Seeking a diagnosis

Our son was referred for a caore eval by his kindergarten teacher, and placed on an IEP. The results of the eval were vague, I’m sure partly because he was so young. The IEP was vague too. It was originally written for OT 30 minutes weekly, and SPED help in the classroom 30 minutes 3 times a week. At the end of his first grade year, the SPED teacher asked that the IEP be amended to 30 minutes daily, because that reflected the time she was actually spending with him. With that amount of support, he did very well through second grade, at which point they took him off his IEP.

It was a BIG mistake for me to let them do that, but I didn’t know then what I know now. In any case, when he fell apart in 3rd grade, they refused to put him back on an IEP, and we eventually decided to have a private full neuropsychological eval done. I can’t recommend this route highly enough if you have questions about your child’s learning profile.

A good neuropsych eval will not only look at academic functioning, but also, and probably more importantly, specific cognative strengths and weaknesses. A good report will not only tell you what these strengths and weaknesses are, but how they are likely to effect the child’s functioning in the classroom, how best to accomodate and/or remediate the child’s weaknesses while teaching them to use their strengths to compensate for their weaknesses.

With a good neuropsych eval in hand, and our neuropsychologist in tow, we were able to prove the school that my son should never have been off an IEP to start with, and to write a really meaningful IEP to move forward with. It’s still not easy, there’s still a lot of “management” that you have to do as a parent. But at least you know what direction to move in.

As far as arguing with your daughter about school work or learning issues, please, please, PLEASE don’t. She will have many teachers in her life, she only has one Mom. Help her when/if she’ll let you. When she won’t, back off and insist that the school do its job. If they are totally incapable, look for another outside source, even if it’s only another mother who will trade time with you. Your daughter needs you as her emotional support system way more than she needs you as a teacher.

Karen

Debbi -

I think you are wise to consider tutoring. I was disappointed that my son wouldn’t let me teach him, but there was really no choice since every time I tried to help him he just put up a big battle. It made me so frustrated and irritable when he wouldn’t cooperate. Even after we got the tutor, homework time was just a big power struggle until I finally just gave in and let him do it his way. Which was sometimes laying down on his back writing on a clipboard, spinning around in a chair, or hanging halfway over a chair. Drives me nuts. But once the power issues between us were gone, he started coming back around and is more positive about tackling his assignments. Now (7th grade) I am there during homework time for moral support and to look for ways to make the assignment quicker (he will spend hours on ridiculous details) and most importantly to check on what he is currently struggling with. Anything negative that I do completely backfires, so I have learned to keep it positive or keep out.

Assuming you have an IEP, you don’t necessarily need a specific diagnosis to get accommodations. But you may need to be a really tough advocate for your child to get them. Some schools use the words modification to mean curriculum changes (which a teacher is less likely to want to implement) and accommodation to mean adjusted work expectations for the existing curriculum. Once you’ve got an idea exactly what you are after, request another IEP meeting and get the accommodations written into the IEP. Push hard to get the meeting, and don’t back down when you are there. You may still have to deal with another battle getting the teacher to respect the accommodations and you’ll have to stand firm here too. And you may even have trouble getting your child to take the accommodation. Our child did not want to do anything that made other kids aware that he was different.

You can also get accomodations under a 504, if that is what your child has. If you don’t have an IEP or a 504, you will probably need to get the school to do the psych/ed evaluation or get it done privately.

Here’s some links I found a few months ago related to accommodations:

http://www.add.org/content/school/list.htm

http://www.esu10.k12.ne.us/~sped/obj/objhp.html

http://www.nde.state.ne.us/SPED/iepproj/appc/acc.html

It seems reasonable to me to have your child circle the words she does not know, or have an electronic dictionary to look up a word she does not know to see if it is a noun. Franklin Speller is one type, and there are plenty of others.

~aj

Karen,

Thank you for reminding me of what is important, being MOM and let the school take some responsibility. I am so used to them telling us that we (my husband and I) need to do this and that but they basically feel that they are doing all they can do even though my son is not progressing. We are in the process of the neuropsychologist eval and I am anxiously awaiting the “big picture” and valuable information so that I can make the necessary decisions for him, not just what the school is willing to give him. You always have wonderful advice. Thank you!

If your child is in a resource room, I assume you have had an IEP meeting and that your child is receiving services under some classification. If that classification or educational label isn’t enough for you, or wasn’t explained well, I would definitely seek a private evaluation. To get more services through your school, try to reconvene your IEP team for a review. In my experience, evaluation for classification and evaluation for diagnosis and future planning are two different things. The public schools have categories for receiving ed. services under special education law, and look to serve kids in those categories. If your child has been tested more than once through the schools, you could also take all the testing to a private psychologist for another opinion and perhaps spare your child further testing.

And from this site:

http://www.ldonline.org/ld_indepth/teaching_techniques/mod_checklists.html