Trouble getting dyslexia accessment?

I found the most helpfull evaluation came from the occupational therapist. Submit a request in writing for your school to do and OT evaluation for her difficulty with spacing and other writing difficulties. My son had the same problem.
Also you may want to see a developmental optomotrist to make sure that she doesn’t have tracking problems. You may want to consider seeing an OT who specializes in sensory integration outside of school. My son has sensory integration that has resulted in poor attention for certain activities, handwriting difficulties, sequencing problems he can get overwhelmed at times and become emotional as well. Now that I have some understanding of sensory integration I can see how all these deficits are linked. He has improved with sensory integration therapy and I have learned how to help him at home.

It is a struggle to get an accurate SPECIFIC diagnosis. A diagnosis of dyslexia isn’t all that specific it just says that she has trouble reading it doesn’t explain what is causing the problem, same with dysgraphia.

Thanks Linda,

I will do as your suggested about the OT screening, had planned for that when we go back in the fall as that would be the earliest they would do so… I guess. I just couldn’t understand why my pediatrician and the specialist she sent us to didn’t understand the need for specific diagnosis and causes etc. as you suggest. When I said dyslexia/dysgrpahia diagnosis, it was because that is as far as I have gotten descriptively, but of course you are right that we need to know the root causes etc. I understand that there are many forms of each and it is important to figure out exactly what is involved with each individual. I have also begun reading about the sensory intergration problems and suspect, like your son, that she could be experiencing this as well. From what I know of the characteristics, she has many. There is so much information to absorb and of course, I wish I could just press a magic button and be completely prepared to best help her. I appreciate the advice on the developmental optomotrist as well. I hadn’t thought of that at all, being truly honest, I didn’t know they existed. The only thing my pediatrician did when I told her the school thought we should have a thorough eye exam to rule out any of those kinds of concerns was roll her eyes, sigh, and say, we just checked this child’s eyes only weeks ago and they are fine. Of course, as I have read the medical doctor’s answers are generally to medicate first, see if the child improves, and then decide that was the best treatment, which I worry is the case I have here. I could be crazy, but I think you have posted to me before and I really appreciate it. Could you remind me if I know and don’t remember, how exactly does your son receive his sensory intergration therapy, through the school, or privately? Did you get that started from the original school OT screening or from the private OT who specializes in SI? The reason I ask is right now Lillie is on Medicaid and I don’t know if they will cover my taking her privately and just from calling about the ADD, I know it can be extremely expensive. The Medicaid office told me that I needed a refferal from the pediatrician for the accessment in order to be covered. It sounds like I need to have a serious talk again with my pediatrician to see if I can take her to a specialist, or should I wait until they do the OT screening in the fall and then ask for the referal dependant upon the screening results? I apologize if I sound dense, I think I have become so overwhelmed, haven’t received treatment for my own ADD etc., so it is hard for to figure which step to take in what order. Again, I appreciate you input so much.
Deb

All the sensory integration work my son has had is private. He gets OT at school but I don’t see them being trained adequately to deal with his problems. I have fought to keep the OT just because I felt we might need the classification if his handwriting did not pick up. I had him evaluated privately and sent the evaluation to the school. They told me those were medical problems.

Beth

Beth,

Thanks for responding. Did you have to get a referral from your Pediatrician in order to see a specialist in OT? What is the ball park cost for the private OT screening, that is if you know?
Thanks,
Deb

Deb,

My insurance will not pay for OT or speech so there was no point to a referral. I think I paid about $200 for the evaluation and writeup. I went to a clinic that specialized in children and the OT was certified in sensory integration.

Beth

I would ask your doctor for a referral for OT and a referral for the optomotrist now before you get it in the school. Most schools are pretty restrictive on what they will offer. Depends on the school.

I don’t know if medicaid covers these things but it is certainly worth a try.

My son received OT in school first and she was the one who picked up the sensory integration. She didn’t really even pick it up until she was working with him for awhile. Since working with her my son has better coordination and handwriting.
The evaluation my son received from the outside OT was much more thorough and that was what really pinned things down for me. She recommended interactive metronome which we will be doing.
Also read “The Out Of Sync Child”

It is exhausting. Just take one little thing at a time. It is a process there aren’t easy answers.

Also don’t forget to play to her strengths. Let her strengths shine whenever possible. Let her use them to overcome her deficits and to feel good about herself.
My son loves to speak in front of his class and explain complex things. He is quite good and often speaks right over the non sped kids heads yet he’s the one getting the extra help. It makes him feel good.

