Can you believe, this time next year, Hope will be in kindy?!?!? It’s still just under a year away but just this past fortnight I’ve put together all the paperwork and everything needed to start her enrolment.

One question that we often get asked when it comes to Hope and schooling is, “Will she go to a special school?” We have decided to send Hope to the same school as her brothers. When deciding on a school for Lincoln, we already had Hope in mind. We asked the questions back then and decided that this school was the right choice for her.

When enrolling a child into school, there is so much to fill out and send into the school. When enrolling a child with Down syndrome, or another disability, there’s just that little bit more. It’s not as much of a straight forward process. Firstly, there are extra questions to fill in about Hope’s diagnosis. Then, we have to send in all of her latest reports from her therapists. And then it’s off to the school.

The school now has the bigger, and I imagine more difficult, process of going through all those reports and starting to determine how much supports will be needed and get everything happening in order to be ready for when Hope starts school. When I handed in my enrolments forms just recently, I was told, we were the first ones in, but it’s not something we could delay. If we want to ensure Hope gets all of the support she needs from the beginning, we need to give school enough time to get it sorted. Imagine if we left it until term 3 and then didn’t have everything we needed when Hope started. It could be 6 months of struggles that could have been avoided.

So what now…? I don’t really know to be honest. We will meet with the school to have a meeting with the principal, which happens for all kids who are enrolling, and then we wait. The school will do what they need to do, they will reach out to the therapists, they will work with them and us to determine Hope’s needs for next year and look at whether any type of specific equipment or changes in the classroom will be needed. At home, we start other preparations. We start to get Hope ready to make the change from daycare to big school. It’s full steam ahead this year for Hope so she can be as prepared as possible but that’s a blog for another day.