problems (biting, throwing tantrums) so I would bring that behavior home and do it to my parents or my older brother because I thought that was the appropriate thing to do. To show me that this was unacceptable behavior, my parents would pretend to bite me (I would scream, and eventually stopped the “bad” behavior because I did not want those things to be done to me). It was not all bad though, I learned some positive things like picking up after myself.
About to go to kindergarten, there were people who wanted to put me in a special education class, but my parents refused. They brought people in my defense, to say that I would do fine in a regular classroom setting. I still got services like resource room (mostly helped with math and science) and adaptive physical education since I could not participate in the regular gym activities most of the time.
I'm so thankful that I never had to go to an institution - I can only imagine what those people went through.
- Josh Steffen
No comments:
Post a Comment