School

In our town this past summer they have been busy building a new elementary school. They are almost done, even though school started today, enough of it is done that they are able to hold classes. I have been telling Gabi every time that we drive by, pointing to the school, that it is going to be her school. She has been super excited about it.
We decided not to have Gabi start preschool this year. It's very different here than where I grew up. Preschool costs $, as in a tuition, unless your child qualifies for help (they deem them behind). We didn't even get her screened because we knew we weren't going to do the preschool thing. Well, that is, until Gabi started to stutter. It has been a fairly recent thing, in the last month, but it hasn't gotten any better. She is very aware that she stutters, and often gets very frustrated.
I spoke with a friend of mine from church, who also happens to be a teacher, and she recommended that I bring her in to see the speech therapist to determine what we should do. Yesterday was the pre-screening for the elementary, so I brought her in then. Unfortunately we had just missed the speech therapist, but the girls had a blast exploring the new school. The school is very nice inside and out, and I think we all got a little bit more excited about the prospect of school for our oldest child.
We went again today, and we were able to not only meet the speech therapist, but she took some time to observe Gabi. She recognized that she does stutter, but did say that it wasn't in excess. She stutters at the beginning of sentences, but is able to get out the rest of what she is trying to say stutter-free. Her main concern was that she would get so frustrated with herself and sometimes just stop talking rather than stutter.
Since developmentally Gabi is actually doing really well, she didn't recommend her doing preschool this year. We do need to watch her stuttering, although the she was pretty confident that she would grow out of it.
*Proud mom moment* I have never really put much thought into where Gabi was developmentally, just feeling pretty confident she was keeping up with kids her age, until today. Not only does she know all of her letters and sounds, she is starting to sound out words and is able to identify sounds in words. She know her colors, shapes, and her princesses- along with many other things (her latest facts she loves to share involve dinosaurs- thank you Dinosaur Train!) :) The speech therapist said that most of the kids who are in preschool don't even know their letters or sounds, she would probably be pretty bored. It was nice to hear that, because we really wrestled with the decision of what to do about preschool, not wanting her to get left behind.
So, overall, we are glad that Gabi's speech impediment is not as bad as we originally thought, and we are super glad that we didn't send her to preschool. (Not that it isn't a good program, but she just doesn't need it, and I think I would miss her too much :) )
PS In case you didn't know, the most debilitating thing you can do when a person, especially a child, has a speech impediment is to laugh at them. It's not funny to them, it's frustrating. Please don't laugh. Thanks! :)