Can this be a problem with vision, language or both????

I seem to be the only mom in our merry group looking at taking my kid out of mainstream education. The meeting with the psychiatrist was uplifting in the sense that he’s one of the few professionals to really grasp my son’s intelligence, and in fact thinks most of the special schools in our area won’t meet his intellectual needs. However it was also clear from his comments (based on phone calls with the classroom teacher and tutor) that its a foregone conclusion that we’ll have to pull him out of his school for next year. Doesn’t leave us with many options does it?

He also had some interesting things to say about kids like ours. I asked if he had a diagnosis to make , now that he’s been working with my ds for a while. And he said no, he really doesn’ t meet the criteria for any disorder including ADD, except the learning disability. He went on to say there are a class of kids with “soft” neurological impairments that evidence a touch of this, a touch of that, but not enough of any one thing to warrant a dx. They aren’t PDD either because its not severe. They have “atypical” development and often outgrow some of their idiosyncrancies. It was a relief to be validated , but frustrating because he really couldn’t offer up much of a solution except to address the issues as they arise. Didn’t think meds were appropriate either.

Thanks for listening again today!

Karen,

I think what you are considering is probably pretty different than putting him in public school sped. I am pretty convinced that environment is little more than a dumping ground where the put the kids who “can’t” I wish I could find the perfect school for my son but I am not sure there is such a thing.

Sometimes I think it would be a good idea to just home school him for a half a year and do all the programs we talk about in that period of time. If things don’t go well in the regular classroom I might take him out starting in Jan and do Pace and biofeedback with home tutoring of LMB. It is just something I keep tossing around in my mind.

Maybe a little vision therapy thrown in for good measure.

I suspect Karen that your son is a more demanding school than my son’s. Plus, private schools are not required to accomodate disabilities by law. I thought very seriously about pulling my son out and putting him into a sp. ed school this summer. I consulted with a woman who specializes in placement of LD students. She told me my son was doing too well for the LD schools here. He really isn’t more than a year behind at this point in any area but writing. He now is in the lowest reading group in his class. There are only 7 kids in this group (and he goes to resource when they do seat work) but there are kids in this group. Two years ago he wasn’t even in the bell curve. This an issue you might have to face also.

I think the little of this and a little of that fits my son also—especially describes what the neurologist called right brain dysfunction. The frustrating part about that is new things seem to pop up all the time but not in as predictable of a fashion as if he had a full blown syndrome. The good part is I think the long term prognosis is more positive. A lot of the difficulties, I think, arise from the combination of deficits and the lack of strengths. So any whittling away makes a big difference.

My son’s neuronet therapist’s oldest son is LD with a similar profile to our kids. He is now in graduate school. Like our kids, he had lots of support at home but delayed development seems to have played into it too. Our IM therapist’s brother barely made it through high school with significant LD. He is now a surgeon. As both women have told me, you certainly can’t generalize from their experiences. At this point though, I will be delighted with making it through high school without significant stress!!!

Beth

Linda,

I pulled my son out part time in second grade when the school and I couldn’t agree on anything. My son was the only one in the resource room who could read the next year when a new teacher took over. It reduced our stress immensely.

And I have read of many parents who homeschooled for awhile to help catch their kids up. Most returned to school, but not all.

Beth

Yes , of course you are right about that. Part of the cruel irony of our situation is that we were lucky enough (and my son deserving enough when he was 4) to be accepted into a very wonderful but selective school. Its not an average poplulation of kids - not that they are all gifted by any means - but they are all pretty verbal and get lots of support at home. My son may only be reading about a year below grade level right now on a good day - but the kids in his grade are reading several years ahead. We are pretty frustrated and scared though, because several of our therapists feel he’s not special ed. enough for most of the special ed. schools around here. I could see that a good public school (in a different city) might be a good alternative, but then we’d have to move, and THEN start fighting the battles you all fight every day. That’s too overwhelming right now.

Part of the reason I was thirsting for a real diagnosis initially was so I could predict better what the future held (OK, if its NLD then let’s expect trouble with math…) but I have come to agree with you. While we can’t predict which issues will arise, the overall picture is much brighter than if we had a real syndrome. I also believe in our case anxiety is compounding the “symptoms” because when I read thru reports from when he was 4-5 years old (OT, IQ testing…) the real issues were there such as motor planning , but there was no sign of social problems, poor eye contact, or other things like that.

