Progress

After talking to the Special Education teacher who will (and has been) working with Ryan at school, I'm a little less confused. She's actually a good friend of mine that lives down the street and Ryan adores her, so that works in our favor. She explained to me that Ryan's test scores aren't really as low as we were led to believe.

While there may be a learning disability, it's hard to know for sure, since he was already 5 years old when we figured out that he had hearing loss. There are other factors in play here such as 5 years of catching up on hearing that he missed out on before getting his hearing aids. Then there is the delay at the beginning of the school year of getting the proper fitting FM System so that he could hear his teacher talk into a microphone that goes straight to his hearing aids, which may be why he fell behind in the first place.

The problem with all of the testing that they did on him is that they are standard tests that they use on every child that is struggling. They don't take into account that he has hearing loss. The same is true when they do these tests on a child with autism. I have a hard time understanding why they would use the same tests on both kids.

Regardless, I have a lot of faith in Ryan's Special Education teacher. She has goals set for him and high expectations, too. She's said that Ryan has made great progress since she's started working with him and that he should continue to be able to catch up.

Someday, when he's a doctor or a lawyer we're going to look back and shake our heads. We probably still won't fully understand it then. I'm just thankful that we live in such a great school district.