Also we listen to books on tape because his comprehension is way above his reading level even though he reads at grade level.

Another vote for SI OT!. We provided it privately $45/30 min. but well worth the $$. $125.00 initial evaluation. We’re in Florida. My daughter had illegible handwriting, poor spacing, etc. and now after 14-15 mos. can write as well (or better) than most children her age. If you go on www.sensoryintegrationinternational.com I believe you can find someone in your area. Also, my OT was board certified in pediatric sensory integration. My daughter also had the screaming and huge frustration levels that accompanying the LD and other challenges. Honestly after we had her evaluated and started with private OT and tutoring, she quit grinding her teeth, something that she had been doing since age 2.

The school also provides OT for her and now her OT at school talks often with her SI OT to help bring in some SI therapy into her school OT. An added plus. In fact, my daughter is doing so well that she is to be discharged from OT next month. If at all possible, EARLY private intervention can make a world of difference.

Deb,

A friend of mine had her child evaluated for SI and speech/language at Child and Family Development in Charlotte. He went for therapy there for about two years. They are excellent for these types of disorders. I have no idea about insurance coverage or Medicaid. But I think they could do a comprehensive excellent evaluation for you. My other choice would be Dr. Mel Levine’s clinic in Chapel Hill, but after the TV interviews, I’ll bet it’ll take years to get an appointment.

If I were you, I’d order the Handwriting Without Tears book (they have manuscript and cursive with teacher guides) to use with her at home. The OT’s at our hospital use it when remediating handwritng problems. The books are inexpensive and I would think easy to do yourself (and save BIG bucks!). http://www.hwtears.com/method.htm

Janis

Here’s how I see it. Any dyslexia organization will state that it is NEVER TOO EARLY to proper diagnose and intervene a child who is showing certain learning problems. Pediatricians, on the average, have very limited knowledge of learning disabilities, many will not even touch ADD/ADHD. This is because primary care physicians today are in the business of regulating clientelle to specialists. In the medical community we have a specialist for everything that could possible go wrong with us. Therefore, you need to research and find a pediatrician who has experience with LD kids and who has his buddy network of specialists specific to what you child needs. Otherwise, you are beating your head against a wall talking to someone who has no clue what you are going through. If this is a fruitless search, the next step is a pediatric pyschologist or pediatric psychiatrist if you believe in medication and then there is the pediatric neuropsychologist (very thorough but expensive).

From what I understand, dyslexia does not generically mean trouble with reading. There are very specific criteria to be met in order to be diagnosed with dyslexia. A great site is www.dys-add.com. (Very informative).

Now, once a child or adult is diagnosed with dyslexia, there are very specific scientifically-based remediation programs to be used with this person. It is scientifically proven that these people have different wiring of the brain. They learn differently and the general curriculum can not provide this remediation.

Schools will argue (as my does) that they provide a multisensory, blah, blah, blah. This is baloney and they know it. Every interaction we have in a classroom is multisensory. This is a smoke screen. With a dyslexic, it must be done methodically and by someone who is qualified to remediate these children.

Here’s the problem. MONEY, MONEY, MONEY. Special Education LAW (federal and state law) recognizes dyslexia. School districts do not. Dyslexia is a dirty word. Why, because if they recognized it, they would have to provide the expensive, specific remediation by specially trained personnel. What does that equal? MONEY!

So instead of spending the money, they give you that multisensory garbage to pacify you into thinking they are doing everything possible for your child. Many schools won’t do it just because of time it takes to intervene. In other words, if they just do the bare necessities and accomodate, modify and all that other garbage, the kid will just move on. We were even told to just lower our expectations for our dyslexic son.

We have also been told that labeling him dyslexic does not identify all of his problems. I have to disagree. All that I have read about dyslexia points out everything my son is experiencing and everything that has shown up on the schools evaluation and our recent neuropsychological evaluation. Again, another tactic by the school to skirt out of dealing with his disabilities. Also, if you didn’t know, if the school cannot provide an appropriate education for your dyslexic child, they have to find some place that does. When you threaten to take them to due process to get what you need, you may be surprised to see doors open up to what your daughter needs.

If you have not done so, please check out the website I mentioned above. It is loaded with all the info you may be looking for. Also try www.kerrlaw.com, www.reedlaw.com, www.wrightslaw.com and www.fetaweb.com (great site and book called “From Emotions to Advocacy).

