Private Clinic Students

I have often thought about this too. I have a friend whose son has the same disability as my youngest son. This friend only has the one child and has sufficient money to pay for therapies. Her son has been through biofeedback training, listening therapy, private speech language therapy, used multivitamens and few other “alternative” treamtments. She felt the public school district had nothing to offer and mainly got treatments on her own. In my case I have 3 children, 2 of whom have special needs, and not a lot of money for private treatments. For the most part my boys have been treated through the public school system. Both boys have made significant improvement since receiving special ed services. Granted they may not be on grade level but they have made steady improvement. The youngest son who falls on the Autism spectrum started out to have skills lower then the boys who received private services. After 3 years of private services this ladies son made little to no progress. In the same three year period my son went from a pre-K reading level to a 3rd grade reading level, from no social skills to skills to allow frienships. One of the differences between the two boys treatment was in public shcool my friends child was mainstreamed a majority of the day, and my son was in self contained LD class for the majority of the day. The other difference was her sons outside help was from therapies provided by others. My sons extra instruction came from us at home in the form of partner reading, oral questioning, role playing, ect.

Thanks for sharing this information Anitya. I believe you brought this up in a previous post and I was curious to hear what you had learned.

One thing your observation brought to my mind is that a local friend of mine recently had her daughter complete PACE. She felt the program was helpful, but she thought that in order to continue being helpful her daughter would need to do it regularly.

Perhaps “rememdiation” needs to be a continuous building of skills (such as having a child participate long-term in activities like gymnastics, karate, piano, etc…) as oppossed to “quick fixes.”

I don’t really know, but it’s a thought….

I think that one issue that occurs with such therapy is the child is very complex and even fixing one piece, if indeed it is fixed, does not necessarily translate directly into academics. There still can be other things holding the child back.
We did PACE and without great success, I would say. My son’s problems are much more sensory based than PACE is—learned that the hard way!! Still, there are gains my son made that stayed, although they did not translate directly into reading. His visual spatial skills improved, his ability to process visual information improved.

I also suspect you do a much better than average job in the classroom. We started down the private therapy route when all we could get in the public school was total incompetence. Eventually, that individual left and I think it is noteworthy that my son was the only one in third grade resource who could read at all (and I had taught him).

Also, I have to tell you, ironically, that you are one of the reasons I have pursued the private therapy route. My son fits the triple deficits you have talked about—phonological, RAN, and visual processing issues. Those kids do not have much of a chance it seems, even with very good teaching. So we have chosen, with success, to work on the undelrying processing. My son has made tremendous progress and is now in a combination regular classroom and resource room for reading. Now in fourth grade, he reads with the regular class (lowest group) and then when they do independent work, he goes to resource room for more reading instruction. This is a child who was a complete nonreader at the end of first grade and for whom I was told to lower my expectations.

Now he, like your fifth graders, isn’t much for periods…..and his spelling too is on about a second grade level.

Beth

Sometimes, I think, therapy is to get the kid to the point that he could benefit from regular activities that then can improve his or her skills. My son took karate last year but didn’t like it because he wasn’t very good at it. I let him quit when we started IM and we haven’t gone back to it since we play soccer in the fall and winter here. Given the improvements I have seen in soccer, I would venture to say he would be better at karate now too. Now just to get him back to it….

Beth

You know, it appears to me IDEA should have had a teacher training/specialist training or monetary incentive package built in for special educators. The reason many of our LD children aren’t doing well in school is that there’s no-one there trained to work with them. Now that the colleges believe they’ll catch up like catching a virus by being with those who know, our children sink in the slimey mire of politically correct/constructionavist programming. Young teachers come into classrooms and are eaten alive - they quit. Good ones move out of the classroom and into paperwork…or into the universities. Dedicated ones continue to have successes and wonder why parents sue and win - gaining private educational facilities thousands of tax payers dollars to bring a student to where a simple resource room of twenty years ago could have brought him/her.

How can we get young teachers dreaming again? How can we even recruit? Is there anything left of altruism?

