Moving to MetroWest with a Special Needs Child: What I Wish I'd Known by Teri Adler
I remember as a young mom wondering what Allie’s future would hold. We knew she had an intellectual disability and while they used the word “delay” when she was younger, catching up completely wasn’t going to happen. Her testing results were so low, one doctor told us to expect a group home setting when she was older and didn’t give us much hope for anything beyond that. Allie was seven years old at the time and I was pregnant with my third daughter. My husband and I felt a sense of hopelessness.
I will start where perhaps this blog should end. What did that doctor know? At 23 Allie is a thriving young woman who has worked as a bagger at Stop and Shop for five years and also works part time as a teaching assistant with preschoolers, which is her dream job! She is incredibly savvy socially and can navigate the community freely. She has great friends, a boyfriend and is more organized than any of my other kids! She keeps me in line with my schedule and if I lose anything in the house, you can be sure she is the one to find it . So don’t let anyone predict your child’s future. Allie and all her friends have excelled way beyond any of our expectations.
Things really started to come together in middle school. Maturity helps so much and the program at Wellesley Middle School was incredible. We were scared leaving the cocoon of Sprague Elementary School in Wellesley, but boy were we wrong. The middle school ISS Program taught our kids confidence, camaraderie and offered a very holistic approach to teaching. The kids as a group attended dances, sports events, sang in the chorus and had parts in the school plays. The Best Buddies program matched them with typical buddies who became friends at school and sometime out of school too. The teachers, loved our kids and it showed. At Back to School nights we had a home in Liz Egan’s classroom and it felt so natural and inclusive. To this days Liz is one of the best teachers any of my kids have had. She is a part of our family and we are grateful to her for her teaching and the love that she gives all her students. The growth we saw in middle school was truly amazing and I credit the teachers and staff there for a large part of it.
Come high school ,special needs kids tend to take different paths. Some of Allie’s peers stayed at the Wellesley. High School where the learning continued. For Allie, who is a strong personality and likes to carve her own path, an out of district placement was best. We worked with the town to create the program that worked for her. It wasn’t always easy but we did it. Allie attended both the ACCEPT and LAB Programs. Both are semi-public programs paid for by the surrounding towns so she was in classrooms with students from many different areas. Wellesley provided a bus that would take here there and back.
Some students in high school decided to attend private programs- many times paid for by the parents, and sometimes paid for by the town. Riverview School on Cape Cod is for those with different learning styles and we always hoped Allie would go there. It never worked out, but we were always very impressed with it.
If your IEP stipulates it, the town will support your child’s learning until the day they turn 22. Once they are 22 they are on their own with the help of the state. There are programs in place to help with that. That is where we are. Allie is an adult now and through the state and local organizations we continue to craft supports for her so that she can lead her best life, and we can too.
As we reflect on the first 22 years of her life, it was a huge success. It certainly wasn’t easy and caring for her will always be something we do. But she gained great wisdom through the Wellesley public schools and beyond. I was able to compare her with kids who came from other parts of the state, and her knowledge, maturity and confident was far beyond many of her peers, through her life experiences in Wellesley. Now onto the next chapter….
I am a real estate agent and help many families relocate to the suburbs west of Boston. Please reach out if I can help in any way.