Sorry to ramble on, but we just went through the same thing and I am still stewing over all the hoops I’ve had to jump through to get proper diagnosis and now we are battling for proper remediation.

Just remember, it’s a game of survival of the fittest and knowledge is power. Hope you find this helpful. Good luck!

nt

We also did the vision therapy early on, first grade when they told us to have the thorough eye exam. What a scam. I know some people swear by it, but it was just a waste of money for us.

The school kept telling us lets wait see in 1st grade when he totally bombed, but get the eye exam. We were desperate to help our son, so when the behavioral optometrist said he saw something, of course we jumped on it.

Please research that as well before you jump in. Its very expensive, requires a committment of time for exercises and weekly appointments on top of the nightly disaster of homework from school.

From our personal experience, I would not recommend vision therapy. Go with your hunches on the dyslexia.

You have received excellent advice through this entire thread-My dau also has SI issues but was diagnosed very late so the changes were not as great-but one thing we did do for her was to put her into Tae Kwondo which has been very helpful with SI. In fact any gross motor activity that involves having to work with both sides of the body is great ex. swimming, mini obstacle course in the backyard, or just tossing a bean bag alternating hands even marching around swinging alternate arms (we do lots of this when homework gets overwhelming!)

Let me just say that the only children who were unsuccessful in the original research study with Phono-Graphix were children with developmental vision problems. The children in the study received vision therapy and I understand repeated PG and were successful. So these children exist and need to be identified.

That is interesting. Where can I find this research. I’d love to read it.

little lulu,

I definitely agree that most pediatricians absolutely do not have knowledge of learning disabilites. I would think most of them would make the referral if a parent told them the child was having difficulty. It’s no loss for them to do so.

I do disagree with your statement about dyslexia not generically menaing trouble with reading, though. That is exactly what it means. The causes of reading problems may vary somewhat, but he majority of kids have basic problems with phonemic awareness and decoding. In education, the term reading disability is generally used instead of dyslexia. The label just doesn’t matter. The therapy certainly does, as you stated. Dr. Mel Levine of “All Kinds of Minds” does not think the label dyslexia is all that important either. I haven’t read the whole book yet, but what is important is to recognize a child’s strengths while remediating the learning problem if at all possible.

I do agree that most schools do not provide the right instructional methods with the intensity of service needed to remediate, however. Most parents end up getting it outside of school because they want better services than the schools provide.Also, it can be detrimental for a child to be pulled out of class during the school day anyway. Missing classroom instruction causes whole new problems.

Janis

The International Dyslexia Association’s journal published the article so I imagine reprints are available through them or through Read America. I have the article which I obtained at PG training in April during the Read America convention. It costs a dollar or so. Off hand I do not recall if that information was all in the article or if it was told to us verbally. But we were told to watch out for kids who might have visual problems as they might need that corrected before continuing with PG.

Janis

My response, will all due respect of course, is if a child is not performing at grade level, does not have the basics of language comprehension, of what value is it to him to sit through classroom time for the sake of missing something. Missing what? If the child needs intensive rememeditation in the basics, that is what he should be getting during the school day. Not after school while everyone else is outside being a kid.

From what I understand, dyslexia can affect the child in other all areas, visually, auditorily and tactilly. Therefore, that is why the specific multisensory remediation is imperitive to these children and a gen ed teacher just is not capable of giving this child what he needs consistently.

I am reading Mel Levine’s book right now as well. I agree with what he is saying about learning disabilities, but I have some reservations about his approach to intervening. I have a gut feeling that this is an attempt at another “method” which is only going to lead to more smoke screens for remediation. Maybe I’m wrong, but I see the products showing up already on his website. Maybe I’ll change my mind by the end of the book. Right now I’m skeptical but interested.

Just another “modern approach” that will take years to pan out its benefits.

Thanks. I’ll start there.

I accidentally posted my reply right above your response. Please look there.

I checked the article and it does explain in the discussion section of the article about the 4 children referred for vision therapy as I described above. The article is entitled “Phono-Graphix: A New Method for Remediating Reading Difficulties” by Carmen and Geoffrey McGuinness, Annals of Dyslexia, Vol. 46, 1996.