(Or not so slowly…), you’ll get him attending to that punctuation. :-) Spelling will come along slowly behind reading. It is a long and winding journey, Santiago.

You are an amazing mom! Such a good balance of motivation and empathy and seeing the big picture plus smaller details clearly and objectively. A difficult thing to do with one’s own child.

Thanks Susan!!

He does like that drum!!!!

I have to tell you that I had a conversation with his regular teacher yesterday that was amazing. My son had come home whining on Monday about writing. Fourth grade is where the kids take the high stakes writing test so there is a lot of emphasis on writing. He tried to tell me that he didn’t need to learn to write and was quite dismayed to find out that both I and my husband and his favorite aunt do a lot of writing as part of our jobs. He seemed to think he was incapable of learning to write and seemed to overwhelmed with everything. He had tears in his eyes as he worked with me on his assignment. Then he went to bed in quite a funk.

His teacher told me that he was working me and that he was perfectly capable. She told me he wrote two pages in 30 minutes for an assessment at school. Anyway, she told me how he answered all the questions on a field trip they went on to the Everglades and how all the kids were amazed at him.
She told me he was getting an A in math on his report card (he has never had an A on his report card and was barely getting C’s in math by the end of last year). And she told me that he may even get an A in reading!! I guess he is just doing splendid in his reading group, although he still isn’t at grade level.

Such a change from a few years ago when I was told that I needed to adjust my expectations…… I seemed to be the only one who believed he could learn to read or learn to do anything for that matter.

And you are right, it is a long journey. When I decided I would teach him, if they couldn’t, I never imagined it would be so difficult. Glad I didn’t know then what I know now.

Beth

How has IDEA changed things? I, of course, don’t know any other world. I do know that my son’s first resource teacher was totally incompetent—I had district people admitting that she was using programming incorrectly. The one he has now is pretty good but she doesn’t get enough support. She also has too many kids. Was this situation better before IDEA?

I also think where I am at anyway, the district has not chosen to support effective programming or provide training.

Beth

Yes, Beth, I have seen the same thing with my son. We dropped out of piano before IM and now he loves piano. Also, he couldn’t ride a skateboard before. He is finally getting it.

I don’t think that IM teaches piano or teaches skateboarding. It does give him skills that were missing before.

I think that parental support is also key. I can’t imagine that just sticking him in programs and not following help would really help. This is true no matter what the therapy or intervention.

Well, Ken, we don’t support our teachers. We don’t train them. I have no opportunities built into my job to interface with other resource teachers around the district. We have so many meetings, etc. it is next to impossible to find a morning or afternoon to meet together. 4-5 of us meet the last Friday of the month for breakfast informally. I had to miss last month.

Our administrators have no real understanding of what we do and how hard we must work (the work is rewarding, so it is not toil and trouble) to get our students moving along academically. They think nothing of overloading us.

I am having a wonderful, wonderful fall. I have 18 students! I have a group of 5, but the rest are 4 or less. I am measuring goals and objectives for report cards and generally i am getting good progress. Is it any wonder? I am teaching and individualizing.

By March I will be in the mid 20s. I will see many of my students (as I do now) twice per day. I will be managing groups of 7 in a 45 minute instructional block and I will have very little time to work 1:1 with children who have specific needs and still do all the necessary teaching for all. While there is a great deal of overlap, there are individualized pieces.

The programs that are getting results (I mostly have students at 2-3 reading level and beyond) for my students I believe are: Great Leaps (Ken’s program) and Read Naturally. I think these two programs are really improving the reading scores, coupled with my small group instruction on skills. I follow an O-G approach and sequence for teaching decoding skills. Even when these programs only require a few minutes per day, they do require 1:1 and maintaining these programs for students in large groups takes more time than I find I have.

If we want our resource programs to work, we really should seriously consider limiting caseloads to 20 or less. We should never have more than 4 in a resource room group (I get progress with the larger groups, but I don’t think it is as marked).

I am not qualifying many students who cannot read anymore. Thanks to a really strong general education reading program that starts in K, it is more typical to qualify a child in third grade who is scoring at second grade, but who reads very slowly. Hence, my emphasis on programs like Read Naturally and Great Leaps.

