My Fantasy World

Today was our visit with CDS to evaluate the twins and to see if there was enough discrepancy between their chronological age and the age-level they are functioning at now. Imagine my surprise when both twins, not just Matthew, failed these screenings. The screenings determined that both boys are from 10 to 18 months behind in the following categories: physical age, self-help age, social age and academic age. Now, the good news is that both boys passed their hearing screening and Charlie, of course, passed the speech and language screening (Matthew did not). We won't know the results of the eye/vision screening for at least two weeks, so we are keeping our fingers crossed on this one. Preemies tend to have more vision problems than full-term babies. So, now what? Well, based on the evaluation today they have determined that both boys need further evaluations in order to determine (1) if they have a disability under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, (2) present levels of performance and educational needs, and (3) if they require special education and related services. Both boys will be scheduled for comprehensive development evaluations and Matthew will require further speech evaluations. From there, I don't know what happens next. We are visiting the Meyer Center tomorrow and must seriously consider placing the boys in it's program. Apparently, I've been living in a fantasy world. I look at the twins and I see normal 3 year olds, doing normal, 3 year old things. Maybe I have been secretly hoping that if I pretended there weren't problems with the boys that everything would work itself out. I am afraid for the twins and their futures. I'm scared to death of how Charlie's peers will react to him, I'm scared silly that he won't always be the picture of health that he is today, I could go on and on. For Matthew, I'm afraid they are going to diagnose him with Autism, or some other neurological condition and we won't know how to help him. As it is now, we struggle with Matthew every minute of everyday and it breaks my heart. As his mother, I know something is wrong, and that is really hard to admit. My greatest fear is that the doctors were right in the beginning. Here's the thing, they can't be right. Not even a little bit right. I need them to be really, really wrong......