Janis

I don’t disagree with you that it would be preferable for the child to get excellent remediation at the school, but 99% of the special ed. teachers have not been trained in the effective programs, so therefore, I think it is questionable that the time in the resource room would be more valuable than being in the classroom. For example, I do not want my child pulled out of class during langauge arts or math time. Those are essentials and I want her to have a double dose of reading. So they basically would have to pull her before school or during science and social studies. This past year we were lucky and had therapy right before school.

You said: “From what I understand, dyslexia can affect the child in other all areas, visually, auditorily and tactilly. Therefore, that is why the specific multisensory remediation is imperitive to these children and a gen ed teacher just is not capable of giving this child what he needs consistently.”

Well, I would turn that around. A child can have various sensory/cognitive deficits which result in many kinds of educational delays…reading (dyslexia), writing (dysgraphia), math (dyscalculia), etc. And I 100% agree that general ed. teachers cannot provide the specialized instruction these children need.

As you said before, though, money IS the issue. It costs $200 per day of Lindamood-Bell training per person. I know becuase I wanted to go this summer but it was just too expensive…$1400 for LiPS, Seeing Stars, and Visualizing and Verbalizing. I asked my school district to pay for part and they said they had already used allotted funds for training (and there was no way they’d give $1400 to one person anyway!).

As far as Mel Levine goes, I think he is a master at helping children recognize their real strengths which can give them the confidence needed to try and tackle the weaknesses. Some of them feel like total failures and need to understand the mechanics of what is wrong with them but also to give them hope that there is something positive about their existence! That doesn’t mean they won’t need Lindamood-Bell, though! It just may give the child the motivation to try hard at the LB lessons! He has a few products to help kids understand memory problems and things like that, but I don’t believe he attempts to provide programs for remediation of specific LD’s.

Janis

I agree with your comments about Mel Levine helping children find something positive about their existence. Absolutely. But on his website the whole “School Attuned” is what I’m getting at. If you read through it you will see that there is expensive training involved and a program to be followed. I don’t think he is wrong and I applaud his work. I just think we should be cautious.

The response he got from his recent appearances is evidence of the desperate cry from parents of children who are being failed by our current education system. This is sad.

About the dyslexia, it’s all in how much stock you put into a label, I guess. I happen to value it because it gives me a place to start and proven methods of remediation. I guess the debate is endless.

Enjoyed discussing with you.

I’ve enjoyed talking with you, too!

We live in NC and many systems here have used the Schools Attuned training. It is really to help the regular educators be more accepting of learning differences in children. I surely wish my child could have teachers trained in it. However, I will say again, I agree with you 100% that this does not take the place of a specialized reading program like Orton-Gillingham, Lindamood Bell, Phono-Graphix, etc. It would just be helpful for regular teachers to understand that some children learn differently and they could do some things in the regular classroom to make learning more multi-sensory to begin with. I understand some schools have embraced it and others have put it on the shelf. But most regular educators are far too ignorant of simple things they could be doing to help kids with special needs.

A great school would have regular educators trained to understand learning differences and applicable teaching techniques, and the special educators would have access to the best available specialized training and materials. And the children would have intensive individualized remediation EARLY! How tragic that this is rarely found!

Janis

What sort of symptoms would you look for to detect a vision problem such as you’re describing?

Kathy,

I work with kids with auditory disorders so I have little experience with the visual, but I’ll quote a sentence from the Phono-Graphix article for you:

“They were unable to track text smoothly from left-to-right due to instability of binocular fusion while tracking, which causes the print to go in and out of focus.”

(Annals of Dyslexia, Vol. 46, 1996, “Phono-Graphix: A New Method for Remediating Reading Difficulties”)

Janis

little lulu wrote:

> From what I understand, dyslexia does not generically mean
> trouble with reading. There are very specific criteria to be
> met in order to be diagnosed with dyslexia. A great site is
> www.dys-add.com. (Very informative).

Actually, the definition is often debated, and means different things in different literature. So when a program says it’s for kids with dyslexia (such as Sue Barton’s at www.dys-add.com) it’s important to specify just what’s meant, so you know who’s going to be helped (loads better than basically claiming what you have is the just the best, for everybody, please don’t argue we want to save the world).

