Kindergarten frustrations

I don't normally complain about the girls' teachers (because for the most part they have always been really great), but I have a bee in my bonnet right now about something Emma's teacher did.

Last fall during conferences it was mentioned that Emma had a slight "speech delay" issue - she has trouble pronouncing "r" (it often comes out as wun instead of run), "th", "l" (if it's in the middle of the word "Owivia" instead of "Olivia"), and a few others. All are minor issues in my book. We know all about speech delays and speech therapy after having dealt with Olivia's very serious delay at age 3 - followed by three years of speech therapy.

So when the teacher mentioned Emma's "issues" we acknowledged their existence and we've been working with her since then. There was never any mention of speech therapy, but if we felt it was necessary we would certainly go down that road again.

And then there was yesterday.

I received a phone call from the teacher letting me know that she was still noticing the issues with Emma's speech and she felt they weren't getting better and so she decided to send Emma to the school's speech therapist for evaluation. (What she failed to mention was that this all occurred last week!) Oh, and the speech therapist agreed that Emma was having a few issues with certain sounds but she wasn't going to do any other intervention right now.

And the only reason the teacher called to tell me this? Because a letter from the speech therapist was sent home with Emma yesterday, detailing her trouble spots and letting us know that they would be re-evaluting her at the end of the school year. Oh and if they think there are still issues present they'll recommend speech therapy.

Hold. The. Phone.

You sent MY CHILD to the school speech therapist LAST WEEK without asking me if that was OK? You did this without asking if we were comfortable with our child meeting a speech therapist that we didn't know? And you made this decision without consulting with us first to let us know that you, as the teacher, felt there was an ongoing speech issue?

I am not OK with this. In fact, I am pretty pissed off. I'm not angry about the fact that the teacher was trying to help Emma, but I'm angry that she did all of this without asking us first. As I said, I have nothing against speech therapy - I know it works wonders. But to just take this action without letting us know BEFORE THE FACT and then waiting SEVEN DAYS to tell us? That is ridiculous.

This isn't the first time something like this has happened at the school. Last year Olivia's teacher evaluated her reading levels and then sent her to reading intervention without letting us know what was going on. Oh sure, we received a letter after the intervention program started letting us know that Olivia needed some help. But once again it was done after the fact.

Yes, I want my kids to receive the best education they can - and if they need help, by all means please provide them with that help. But don't make decisions for my child - like sending them for speech evaluation - without letting me know BEFORE it happens. That is not OK.