Hi there,
I’m looking for some objective opinions. My daughter is 6 yrs., 10 mos. and in first grade. She’s struggling academically and was referred for testing. My meeting with the team is tomorrow, but I have the reports and I’ve spoken to the director of sp.ed., and I’m frankly surprised at how serious they’re saying her learning disabillities are. They will recommend classification as ‘multiply handicapped’ and immed. placement in a mult. handi. class with nine other children. Right now she’s in an inclusive classroom with 20 other kids. It’s the end of March and I don’t intend to move her away from her friends at this point; she’s a very social little girl and she would not understand.
I’m gonna’ throw out some scores, and if anyone has any insight, I’d really appreciate it your feedback!
WISC-III Full Scale IQ is normal, with no VIQ/PIQ discrep. Subtest scatter: 5 in Object Assembly, 15 in Coding, between 7 and 11 in everything else.
Perceptual Organization Index is 16th %ile, Freedom-Distractability is 19th
%ile, Processing Speed Index is 71st %ile.
Connors Teacher Scale- only somewhat atypical score is in Cognitive
Problems/Inattentive.
Bender Visual-Motor Gestalt Test: 5 year, 9 month to 5 year, 11 month range
(she’s 6 years, 10 months)
social-emotional functioning reported good
Test of Language Dev’t.-Primary-3:
Core Subjects- highest is Picture Vocab. with 37th %ile, lowest is Sentence
Imitation with 5th %ile
Supplemental Subtests- Phonemic Awareness is 63rd %ile, Word Discrimination
is 9th %ile, Word Articulation is 2nd %ile (ok, personal note- her speech is
difficult to understand, that’s obvious)
Composite Scores- ave. for Listening, just under ave. for Speaking and
Semantics, lower for Syntax, fairly low for Organizing
Clinical Eval. of Language Fundamentals (CELF-3):
Age Equivalent of 5-7 , Total Language Score of 90 (ave. is 90-110)
only 5th %ile for Concepts and Directions, 9th %ile for Word Structure- so
Expressive Total is 18th %ile
Woodcock-Johnson:
intentional cognitive processing in low range
visual-spatial, fluid reasoning, short-term memory, phonemic awareness are
ave.
processing speed, working memory- low ave.
comprehension-knowledge- low
long-term retrieval- very low
oral lang. skills, oral expression-ave., listening comprehension skills-low
ave., academic skills- ave., knowledge, ability to apply academic skills- low
ave.
math calc.- ave., broad reading, basic reading, reading compreh.- low ave.,
math reasoning-low, knowledge of phoneme-grapheme relationships- low
What would you ask the team? What would you do with your child? Thanks in advance!
Re: just learning daughter has lds
I don’t understand why they classified her as multihandicapped?With an average IQ it seems to me they would have classifed her as learning disabled. I would get a a specialist to evaluate her attention. Most school system tests and most peditricians (unless they have specialized training) do not diagnosis attention deficit very well especially the inattentive type which a lot of girls have.
I would really think twice about a separate special ed classroom and think more about a regular classroom with pull out and/or inclusion from resource (special ed). five days a week for 30 to 60 min. per day. Get her some help this summer too and maybe a tutor once a week for the school year. Good luck.
Re: just learning daughter has lds
Look very very carefully at what is being offered. In some cases, full-time special ed can be a wonderful placement with a caring teacher who actually teaches what the child needs. In far too many other cases it’s a warehousing system to get “those kids” out of sight and out of mind. Physically visit classes in session and talk to the actual teachers she would have. Of course you ask ahead politely, but if you are stonewalled and everything is a deep dark secret, that is a bad sign.
Get *everything* in writing. It’s amazing how fast out of sight, out of mind happens when people don’t have a paper trail. The squeaky wheel definitely gets the grease here.
Practice saying “no” loud and clear and finally. This is an important word in dealing with bureaucracies. Be as polite and patient as you can be, and keep an open mind towards different approaches, but when you see something wrong, say no and keep saying it.
Get help on the poor kid’s speech issues ASAP. The school’s testing has shown a clear need. They should have some way to get you to a Speech and Language Provider (SLP). If you have money, you may be able to get quicker service and more time by hiring someone privately as well. Since speech is the main form of activity in school, she needs as much help as you can get her here.