All that said, I am having a great year, enjoying my students and seeing the progress that small groups allow for. Looking down the road, though, this is not likely to remain in place. The principal is committed to running as many students through the testing process as she can and I can predict where things will be in March; bursting in every time slot all day long, and the complete loss of my testing time slot.

How I wish we could get our legislators to really understand that we can teach more effectively to very small groups in our special ed. progams.

Beth,

Congratulations to you and you son I know you are so happy.

Oh Ken,

I just came from an IEP meeting for my son. Long story; moved him out of inclusion class that was doing more harm than good. He is much more relaxed and doing well in this new class. This is the kid who never fidgeted before inclusion and is now again not fidgeting after being removed from this strange experiment that is inclusion in my district. All sped did for him was make him fidget.

I asked about LMB seeing stars for him as one topic that kept coming up was that his writing was still very weak. I said that he doesn’t visualize the symbols and that if he could learn that he would probably write better. The sped teacher who was LMB trained agreed this would help. The group maintained that they don’t do pull out for kids who are mainstreamed. They said LMB is sped and I already refused sped. (The class he was in before did not have a teacher trained in LMB.) So no LMB for him, even though they have it and even though he would benefit him. I don’t care; if it means he has to be subjected to that crazy inclusion they do, I would rather he not get it. I also didn’t get a great feeling from this woman; she had the jaded sensibility I found in his last sped teacher.

I kept thinking this is a wonderful program that would benefit all children. Why does it have to be only sped? The LMB trained sped teacher that was there seemed to indicate that LMB was extremely difficult and only something that can be done by the few highly trained specialists they had.

I say hogwash! Hasn’t anyone ever heard of train the trainer. Get a few people trained really well and share the wealth. This isn’t rocket science.

One other thing. The new regular ed teacher had a lot of really nice things to say about my son. She said he was eager to learn, well behaved, doing well socially, and that he caught up with the reading that he was behind in really fast. This seemed to annoy the rest of the room. At one point this sweet, naive, obviously never experienced an IEP meeting person said something like he does put his head on his desk on occasion. They all pounced, “Is he tired? Is he not paying attention? Do you think he is tuning out?” The questions came fast and furious. She said, “No, really, I think he is fine, I think he is listening with his head down, which is fine with me.”

I just walked away thinking. Teachers really need to take an oath like physicians. First do no harm.

Linda,

They just trying to beat you with the system but you know that!!! I am so glad he has a wonderful teacher who doesn’t play their games.

Beth

Anitya,
A lot of interesting responses here, but I wanted to get back to your main topic which touched on conflicts of interest in clinics that help parents sue the school to pay for their programs. I’m not sure this goes on at the remedial clinics in my area, but it certainly goes on in the testing places. We were barely five minutes into the neuropsych’s discusssion of results when he began the pitch for using the center’s advocate. I really found it distasteful and worse, counterproductive. My ds really needed some targeted remediation and he totally dismissed that and any discussion of specific remedies, insisting ds needed to be in an expensive private LD school that the advocate would get the district to pay for.

But this isn’t the only place where there are conflicts—language testing, for example, is done at centers that provide the remediation. Are there any out there that pitch their services when they’re really not needed, but the parent doesn’t enough about the testing process to do anything else but go along with the experts? Ditto vision testing. CAPD testing remains conflict free for the most part because it requires such expensive equipment and so most have to go to universities that don’t simulataneously offer services.

As for your contention that your kids seem to be making more progress than many in private remediation, I can believe it. Having put my child through lots of private remediation, at times it seemed counterproductive. And this for the very simple reason that it was all done on top of regular school and regular homework. But I didn’t have another option at the time the problems started—the sped at the school was near nonexistent and what was there was so deficient that ds’s son recommended private testing and remediation. I have no doubt he would have made at least as good, if not better progress, had he been lucky enough to be at your school. And all of us would have a lot more free time for just enjoying life.

My private OT said it was the best and cheapest OT I could have gotten at 3 - 4 years of age!

