Parenting is terrifying, utterly terrifying. When I was pregnant with Little Man, I spent 9 months thinking that I couldn't wait for him to be born so I could stop worrying. Then the second he was in my arms I was wishing I could put him back in because as scary as pregnancy was, he was so much safer tucked away and cushioned from the world. There are so many things that we just can't control for our children and for a self-professed control freak like myself, that presents many problems. It doesn't matter how much we keep them in safety helmets, the top-notch car seats or sequestered from any other child that has the sniffles they will still get sick, fall off their bikes and chances are will at some point end up in the ER taking years off of your life. Since we can't control these things, we end up controlling things that really don't matter in the grand scheme of life like preschool and tv limits and junk food consumption. And then we second guess all of those areas and the blame rains down. If I had chosen a different preschool maybe, if I hadn't let him eat all of that high fructose corn syrup.... The what-if's are terrifying and full of guilt. I have spent a lot of time wondering if Peanut hadn't been premature, the surviving twin in a vanishing twin pregnancy, if I had been able to keep pre-natal vitamins down or eaten more or less of something rich in vitamins would he still have Apraxia. Parenting is terrifying.
But once in a while you find a battle that you can fight, an area that you can control that really matters and when you get there as terrified as you might be, you fight. You fight with everything that you have and arm yourself with every weapon available to you. That is what this IEP process has been for me. Today I won a small battle but I know that there is a lot more to come. Peanut turns 3 next month and when he does, we lose our amazing and wonderful speech therapist that has taught us so much. For 2 months I have been fighting to get the right goals set for him and the right level of service. Today the goals are set, they are good goals. They are motoric and written by the head of speech therapy. But the level of service is still a battle that I am not finished with. He is being offered 4 hours a month of speech therapy at a school near us and it may or may not be 1:1. He needs 1:1, he needs more than 4 hours a month, he needs at least three 30 minute sessions a week and he needs extended year services. I will get it for him and I won't stop until I do. Because parenting is utterly terrifying, but I got this. This is can do. And I will.
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