Results from LMB evaluation...

Sounds good; is it very far below his FS IQ? I know you won’t consider public school but you’d be surprised at the range of kids in public school and perhaps your son wouldn’t be as frustrated as in a high-achiever type private school. I wouldn’t minimize the effects of maturity on the development of bright kids; my 11yo has make lots of progress over the past year and a half on his own. Beware of an LD school that will put your mildly LD kid with very impaired kids…the transition back to reg. ed. can be tough if they’re not following a regular 4-5th grade curriculum. I would save private special ed. school for kids several years behind; make sure you talk to parents of kids who have made the transition back to regular ed. from the school wyou’re looking at.

You’ve articulated many of our confusions and concerns. If we lived in a place with decent public schools he’d be fine in a mainstream setting - and I would consider it. We ended up going private ironically because we sensed at the age of 4 that he needed a smaller class size. That would also put him with kids with a more normal distribution of abilities. Given that he’s in a competitive private school now, being 1 year below grade level is really like being 3 years behind his peers. We ‘re in this weird environment where its all or nothing - either private special ed. or private schools that offer nothing for support. Our original neuropsych eval didn’t recommend special ed, and the LMB person also didn’t think he needed it compared to the kids she sees.

. There is 1 special school in our area that seems to have a really strong curriculum over and above the remediation which is excellent. They limit their enrollment to bright dyslexic kids and their mission is to mainstream them after a few years. If he gets in we’ll send him and - if not… then we’re kind of stuck. Maybe lots of LMB over the summer and stay where he is for one more year.

Karen,

That sounds alot like my son’s reading issues. That is amazing. As you know I have been teaching him some visualization and it really helps. I don’t even do it as separate learning experience but rather incorporate it into other things we do. Mostly this means having him visualize his spelling words and telling me where he sees the third of fourth sound. He also has to picture the word in his mind and spell it backwards; thats how I know for sure he is truelyvisualizing. You just can’t spell something backwards unless you can visualize the word.

Very interesting about the inference too. I bought a bunch of books from the LMB site. One that I really like is visualizing and verbalizing stories. It has short stories and then test questions that test for comprehension after each story. I knew my son’s comprehension was good but when I did these little tests with him I started at grade 2 and did one story with him from each grade. He was able to answer the question from the back of the book grade 8. One was a story that talked about Giraffes and one question was Why would a Giraffe have the highest blood pressure of any other animal and he got it right away. He said to get the blood to their brain because the blood carries oxygen and their brain would die without oxygen.

I had his last sped teacher infer that he had a problem with inference. It really bugged me that she missed that in him. I mean geez just because he can’t write a complete sentence and use periods and capitals doesn’t mean that he can’t think. I think she was the one who had a problem with inference. I am tired of being treated like I am in denial about the fact that despite LD this kid is very bright.

I really agree with this. I think being in sped for just one year put my son behind. I have you as one of the people to thank who convinced me to get him out of there.

There is a very big range in regular ed and there are alot of kids who are in reg ed getting extra help. In my district they call it basic skills. I think it is good because the child gets the same curriculum as everyone else and only help with areas he has a problem with. This is not a program for classified children so my son isn’t eligible. Isn’t that strange, my son either gets put in inclusion which in my district is two teacher run like two classrooms with the sped kids on one side of the room receiving the dumbed down curriculum and the reg kids on the other or nothing.

I honestly don’t even care he doesn’t want extra help. He likes it just where he is and is doing really well, I don’t want to make anymore changes although I know if I fought I could get him in basic skills. It is a civil rights violation to deny him access.

Linda,
THe LMB lady specifically referred to the ability to say what the 3rd or 4th letter in a word is as a skill they will build with Seeing Stars. I’ll keep you posted because it looks we will do it. Then I figure I can always get the V/V books and work with him myself. Do you think I should get them now - do they give you a methodology for talking about stories that helps promote inferencial thinking? Thanks for encouraging me to do PG though, because it is allowing us to skip Lips.

I think my son would have no problem answering your giraffe question. Where his compehension seems to break down was the same kind of breakdown we saw in the comprehension piece of the WISC. Show him a picture of a few people interacting and he misses the gestalt of the picture. He can visualize, and seems to have a decent visual memory. He comes close but misses an accurate interpretation. I think his deficits in this type of thinking are not huge - his performance is average, but since his intelligence is well above average it definitely represents a gap and an area we should address.

I think the VV books are very good better and more self explanatory than the seeing stars books. Also seeing stars uses a little bit of a different method of separating the sounds they use syllables rather than phonemes and well you know my son is just such a PG kid that I used the concept of symbol imagery with the PG way of separating the sounds so didn’t use the seeing stars books. Not to worry though I am sure a really good LMB person will be able to teach him this skill which has really helped my son.

I never really used the VV book because it teaches the specific skill of having the child make a mental picture of the story. When I asked my son to describe a story he described everything right down to the shoes the kid was wearing. He sees movies in his head when he reads and this is what VV teaches so there was no point in teaching something he already knew.

The VV stories book is neat because in order to answer the questions you have to infer which my son could do really well. I just like it because it really justified something I kind of knew. Get that book, I think it is pretty cheap and if you see him have a problem with those stories you can always go back and buy the more expensive VV manual. If he can already do the questions in the stories he probably won’t benefit from more VV instruction. Just my very humble, Linda M.O.M. certified opinion.

One other thing. I think my son does have a problem with inference and comprehension when he reads a very long story. The problem is that his eyes get tired and so I think it is more related to a disconnect from exhaustion and waning attention from having to put in an extra effort than any real cognitive issue. I think that if I can get his eyes fixed this problem will resolve.

Interesting - I also wonder if my son’s higher order skills will be stronger when he can actually read without so much effort. I suspect a mild deficit in this area is amplified by the amount of energy he has to expend just to decode. At our LMB meeting the director said they were shocked he comprehended anything given his extremely slow rate of speed when he reads. And yet he comprehension was 100% for fill in the blank questions. A different skill, but an innate one we can build on.