Beth, just interested, does he do any typing? You know the auditory spellchecks are great for use on computers.

My daughter can pass a spelling test with an A every time, but can’t spell anything correctly when writing. She knows the beginning, middle, ending, and punctuation, including quotes and commas, but it’s hard to get more than 3 sentences out of her - of course, they are 3 perfectly punctuated sentences! When she takes writing tests, they are correct, but contain the very minimum of content. No elaboration, but orally she can tell one whopper of a story! We have found the organizational software to be a big help.

Anyway, I have come to the conclusion that she will never be a great speller, but don’t want that to hold her back from being able to show her knowledge and ability. Thought it might help you son as well.

I know. I know. Unfort. I didn’t sign my son up until I was aware of problems which was at age 7. I only got him to take for a year until he decided it was something boys don’t do!! Sigh. And he wasn’t even half bad at it.

Beth

My son learned to type this summer but hasn’t used it much this fall. What happened is that his handwriting improved a lot following IM. So much so that he is able to keep up with the writing demands of a regular classroom without typing. And he doesn’t like to be different, so I haven’t pushed it. He does use typing at home some but frankly he has lost some of it.

But I will tell you he is no better at periods when typing!!! I am trying to teach him how to use the spell check but am not familiar with the auditory ones you are talking about.

Beth

In 1976 I had six to eight students as a case load (it eventually grew to 12-16….not at a time - for a day- these were students with significant behavior disorders. As the professional I had input in the staffing, labelling process. I had support from a certified professional and those of us in behavior disorders met regularly as a team. Our services and paperwork were monitored closely by the state and nation - in fact, I was audited my first year of teaching. At the Univ. of Florda, I had top class professionals interested in the etiology of emotional disturbance, in the instruction of those with learning problems, and in coordinating community services for these children. Professors included Cecil Mercer, Bob Algozzine, and Bill Wolking. I attended conferences which were exciting and young teachers were encouraged to innovate, share, and learn. My colleagues in LD had a somewhat higher class load but were very much into prescriptive teaching. Many of their children were remediated and returned to the mainstream. The students belonged to the mainstream back then, and came to us as a resource. We were in charge of the intervention and coordinating a plan to get that child back performing in the mainstream. Most teachers had achieved stringent certifications in special education. Those of us recruited to teach, underwent serious training at the university level and worthwhile inservicing at school.

Now let’s go ahead a career. Wonderful teachers are being driven from the classrooms by unbelievable overloads. I wrote Great Leaps because I was expected to teach reading to 17 adolescents at a shot. (Yeah, right. God Himself knows better than to try something so impossible.)

There are those who think that proper paperwork equates reasonable service delivery. What a sham! THE CLOTHES HAVE NO EMPEROR!!!! The best special education teachers I know are in charge of writing proper paperwork, running IEP meetings, cleaning up things for auditors, and teaching teachers had to do proper paperwork. All are fedup with being flak catchers by administrators who perhaps even believe everything is hunky dory. Parents unload on overburdoned special educators with regularity; treating us as if we’re the damned problem….and how many of them politically support no new taxes - support the present society-wide efforts to damn public education?? How many have asked for the incredible for their kid at the expense of the rest? And I watch districts give in when lawyers and threats of lawyers are involved - even when what the parent desires is extremely detrimental to the child. (The IEP has always been about the child, not the parent.)

Don’t think I’m anti-parent. I’m against the know-it-alls who come in fighting even when service delivery is tops. I’m against the bullies and liars on both sides. Don’t think I haven’t come after administrators in my career.

Somewhere in this mess, the kids suddenly became ours and there had to be a movement to allow our children back into the mainstream. (Where they were failed and mistreated and sent back to us.)

The universities and professional organizations have been a really big help. Young teachers have spent more classroom time studying about racism, feminism, diversity and sexual preference than in working with reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic. CEC spent years worrying about reorganizing and passing IDEA than in seeing adequate service delivery existed. Speak up on these issues and some of the absurdities involved and you’re branded a white bigot in sheets - it not mattering all that much that I marched for civil rights in the 60’s and worked in President Johnson’s Poverty Program. I’m a 53 year old white male with a Southern accent.