>
> Now, once a child or adult is diagnosed with dyslexia, there
> are very specific scientifically-based remediation programs
> to be used with this person. It is scientifically proven
> that these people have different wiring of the brain. They
> learn differently and the general curriculum can not provide
> this remediation.
>
> Schools will argue (as my does) that they provide a
> multisensory, blah, blah, blah. This is baloney and they
> know it. Every interaction we have in a classroom is
> multisensory. This is a smoke screen. With a dyslexic, it
> must be done methodically and by someone who is qualified to
> remediate these children.

The key to O-G programs is that multisensory aspect in *every* part of the instruction. Sometimes it helps to ask just how the verbal, auditory and kinesthetic pathways are being tapped in typical classroom activities — *and* how they’re being integrated. Doing a little of each isn’t what “multisensory” is about in O.G. — it’s about using *all* of them.

> Here’s the problem. MONEY, MONEY, MONEY. Special Education
> LAW (federal and state law) recognizes dyslexia. School
> districts do not. Dyslexia is a dirty word. Why, because if
> they recognized it, they would have to provide the expensive,
> specific remediation by specially trained personnel. What
> does that equal? MONEY!
>
> So instead of spending the money, they give you that
> multisensory garbage to pacify you into thinking they are
> doing everything possible for your child. Many schools won’t
> do it just because of time it takes to intervene. In other
> words, if they just do the bare necessities and accomodate,
> modify and all that other garbage, the kid will just move
> on. We were even told to just lower our expectations for our
> dyslexic son.
>
> We have also been told that labeling him dyslexic does not
> identify all of his problems. I have to disagree. All that
> I have read about dyslexia points out everything my son is
> experiencing and everything that has shown up on the schools
> evaluation and our recent neuropsychological evaluation.
> Again, another tactic by the school to skirt out of dealing
> with his disabilities. Also, if you didn’t know, if the
> school cannot provide an appropriate education for your
> dyslexic child, they have to find some place that does. When
> you threaten to take them to due process to get what you
> need, you may be surprised to see doors open up to what your
> daughter needs.
>
> If you have not done so, please check out the website I
> mentioned above. It is loaded with all the info you may be
> looking for. Also try www.kerrlaw.com, www.reedlaw.com,
> www.wrightslaw.com and www.fetaweb.com (great site and book
> called “From Emotions to Advocacy).
>
> Sorry to ramble on, but we just went through the same thing
> and I am still stewing over all the hoops I’ve had to jump
> through to get proper diagnosis and now we are battling for
> proper remediation.
>
> Just remember, it’s a game of survival of the fittest and
> knowledge is power. Hope you find this helpful. Good luck!

Thanks Rhansman,

All very helpful information. You are right, everyone here has been so helpful. I am going to have my husband read all of these so he can be on the same page. Thanks again and I will try the things you suggest.

Dear Leah,

Thanks for the info. It helps so much to hear what has worked with others. I can not tell you how vauable this is to me. It will give me the confidence I need when dealing with the less than cooperative pediatrician. It helps to know I am not just being a picky Mom, that continuing to be an advocate for Lillie, is exactly what I AM supposed to be doing. Thanks for helping drive that home for me. Your and everyone’s advice here has been a God Send for me. I appreciate it so so much.
Sincerely,
Deb

Thanks Janis,

I will look into the Charlotte Clinic as that is only an 1.5 drive from here. I agree about Dr. Levine. I had already looked at that, but your right, it will take too long to get the help. I will try the handwritting books you suggested also. Again thanks to you and everyone here.
Deb

Dear Little LuLu,

I don’t mind you rambling on at all, in fact, that is just what I wanted to get by posting here. I needed a thorough idea of exactly what I am up against, and I think you have given me exactly what I was looking for. Not that this news makes me happy mind you, but like you said, knowledge is power. Please let me know how your fight for remediation goes. I have a feeling that my school district will be one tough nut to crack. Like you said, they are very clever in their phrasing and packaging.

I am curious, if you don’t mind telling me, how was your son doing with his grades etc. Lillie failed first grade miserably the first attempt. She seemed to be in a fog, like they were all speaking another language she didn’t understand. She tried at times to do some of her work, but without the medication for ADD back then, she was fighting an up hill battle. Now with the Adderal she attends somewhat better, but she still has the difficulty with writing and reading. The school, the specialist said, oh we are so impressed with her improvements, but I see her frustration. I can’t help but think, they prefer to see no problems unless her grades are low. While I know she can read better now, I also know it is difficult for her. I know, I know, I have to get the evaluations and then I will better know what we are dealing with. Still, it certainly helps hearing about other children and that I need to prepare myself for the hoop jumping. Thanks and I look forward to hearing from you again.
Deb

Dear Deb,

I don’t mind at all sharing his history. He went to a Catholic school because they offered an all-day kindergarten program. I really thought he was ready because he has always been so verbal. He can go on and on and although he struggled with writing he did it. Well, they were believers in whole language. We had sight words we had to do every night. We would go over them again and again and again. Each time we did, there were many that he looked at like he had never seen them before. He couldn’t consistantly identify the word “the” until the end of 1st grade.