It was written by Oliver Sachs who is a famous neurologist about an older woman who developed a brain dysfunction. What was interesting to me was that he identified it as a left brain problem and then described in detail what she experienced : inabilitiy to see letters as parts of words, inability to read but she could still write letters to friends. The inability to recognize and name certain objects by sight, but could still play the piano, and in fact noted that her auditory memory and skills increased. She had a left brain visual system impairment and alot of it sounded mighty familiar - despite the fact that I think my son has a right brain problem.

Beth,

My husband had LD as a child. He is one of the most together people you will ever meet. He is a V.P. at a large company.

There is no way anyone would EVER guess that he once had a problem in school. I know quite a few people like this. I know alot of doctors that I worked with who were the worst spellers and had the absolute worst handwriting imaginable.
My husband’s brother never struggled in school and is not nearly as successful in both life in general and in his career.

I think one of the keys is to make sure that your child does not get labled and lumped with the non learners. I really think low expectations can have the biggest effect.

Funny, I envision all our boys some day meeting at college and becoming great friends as they discuss their nutty Mom’s who used to go on the internet alot.

You are in a difficult situation. Here too a kid only a year behind is not far enough behind to really fit into a sp. ed school. In our district the gifted kids are taken out of the regular classrooms so the regular classrooms are geared more towards the average students. For my daughter, bright but not gifted, that was a real problem. She is prospering in a parochial school.

If the present school won’t keep him, and the sp. ed schools aren’t a good fit, you proabably have no choice but to look for a different sort of regular school. The advantage could be that he may be able to do much better there which will give him some space for maturation and therapy to take effect. Sometimes you don’t want your child to be at a really competitive school. If your son has issues with anxiety, then a less pressured environment might be good for him. I know your son is quite bright and in some ways the present school is a good match for him and he might not be challenged by another school.

I will tell you I was quite bored growing up. We changed school districts when I was 6 and I was always older than most of the kids. But you know what, being bored did not cause me any emotional harm. That I think is the bottom line with kids. We want our kids to arrive as adults in good emotional condition.
That to me, is more important than they be intellectually stimulated.

Beth

With all our combined knowledge and commitment, I think we all could write a research paper together!

Karen, I’m convinced your school was a very demanding one. I think you’d be surprised how different many public schools are. What I’m beginning to find is that although my son started out with a very obvious reading/learning difficulty, it was noticed and he began getting intervention at school (and a huge amount from me!) so he is progressing. It may be slow, but he is progressing and I’m very happy with this and plan to continue working with him. My aim is “top of the class.” I know that’s unrealistic, but I figure by aiming high I won’t “give up” or if we catch up to “average” I won’t think “Everything is okay. I can stop worrying and let him play afterschool (play after school! What a concept!!!). I do believe our children, in the long-run, are going to do well because we are involved and working with them. Many of these kids doing “so-so,” not having so obvious difficulties or having parents who are trying to ignore any problems are the ones who may be in a much larger disadvantage.

Keeping high expectations and working with them is going to make a big difference. Sometimes it doesn’t seem like it because this is not something that happens overnight. It takes years! But, I think, by trying to stay on top of it, that’s really going to make the difference for our kids.

Linda, I can imagine it too. Our boys will all be good friends in college at MIT or Cal Tech.

I am with you on that Laura. Sometimes I see these flashes of brilliance in my son.
I truely beleive these kids can go anywhere.

I just watched the most fascinating video tape on neuro biofeedback that was sent to be me by a local provider.

I think we will test the waters on this one for our little group and then report back.

Maybe this will be a chapter in our book. Forget the research paper there is just too much here ; )

That is very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

Today I came across an article in Science Weekly (I have to get articles regularly for my daughter for her science “current events journal”). The article was about an ADHD study. It said that adolescents (unmedicated) with ADHD had smaller brains than those without ADHD. And that adolescents who had been taking medication (like Ritalin) had “normal” or “average” sized brains.

This worries me a little since I’m not quite sure if my son does have ADHD. I’ve always wondered if we should consider a “trial” med test (just try it to see if it has any effect).

Beth,
You make a good point about emotional health. And I tend to agree with you that emotional health is more important than intellectual stimulation. When my husband was a child, the school wanted to skip him up a grade. My mother-in-law went ahead and allowed him to be moved up, but this is something she later regretted. He was never very happy because he was quite immature for his age and he already had established a close group of friends. Even after the change, he continued to play with his peers and never felt comfortable with the older children.
Also, because he was put into a class of gifted children, he no longer “appeared” that bright. In comparison to these other kids, he felt very slow.