Yes, emphatically I believe special education was better in Florida before PL94-142. I now believe most children with minimal handicapping conditions would have been better off if they had received no special education services at all. For every good teacher, there has been a young baseball coach hired to get kids in line until an opening comes in the athletic department. For every innovator in special education there has been the tired, burnt out incompetent exiled to our children to finish their career. For every innovative, caring adminstrator there have been 5 fast tracked Peter Principled to fill a quota.

I have not written this to offend teachers, parents, administrators - note that this note went after them all. Special education was a lot more special and professional back in ‘76 than what I presently see. And after all is said and done, I guess it will be my generation of professional educators who will shoulder the blame from the whole mess.

(I do not live my life in the negative realm, a nerve was hit with the quite appropriate question.) Let’s pray for a better educational future for children with behavioral and learning problems. Ken Campbell

Linda,
The resource specialist at my school is trained in LIPS, has a son with dyslexia, and none of the children in the intervention group are taught using LIPS. (As far as I know). Also, there are no “special ed” classes at my school. Only a gifted program.

In addition, I just found out yesterday that the speech teacher has been trained in VV. When I asked about her using it with my son she told me she only has him for a short time weekly so she can’t fit anything extra into the schedule. (But she’s been extremely helpful and has offered to share with me information and resources ).

One more thing…and this is really weird! One mom was telling me that in her son’s 3rd grade class their weekly spelling tests are multiple choise!!!! Guess why! This school has the highest national test scores out of all the local school districts and is merely preparing the kids for these tests. Their entire focus is teaching to the tests!!!

Sadly, it’s not about educating kids, it’s all about their reputation.

Beth,
I think you are very inspirational. Reading about what you’ve done, and your son’s successes, give me (and I’m sure many others) alot of motivation and hope.

Marie, thanks for your thoughts. That was only one student. I do believe some make progress and I know that special ed. teachers are often not well-prepared or are given caseloads that are not manageable. I just read on under a class size post of the teacher who had Down Syndrom, autism, LD, and seriously emotionally disturbed in one classroom. I suspect there are so many behaviors in that kind of setting the teacher trys to manage behavior, so teaching takes a backseat.

As for conflict of interest. The 2-3 clinics of which I am aware do offer advocacy services to parents. I do believe the founders were just trying to help students. However, it becomes tempting to help parents against schools, esp. when you charge them by the hour and may get reimbursement for them to up the hours at your clinic. I don’t think most start off trying to lasso parents into spending mega$$$$, but I believe this may be what can happen. Indeed, many private assessment persons, neuropsychs. or whatever, do have personnel they can refer you to for therapy. It can get potentially conflicted.

Before PL 94-142 CA had learning disabilities teachers who worked 1:1 with students.

Sadly, when we become outraged at the flagrantly inappropriate cases of managing special ed. students (there were those) we then decide the next thing to do is pass a law (how we fix everything in this country). We fail to recognize that passing laws does not fix anything, that laws are just hte use of, excuse me, bully power, and that there were actually a number of better programs out and about before 1976 or whenever the feds. got into the sped. business. Nothing gets better in the long run when we let the feds in.

Better ways to create change, I believe, is through education. You’ll never get everybody doing things just the way you want them, but you do gradually raise the consciousness and the only thing that produces any REAL change is a changed consciousness. People have to see the need and WANT to change something.

At lunch yesterday we were discussing the SLP crisis. Our county has flown SLP positions nationally, they do not have enough SLPs. They are having to tell people the service is not available. What they don’t realize is that this monster is a thing of their own creation. The legal situation, parent advocacy taken to the extreme, etc. is ruining special ed. and SLP persons don’t WANT anything to do with schools and the junk. Even my dear friend said she would give this another year and then she might go to work for a hospital.

We have a huge sped population in my district. They classify easily. I think so that the kids who have trouble don’t take the time from the regular ed teachers.

The principal said to my son’s new teacher, “Is this situation causing difficulty in your class and causing you to take time away from other children.” My son’s teacher said, “No, it was fine.”