The K teacher told me we weren’t working hard enough. Do them again. This will forever haunt me as I tortured him over this doing them again and again, him balling his eyes out and me telling him that the teacher says he’s not trying. I’m just sick thinking about this, but I didn’t know any better at the time. She was supposed to be the professional. The whole year was just a continuous struggle. Thank goodness for summer vacation that year.

1st grade we moved to the public school because I knew something was wrong and the Catholic school told us up front that if something was wrong, this was not the ideal place for him. 1st grade was worse than kindergarten. All of this became evident. But the teacher kept saying let’s wait and see if he matures, maybe things will click, its too early to tell, etc.
Endless conferences, tutoring, and nothing but tears and frustration. He received some extra help in reading by the schools reading specialist, but he just was not progressing. By the third quarter, the teacher tells me she can’t pass him on to 2nd grade and I WENT NUTS. I had asked after the 2nd grading period to have him tested for LDs and was told to wait and see; now he has failed? We told the principal that we refuse having him held back and we were demanding that he be tested. He was tested at the beginning of 2nd grade, and it turns out he has significant learning disabilities. Like I said before they would not say dyslexia, but that’s what is was.

2nd and third grade had their issues but things were okay within the general classroom. Both years they were good teachers. But the resource teacher left much to be desired. He did not progress much, if any, but he was fairly happy in the classroom. Homework was an absolute nightmare and unfortunately, that’s when we began the vision therapy in hopes of helping him. WRONG!

In our school, they do not give letter grades until 4th grade, so it was very hard to determine progression or regression during these two years. You were either satisfactory or developing. Well, he mostly got “developing” these two years. He had an IEP since the LD testing at school, but the help he was getting and the implementation of it was limited.

Then came this year, 4th grade, when everything just fell apart. He was put in a classroom with a gifted cluster. The teacher was a gifted-certified teacher. His weaknesses were glaring in this classroom and the amount of assistance that my son required drove her up the wall. Again, resource help was limited and consisted mostly of being pulled out of the class to do papers he did poorly on in class. He absolutely hated this and it finally took its toll.

Last November he told us that he would rather be dead than have to go back to school. This is when I woke up, stopped trusting what the school was telling me and took matters into my own hands to find out what was going on. This year he was getting Cs on his report card. When I would go over all of his papers (I kept everything this year) his grades were predominantly Fs. How this added up to Cs is a mystery to me. I educated myself on what the standardized tests and his scores meant (ie: Stanford Achievement, MAT6, OLSAT, ISAT, etc). Bottom line was, he was failing miserably and it was killing his self-esteem and emotionally.

So we recently had the neuropsychological evaluation done and it proves the same. The school says they think he’s doing just fine. They just do not want to spend the money, like I said before and its also an issue of accountability. They will try to tell you that the standardized testing isn’t that important. Well, I had a little conversation with our district’s facilitator of these tests and that is false. It is not the only thing to be considered, but it is not to be ignored either.

I wanted to use the scores to help determine how well he was really doing since they kept telling me that everything is just fine. They like to use teacher observation as their tool for reviewing progress. What teacher is not going to tell you that your kid is doing fine in her class. If he wasn’t doing fine, it would reflect poorly on her, of course.

He will be going into fifth grade and reads and spells at a 2nd grade level. He is not independent at all. Cannot complete assignments on his own at his desk. Yet they say he is doing fine.

Well, their way didn’t work. Now we do it my way, and mom is mad.

My advice to you is trust your instinct! I let them tell me, in the beginning, what was best for him and look where he is now. Know you daughters strenghts and weaknesses and what her test scores, grades and daily work performance mean. Tape record all meetings if possible and DOCUMENT AND SAVE EVERYTHING. It is a sad state that we cannot trust the schools, “the professionals,” but as you will see, you probably know more than they do, especially about your daughter.

You will see, the school will not offer you things and will not even guide you. You are on your own.