Karen, I don’t think there’s necessarily a perfect solution for your situation, but you might want to consider a public school. That’s where you’re most likely to find a good mix of kids, many quite similar to ours.

I am thinking about looking into public, but that will also necessitate a move . I think our first and best option is sending him to the one school in area that would meet his educational needs (the special one for bright kids). Its the fallback plan that has me stumped. Do you guys have any ideas on how one goes about researching public school systems with sped in mind?

Karen,
I hope your first choise works out, but if it doesn’t, the only way I know of researching public schools would be to contact the schools in the area you would be moving into. Talk with them, get to know the principals, find out what special ed or resource programs are available, and then make a choise from there. The only way to really know is to contact the school’s by phone, ask questions and make an appointment to visit. Just talking with them and visiting will give you a good idea.

One more idea. Here’s a website I found for you:
http://www.greatschools.net/cgi-bin/glossary_browse_theme/NY/12
I used a California API website when we were in the midst of deciding on a house to buy.

At the public school level, your son may not qualify for special ed so you definitely would want to look at resource and/or intervention programs. From what I’ve heard locally in my area, you would definitely want a bright child (unless severely spec ed) in a regular class with accomodations because in many of the schools the spec ed is more a “parking” place than a classroom of learning.

Either way good luck to you Karen! :-)

You may want to request an eval. now from the NY public schools…how else would you even know if your son would qualify for special ed. in NY? Then you would know if special ed. would even be an option in a new locale. For very bright kids it can be next to useless to use public school special ed. because they are mandated to serve everyone, especially lower functioning students and kids with attention and behavior disorders…very little real remediation gets done in my middle-class high-tech. Mass. suburb.

You say you’re taking your child out of mainstream ed. yet I wouldn’t say your child has ever been in mainstream ed. if you haven’t tried the public schools yet; the only reason to fret over a diagnosis would be medication or the stressful process of qualifying your child for special ed. under the fed. definitions as interpreted by NY state; start with a good look at the state dept of ed website and talk to other parents who’ve been through it.

My son is in a mainstream school, it just happens to be private. Its not special ed. , gifted, parochial or anything other than a regular school that is privately funded. We just happen to live in a place where private schools are abundant, and very much the norm. in great part because of the lousy condition of our public school system. And the irony is that because private schools do not have to provide remediation to children like my son our only option is to enroll him in a special private school where he would be in special ed. all day. Its an all or nothing proposition within the private school system. (It seems pointless to me to put him in an urban, over crowed public school and then fight for services - if we go public it will be in a suburban town with better resources.)

It is true that we don’t know if he would qualify for special ed. under our state law because we haven’t contacted our local board of ed. yet. I do realize that entering the public school system would introduce us to a new set of problems and battles to be fought. But I agree with Laura’s earlier post - the right suburban public school system with resources for him might be a better all around environment than the wrong special ed. school.

This thread has gone way off topic, so I’ll ask my questions about navigating the public school systems in a new thread. Thanks!

Yes Laura is absolutely correct! I would be very careful about putting your son in an inclusion class. Even though in theory inclusion is about all the kids working together with some getting extra help from a sped teacher, that was not how it was done in my districrt. My son was in the group with the sped teacher and the rest of the class was with the regular teacher.

My son was placed in an inclusion class but it was really run like two classes. He was constantly reminded of the fact that he was with the kids who struggled. (Some of these kids were pretty rough) This wasn’t too much of a problem when he struggled but when he felt he could do the harder work they wouldn’t give it too him. This was a case where he found it somewhat demoralizing to not be challenged.
I just didn’t like the whole set up. I think pull out is better because the child can get the full reg currculum except in the area where he struggles like in your son’s case reading.

Now, the best districts will do inclusion. It is all the rage in sped. Maybe some do it better but I know that my district has a great reputation so don’t be swayed by reputation.

I would look for a reg public school that was willing to pull him out for reading every day. Look for a school that does LMB or another phonemic awareness based program. I wouldn’t even work to hard to get him classified right away if you can get him the help he needs under regular ed. If it isn’t enough, get him classified.
I think regular ed in a public school will be less intense than his current environment.