we’re a week into 4th grade using adderall after a summer add diagnosis. Its so hard to tell as material is all review but what ive seem come home is positive. Handwriting is clearer-papers are done the same quality first question and last-before hed start good, then make errors galore by #8 even if material was same.
Question is, even if this is 100% the solution, wont he need remediation? Could i do it-should i sign up for sylvan. How will i know for sure. Ive been on the ld board here and the decreasing verbal iq likely possibly being a result of add , not CAPD really caught my attention. Ivew always assumed some sort of LD was no 1 issue with ADD a distant 2nd-but maybe im wrong?
I have contacted the school and he is on the list for CAPD and dyslexia testing-who knows when he’ll actually be tested. Meanwhile, can anyone kinda run me through a possible progression of academic skills if we are truly on target with ADD diagnosis and treatment?
Re: OK, assuming the meds work...
I would say it depends also on what your son is lacking at this point, some you may already have figured out, the rest you may need to see the test results to see if he needs remediation.
I found that a one on one tutor helped best, my older son was tutored over the summer between 2nd and 3rd by the school reading teacher, who he had visited during school for reading remediation and really liked. In 4th grade, his teacher was very knowledgeable about add and ld’s, as was her mother who was a retired schoolteacher. Between the good 4th gr. teacher and her mother as tutor(in her home) he did pretty well.Lots of accommodations.
His 4th grade teacher is the person who told me after 2 weeks that something just wasn’t right and recommended testing(second time around), they found the add was affecting school the most and qualified for sped. under ohi. It took most of the year( we started in Oct. and made the iep in March) so basically he really only spent 5th gr. in pullout resource(reading,lang.arts, supplemental math). He had a great year in 5th even though he didn’t want anyone to know he had resource, I told him just to say he was going to reading class if someone asked. Usually no one did. He spent 6th in reg. classes with support from sped. and did very well, and today I just put him on the bus for his first day of 7th.
ADD can affect school just as a learning deficit can(dyslexia or dyscalculia or any of the myriad of others), I have read it described as being more globally affective, since it can impact learning to read, comprehend, remembering which way to regroup in math, oh my, learning those times tables, sometimes they need more time to process a question in order to access the answer, even if they know how to add or subtract, if they can’t understand the directions on a test or assignment(perhaps just one word they can’t figure out) then they mess up. Consider keeping their place on a standardized test, miss one question and the rest are all wrong even if they are really correct.
I can see that I have rambled on a bit, my point really is to get a one on one tutor if your son needs tutoring, they can concentrate so much better that way. Try to find someone who knows about add, there are an amazing number of teachers whose own kids have add, they would be able and willing, I think, to help out if they can.
My younger son’s second grade teacher was a huge help(under the radar though) when we were going through the testing part, she was a great teacher to my younger son who also is adhd, she was very tolerant of his talking which annoyed his 1st grade teacher to no end :o)
There are others here on the board who can help also, I hope this helped out. Best wishes.
Sylvan may work for some kids, but for students with learning disabilities many of the “tutoring” companies don’t really work out that well. We paid over $1500 for a summer from another national chain for our son, and it didn’t do any good. They started out at a lower level than he tested at “to help him build up his self-esteem by knowing the work.” Too bad it took most of the summer before he was given any new work at all. Even then, because he worked slower in the pre-testing, they finished the testing later in the summer, at our additional expense. The teachers didn’t know how to help him with his LD/ADD. He was basically given work to do while the teacher went around the room, helping many students all at different levels. No one student got individual attention except for a short time. If your son just needs a little bit of catch-up or review, yes, it might help. If your son works well alone, yes it might help. If you don’t have the time and energy it takes to work nightly with your son, yes, it might work. Just don’t expect it to always work in the way that you hope.