I was just doing visualizing and verbalizing with my son. He read a paragraph from level 8 and answered every question correctly. Why do giraffes have higher blood pressure than any other animal? He responded, “Because they have long necks and they need higher blood pressure to get the blood to their brains.”
When he described the giraffe he didn’t just say brown and yellow. He said yellow legs with brown patches on their bodies and a yellow face with one brown circle around one eye. He can totally visualize the gestalt but can not demonstrate that on the written page because of his inability to visualize symbols. It really is the weirdest thing.

He got treated like he didn’t understand anything in the inclusion class because of his performance on written tests. Imagine how frustrating that must be.

Ok Ken, I am a bit dense. IDEA is obviously federal legislation which set criteria for states on who was elgible for services. I picked up from your posts that it created paperwork and increased loads because of increased number of students elgible. I can understand the distaste of paper work (I am always amazed at how many things have to be signed at my son’s IEP meeting.) Apart from that, is the problem that case loads are too high for meaningful remediation? If so, I am confused about the role of the university in this.

I don’t know if my son would have qualified pre1976. He certainly is LD—and quite severely so. How have the “rules” for qualifying changed? I would say that we and private help have been what has mainly helped him. Certainly, he would have been better off in the pre IDEA environment you describe but I don’t know if he would have been classified then.

Beth

Thanks Laura. And really my son in K was totally outside the normal curve for the class–he and the girl with Down’s syndrome were in the same boat. And in first grade, I was told that he had trouble learning anything and couldn’t generalize from the little he did learn.

My only regret is that I didn’t try to do more earlier. I guess I was in denial (the K teacher gently told me, “Beth, but he is a special ed student.” I thought he’d outgrow it with the help he was getting (speech services mainly). For all his problems, he didn’t appear to be that off the mark—just a bit immature. It wasn’t until it was clear at the end of first grade that the school was incapable of teaching him to read that I

When our legislators and our president send us the word that the test scores ARE the whole enchilada, so to speak, suddenly, the test scores drive the entire system. They do. The SAT 9 tests spelling in a multiple choice format. But, you know, the real issue with spelling is can the child spell the words correctly in writing? Therefore, with that in mind, as long as spelling is taught, does it matter that greatly how we test on Friday morning?

Beth,
I’ll try to answer as best I can. You’re not dense, the problem areas are huge and a few pages of writing are always inadequate for clarity.

“….is the problem that case loads are too high for meaningful remediation?”

First, with the classloads meaningful remediation has become virtually impossible. Walk in a secondary special education class for LD’s/BD’s and observe. In even disciplined settings, direct instruction is virtually impossible. How can there be individualized attention with such crowds?

Re: the universities: The universities and their power in special education have adocated the lumping of all students together in what Florida called “varying exceptionalities”. The old classification system is soon gone. For some reason, non-frontliners see little difference between LD’s, BD’s, and MH’s (60 to 70 IQ).

Note: I believe in labelling by category but treating to need. I also believe in credentialing special ed teachers in expert areas, not in all areas. There are times learning experts are needed, times when behavior experts are needed - when there are only generalists - expertise is virtually gone.

Many in universities do not believe in remediation any more than they believe in phonics, memorization of anything, classroom control, pull-out remediation, etc. (Read the debate from the articles on “Curriculum of Control”) The only good thing that will come out of all their politically correct, anarchistic nihilism is the complete and utter destruction of a special education bureacracy gone mad. Then perhaps with LDA and IDA as partners, professionally designed and trained interventions for our children will arise - according to need not label.

I’ll look at classification from how I viewed it in about 1977 just about when we were seeing what 94-142 was all about. At that point the laws and funding were being put into place, things were going along in North Marion County pretty much as they always had.

If a learning disability were suspected, a teacher, a parent, or the guidance department would have the learning disabilities specialist initiate (with the parent’s permission) informal testing. If the informal testing showed problems, formilized testing began which could lead to staffing. To meet criteria, there had to be a statistically significant discrepancy in process areas compard to the whole IQ. There also had to be academic problems. Remembering the LD students back then, they seemed far more LD than what I see in classes today - which look to me like 33% plus Conduct Disorders.

