Not the End of the World

Should you not want to listen to me wax neurotic, you may want to skip this particular post.

Today we got back the speech and hearing evaluation results from Zane’s preschool, and they weren’t pretty. I know that those of you who read SRH’s blog already know this, but I take a longer time processing emotionally upsetting information about my child and since he’s my kid, too, I’m going to go ahead and be redundant. (Plus, for those of you who know us well, you are aware that our accounts will be dissimilar enough to make you wonder whether we even live in the same state, let alone raise the same child.)

Last week at Zane’s parent-teacher conference, the teachers were, well I think the only appropriate word to use would be, relieved that we were planning to get Zane evaluated when the local speech and hearing center came to the preschool to do screenings. Fine. We’re good parents. We figured it was a great opportunity to get it done, and Zane is definitely not as speechy/full of speech/talkified as other kids.

So, we got the screening results back today and Zane got a “does not pass” for the speech component. And I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that when I looked at all the checkmarks in the “no” or “cannot do” column, I kind of wanted to vomit. It’s one thing to think your kid is a late talker, and another to see the hash marks and chicken scratch that a complete stranger wrote up about your kid’s inability to use personal pronouns or complete sentences.

Then, I got to hear from Zane’s teacher how he freaked out so badly during the hearing test that they weren’t able to complete it. (The very evil part of me wanted to say, Well of course he freaked out. You all were clearly judging him and determining that he came up short. But really, that’s not fair. His teachers are delightful).

Apparently, as soon as she started taking out the testing equipment, Zane became very afraid and started crying. The teacher said that she just wasn’t willing to have him go through the test. (See, they are delightful, just bearers of bad news).

But, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this is a traumatic response from his multiple trips to the ER and doctor’s visits. Almost a year after being taken by squad to the hospital from his doctor’s office, Zane still gets scared of sirens and makes sure that those sirens aren’t “for him”. It’s quite heartbreaking, actually, but I try not to dwell on it over much because we probably have many more hospital visits in his future, and we’re all just going to get through them the best that we can.

But hearing how scared he was without one of us there is kind of like taking a fist to the throat.

(I say this as if I know. For the record, I have never personally experienced a fist to the throat, a punch in the gut, a kick in the teeth or any of the other descriptive phrases for violence that people use.)

I evidenced none of this at the preschool, however. I got in my car and went on to work – where I promptly forgot my first appointment (a scheduled conference call) of the morning. They called me 15 min. after it started to see what had happened to me. So, yeah, that also felt great.

So as not to belabor my point, the outcome is that Zane has speech and maybe hearing issues. But we won’t have the specifics until we get further evaluation. Fortunately, my mother is the CFO at the local speech and hearing center so we were able to get the screening notes translated, and Zane will probably be able to be seen pretty quickly.

(As another aside, if you are going to fail a kid on a test, please use legible handwriting in your notes for the parents. It’s very helpful.)

So I’m pretty bummed out and just feeling so guilty. I really can’t figure out a way around the guilt on this one. If he has hearing issues, it could be fluid in his ears – which could very well be allergy related and so I feel as if I haven’t been vigilant enough with watching his reactions. Even if these theoretical hearing issues are not allergy related, well, I still managed to miss them for his first three years of life.

If hearing issues aren’t affecting his speech, he’ll need speech therapy - yet another series of appointments that Zane will have to go to which will be no fun for him. So there’s more guilt there.

And to top it all off, when I got to the bottom of the screening write-up, I realized that Zane’s race had been marked as Caucasian – which he is, of course, but he’s also Black. And if I have to feel this amount of guilt, my genetic heritage better be recognized.