High School Decision

Kai has been attending a public therapeutic school since the middle of his kindergarten year... that is about eight and a half years.

For the last several months, as the end of his middle school days drew nearer, we have been stressing out about where Kai will attend high school.

There is no doubt that Kai has come a long way at his therapeutic school, but it has also been hard to see other kids come and go, returning to their home school while Kai hasn't made enough progress to be considered for a transition. In the last few years, Kai's attitude about school, and himself, has gotten increasingly negative. He hated school, and thought less of himself. He seemed to give up on thinking that he could be anything more than a problem child.

It made us wonder if a change in scenery and a fresh start at a new school would do him good. With the transition to high school coming in the fall, the timing seemed right for a change to a regular school, albeit by spending the majority of time in a special ed classroom.

But it wasn't a decision that we could make on our own; our community's high school would have to agree to accept Kai.

And so we had a series of meetings and emails to discuss the matter. The high school expressed concern about being able to support Kai. But we were heartened that all parties involved, including the special ed representatives of our local high school as well as the staff from Kai's current school were able to be open-minded and were sincerely interested in determining what would be best for Kai.

There was talk about splitting time between the regular school and therapeutic school, or perhaps waiting to transition to the regular high school for another year, but in the end we were very pleased that the decision was made for Kai to attend our local high school full time beginning in the fall.

After eight and a half years, it is a big milestone for us and we are very pleased. My wife was in tears after the last meeting with the school officials where the decision was officially made.

Of course, we were also happy nine years ago when Kai started kindergarten at our neighborhood school. The following photo is from his first day of kindergarten.

That ended up being an extremely stressful time as we got reports from school every day about the difficulties that Kai had before the decision eventually was made to send him to the therapeutic school he's been at ever since.

This time we're going in fully aware that the transition won't be easy. Our community's high school is very large and the hallways are crowded and bustling. We don't know for sure what will happen when he goes there.

But we also think that he is much further along in being able to cope with the challenges he will face. He doesn't have nearly as many meltdowns as before, and he is much more reflective and self-aware than he used to be. And so we do think that he has a realistic chance to succeed, and that this change is just what he needs.

In four months, when Kai starts high school, our stress will start up again. But that is for another day. Today we mark a big milestone with a sigh of relief and joy in our hearts.