Many days, I wish I could just insert myself into Danny’s head and hear what he hears, understand what he understands. It would sure clear up a lot of the grey areas as far as knowing how well his cochlear implants are working, and how well his brain is working. We have no reason to think that the calcification on his brain is wreaking havoc, but at the same time, every little quirk of his is accompanied by a little voice whispering that maybe it’s not a stage, something he’ll grow out of…

He pulled another trick out of his hat this morning on me. They’ve moved drop off at daycare to a room with a little piece of play equipment in it, one with 3 or 4 stairs on one side and a drop on the other than is just high enough to let Danny climb up and down. He loves it. Today, he was doing his usual drop-off routine: he got into the room, looked around, decided it wasn’t where he wanted to be, and tried to slip past me and out the door. Master of distraction that I am, I started to prime him for the mother of all redirects.

“Hey, Danny, where are the stairs? Let’s go-”

I stopped then as he gave a huge smile, spun away from me, and booked it the entire length of the room to start climbing the stairs. I was so flabberghasted I just stared for a moment, then turned to the teachers with an amazed, “I didn’t expect that to work…”

With all of his receptive language and understanding lately, I’ve done a gut check lately. When Danny turned 2, we requested that he not move immediately over to the 2′s room. After all, he was only at a listening age of 13 months, and his comprehension was pretty low still. It’s expanding at a decent rate, and he’s made a lot of social progress as well as far as being part of the class and interacting with his peers, but honestly I don’t think he’s ready to make the jump still. His class has a lot of older toddlers, 18-24 months, and while Danny is definitely the oldest he’s not the most advanced. Lots of them will say “hi” and “bye” to me, they wave for greetings, they just seem to have more daily living skills.

I think it’s the best fit for him to be with kids that are at his mental level rather than his physical age, and the best benefit to him to be in a classroom where his peers have language skills just slightly more advanced than his. At the end of my gut check, I compared him to Eric…not in a negative way, but more of a situational comparison. Eric is a smart kid. There’s no doubt that he’s going to do awesome things when he reaches Kindergarten, and he will totally thrive in that environment. But, for as smart and quick as he is, I wouldn’t drop him into Kindergarten today, when his coping skills and language skills and comprehension skills are that of a not-quite-4 year old. He might be able to make it through, with a little extra help from the teachers, but it wouldn’t be the right fit.

As great as Danny is doing, he is still a developmentally delayed child. A few years ago, a manager of mine shared with me her philosophy for her direct reports: “Put people in positions where they can succeed.” (I’m sure it was worded better than that, but that’s the general idea!) I see it the same with my boys: I want to challenge them so they are always growing and learning, but I don’t want to make it a titanic struggle, don’t want to make it impossible.

Now, that doesn’t mean I don’t doubt it at times. Maybe if he was around more advanced peers, it would motivate him to keep up. Maybe if there was a general expectation of understanding and speech in the room, he would understand and speak. Maybe we made the wrong call in March, or maybe now is the time to move Danny up – except Danny will be leaving that school in a couple months, and I’m not sure it’s best for him now to transition to a new room, just to turn around and do it again.

Ahhhhh!

Who stole the instruction manual to this child, and how can I get it back?