My daughter was in a special needs preschool when she was 3 years old because she couldn’t talk. At the time, we only knew that she could have a brain injury because of an illness at home.
First, the school said she had select mutism and was choosing not to talk. They asked me to make it hard for her to open her lunch, and they would only open it for her if she asked.
Then I came to pick her up after school, and they lost her at recess. They told me that they couldn’t find her so they took the other kids inside and the janitor was outside. (Many years later when she finally learned to talk, she told me she was playing hide and seek and was hiding under the slide. When she came out, no one was there.)
She never went back to that school.
Also, she did have a brain injury, and she had apraxia of speech which is a speech disorder that the brain doesn’t send the right signals to the muscles for speech. With proper speech therapy, most can learn to talk but it takes a lot of time and effort.
Was also going to add that the regular preschool handled my special needs daughter wonderfully. They were actually used to 3 year olds that didn’t talk. They treated her like a regular preschooler.
She graduated college Magna Cum Laude with a statistics degree. I’m glad I ignored what public school officials recommended for her. I feel sorry for kids whose parents trust the public school officials.