There are many programs that people here often suggest, including Earobics, The Listening Program, Tomatis, and Fast ForWord just to name a few. I am not personally familiar with any of these but you can ask here and people will give you advice from their experience.
Poor speech can make all of those other test scores questionable. Take them with a large grain of salt. If you can get a second opinion, do so.
Your child needs to learn to read. Poor speech can cause probelms here, but if *properly* taught, reading can feed back and either help or replace speech (the “whole-language” people consider this idea to be heresy, but how much good have they done you?)
Many people here and on the teaching reading board can tell you how to get started, either by yourself or with a tutor. I will be happy to send my outlines and materials suggestions if you just email me and remind me of your situation.
Lindamood-Bell works on speech sounds related to reading — if there is a clinic near you and if you can afford it, thius could be another effective approach.
Re: just learning daughter has lds
J,
Well, I may be coming into this a little late, but I surely hope this child was not labeled multi-handicapped! If I have ever heard of an improper label, this would be it. Multi-hanidcapped usually means multiple issues such as mental retardation, hearing or visual impairment, physical handicaps, learning disabilities, etc. They are drastically altering the meaning of the classification of multi-handicapped.
If it were me, I’d refuse any decision until I could take my child for a private evaluation. From there you can determine if the school has any appropriate services at all. Speech lanaguge may be good but usually is not enough. You may be looking at outside tutoring (or home tutoring) in order to really help her. I think it is possible she could have auditory processing problems. Has anyone suggested an auditory processing evaluation?
I would contact your state branch of the Learning Disabilties Asso. of America and get some references of places that do good testing. Universities sometimes have good reading and language testing in their communication disorders department. That is usually less expensive than a private eval and would be where I would look first since she clearly needs more assessment in that area.
Janis
there is a pattern here...
she has a low processing speed, and that is indicative of ADD. The connors scale also comes up ADD-Inattentive…The portions she scored low on the CELF require her to focus and attend, namely Concepts and Directions…tests her ability to understand temporal concepts like before, then, after, same time; exclusion, inclusion. She has to listen to 1, 2 and 3 step commands.. etc…
On the TOLD she isn’t able to hold setences in her auditory memory and repeat them back. She has decent Phonemic Awareness which is a surprise to me considering how low her scores are on Articulation and word discrimination. She also scored low on organization on the TOLD.
This is a little girl with language issues which are impacted by her abilty to focus and attend. Chances are she is a very well behaved child in the class who has a tendency to daydream. I would recommend talking with the pediatrician and possibly think about ways to get her out of her little world and tuned into the classroom. One can do this with medication….but you can also implement an auditory trainer to be used in the classroom to help her with focusing, vocabulary and language development. Read a lot with her, reinforce language 24/7, don’t let her play off by herself, she needs to be using and be exposed to language in order to make progress..
The longer she stays tuned out the more language she is going to miss and the further the vortex will become between her and her peers. Personally I don’t think she is multiple handicapped. Does she have any syndromes or is there anything else you haven’t shared with us that would make the team come up with that label?
Re: just learning daughter has lds
Thank you very much for your input. I very much appreciate it!
I am going to allow them to place her in a special ed. setting for math and language arts each day, and of course they’ll begin giving her speech therapy right away. It’s frustrating that she needs the speech therapy so badly, because they tested her last year and deemed her ineligible because the delays were “developmental.” And now she’s in such relative bad shape…..they missed an opportunity last year.We will be having audiological testing in three weeks- we can’t discount the possibility that she may not hear well or may have CAPD. Depending on the results, I may also take her to a neurologist.
For now, I’m also allowing her to be classified ‘multiply disabled’- communcation impaired and specific learning disability in written expression.
Thank you again for sharing your thoughts!
-‘J’
Those scores say you’ve got a kiddo who is struggling in the things that teachers see the most — the speech, comprhension and knowledge, listening skills, etc. I think you’re right in that she’s got strengths that should be nurtured and developed. I’d be asking about ways to tap those strenghts in the regular classroom — and how they can help with her articulation issues. The “very low” long-term retrieval woud concern me, as would some of the striking inconsistencies. Processing speed 71% on teh WISC but “low average” on the Woodcock Johnson — what was the difference? (Tester? What she ate that day? Something different about the tests?)