Please check out those websites and the most helpful book I have is “From Emotions to Advocacy” by Pamela Wright.

Hope this was helpful in some way and if I can help in any way, let me know. Best of luck to you and much success in advocating with your daughter. I’ll definitely be posting the results of our meeting at school. Should be a hoot!

little lulu,

Looks like we’re on the computer again at the same time! All I can tell you is that most children will not test with the required discrepancy needed for LD placement in early first grade. My child is in about the same situation as yours was. She went to a private kindergarten and we moved her to a public Charter school for first. We had a full evaluation in the fall. She qualified for speech/language, but there was no way she had the scores needed for LD that early. If they know a few letters of the alphabet, they’ll score 1.0 grade level in reading.

Anyway, she had an okay school year and got some intensive s/l therapy. She is still not drastically behind in reading, but definitely is behind the other kids in her class. I discussed it with her teacher and she feels another year of first grade with Saxon phonics being repeated would strengthen her reading skills. I feel personally that first grade is the ideal age to repeat a grade if a child is behind in reading. A poor reader will get through second and third with difficulty and then crash in fourth. I’ve seen it a million times.

I totally agree with you that your child has not been remediated by his school. But what I was curious about is what remediation are you getting for him to improve his reading? I can see that you are advocating for him, but so many schools just do not have special ed. teachers with the specialized training in multi-sensory structured language approaches to reading instruction.

Janis

Hi Janis,

Unfortunately, I only began to ask those questions recently. I had no idea until coming to this board that I could even be involved in this whole process.

We may have a case with the school because we can’t get a straight answer out of them, cannot even get a description of a typical session of remediation with him.

I recently asked the resource teacher which research-based programs our district uses. I took close to a week to get an answer. She says that some teachers use Orton-Gillingham (can’t get the name of who this is, so I think she’s making that one up) Wilson Language, Cloze Reading, Alphabetic Phonics. She also gave me the standard, “Multisensory teaching techniques using all modalities are employed to develop reading skills.”

When I asked her what she uses she says Jordan Prescriptive Tutorial Reading Program (can’t find that anywhere on the internet). Asked her if she uses that with my son, she says she uses many different strategies.

Never a straight answer with them. But I did get all of this through e-mail, so its in writing. E-mail can be a wonderful thing.

Any suggestions what I should do next? Any advice greatly appreciated.

Yikes, I’m replying to you on another thread right now! I’ll come back here in a minute!

Janis

Lulu,

Good for you! You asked exactly the right question! I also have never heard of the Jordan Program. That does not mean it is not good, but in all my reading on appropriate MSSL programs, I have never seen it mentioned. That makes me extremely suspicious, too.

Sorry to tell her, but “different strategies” is not the right answer to the question! (She probably doesn’t really know better, though. Most teachers have NOT been taught a MSSL method). Multisensory is good but it won’t teach a child how to read unless the instruction is highly structured and intensive. I would make a copy of this article on MSSL methods for them:

http://www.ldonline.org/ld_indepth/reading/mssl_methods.html

I’d then tell them that if the school will not provide it for your son intensively, then you will have no choice but to have it done privately and have your attorney work on getting the school system to pay. Now I am a nice person (and a teacher), but I think somwhow schools need to learn that a hodgepodge program will NOT remediate a true reading disorder/ dyslexia. Your son is old enough for Wilson if they’d just use it daily with him.

Actually there is a program called LANGUAGE! that incorporates written language intstruction as well as the MSSL reading. I’d really push for some intervention with the written language as well, but he HAS to get help in the reading quickly! I will tell you that some kids with APD have been helped by doing the computer program Fast ForWord (very expensive), but not all. I think it is best done during the summer as it requires 100 minutes a day. I chose not to do it this summer as I don’t think my daughter could tolerate that long on a computer each day. If I were you, I think I’d buy Earobics (around$59) to help strengthen some auditory skills. Use it intensively to get good results. I think there are a couple of different versions depending on age.

Janis

… and you want to chat back & forth, sneak over to www.net-haven.net . The chat software’s up there & works 24/7 — and there are three “rooms” so if by some fluke somebody’s in one, you can click on one that says “zero.”

The other day I spoke with an OT who specializes in SID and she told me that soccer is also really good. One more thing, and this sounded fun, she recommended I have my son try to throw a ball at a target while swinging. She said this was good for vestibular vision difficulties.