Uncertainty and Preparation

I wish I knew when Sunny's final placement was going to be. We're really hoping for within a month.

The great thing about having visited Sunny is that we know he's in a nice home with great foster parents. We don't have to worry about him!

We're calling him every two or three days and talking to him for a minute or so. Mainly "what did you do today" conversations. Today, I told him I bought him a piggy bank (he'd asked me for one at his last visit). He yelled at his foster mom, "GUESS WHAT! MOM GOT ME A PIGGYBANK!" He was so excited. A simple thing, but it really made me happy.

We're in the middle of school choice issues right now. Our first choice doesn't look as certain as it did before. We'll need backups, and backups to the backups. There are a lot of options and we're starting to narrow them down bit by bit. Some factors are: academics, student-teacher ratio, classroom style conducive to a kid with short attention span, close to us so he can make friends with kids who don't live too far away, public (charter/magnet) versus private, cost, diversity.

Diversity is not our number one concern since a) Sunny is black b) we live close to the center of a majority-black city. We're looking at a range of schools from 40-100% black. In this context, I think of diversity as a balance that goes beyond black/white to include Asian and Latino kids, and with a mix of several different cultures and languages. I think this kind of diversity will be more important as he gets older, but right now it's not on the top of my list of priorities. The one thing I'm a little concerned about is his cute Midwest accent picked up from Polish/Irish-Americans. How much will it make him stand out? In first grade, I don't think it matters that much yet.

Sunny is extroverted, talkative and confident. His ADHD diagnosis doesn't hamper him much in social skills. If he's not getting attention, he does get frustrated very quickly. But he likes to share. I'm guessing that he'll be happy in a wide variety of social situations with other kids.