Most LD professionals of pre-1990 were certified, members of a professional organization, and quite articulate in the field. Some of this still remains in the elementary schools - but I see far too little today.

I’m certain talks on these issues will continue on this board - I’m only good for about ten minutes of writing at a time. Ken Campbell

Beth,
I’ll try to answer as best I can. You’re not dense, the problem areas are huge and a few pages of writing are always inadequate for clarity.

“….is the problem that case loads are too high for meaningful remediation?”

First, with the classloads meaningful remediation has become virtually impossible. Walk in a secondary special education class for LD’s/BD’s and observe. In even disciplined settings, direct instruction is virtually impossible. How can there be individualized attention with such crowds?

Re: the universities: The universities and their power in special education have adocated the lumping of all students together in what Florida called “varying exceptionalities”. The old classification system is soon gone. For some reason, non-frontliners see little difference between LD’s, BD’s, and MH’s (60 to 70 IQ).

Note: I believe in labelling by category but treating to need. I also believe in credentialing special ed teachers in expert areas, not in all areas. There are times learning experts are needed, times when behavior experts are needed - when there are only generalists - expertise is virtually gone.

Many in universities do not believe in remediation any more than they believe in phonics, memorization of anything, classroom control, pull-out remediation, etc. (Read the debate from the articles on “Curriculum of Control”) The only good thing that will come out of all their politically correct, anarchistic nihilism is the complete and utter destruction of a special education bureacracy gone mad. Then perhaps with LDA and IDA as partners, professionally designed and trained interventions for our children will arise - according to need not label.

I’ll look at classification from how I viewed it in about 1977 just about when we were seeing what 94-142 was all about. At that point the laws and funding were being put into place, things were going along in North Marion County pretty much as they always had.

If a learning disability were suspected, a teacher, a parent, or the guidance department would have the learning disabilities specialist initiate (with the parent’s permission) informal testing. If the informal testing showed problems, formilized testing began which could lead to staffing. To meet criteria, there had to be a statistically significant discrepancy in process areas compard to the whole IQ. There also had to be academic problems. Remembering the LD students back then, they seemed far more LD than what I see in classes today - which look to me like 33% plus Conduct Disorders.

Most LD professionals of pre-1990 were certified, members of a professional organization, and quite articulate in the field. Some of this still remains in the elementary schools - but I see far too little today.

I’m certain talks on these issues will continue on this board - I’m only good for about ten minutes of writing at a time. Ken Campbell

My daughter was TERRIBLE. (this is before I had a diagnosis and just thought she was the most obnoxious ill behaved, uncoordinated child on the face of the earth). Then found out later she had “severe specific LD’s in all academic areas AND significant processing delays both auditory and visual. Oh, don’t forget the ADD, SI and motor planning, SIGH!

HOWEVER, she was also the child who would CONTINUE falling on her head 18 times until she was able to do both a right and left handed cartwheel. Her perserverance has served her well!

Unfortunately we now pay $45/30 minutes in lieu of $45/mo for the OT! :-0

Funny thing happened this week - maybe some of you have run into this or have some input…

My daughter has played soccer for approx. 4 years. She made her first goal recently (basically she was in the right place at the right time and nudged it in - but SHE doesn’t know that)

Recently my coach came to me b/c he has seen some changes in her playing. He has pulled her out of the last 2 games and not let her play much. He said “It’s not a lack of effort or trying, she see’s the ball, she knows what to do, but it’s like her body won’t move - like the signal isn’t getting through”.

YIKES! My 1st thought was is that “slow processing” beginning to show itself? Her motor planning is now in the high average range and she is on ADD meds (which I usually do NOT give her for her games). Coach said this has been a development he has noticed in approximately the past mo.

The team is undefeated, so it is a group a very skilled girls (again mine has just been along “for the ride” b/c she’s been playing with them since she was 5-6) and I must say she is far better than she was in the past. At times she plays a pretty strong game - but not lately.

I guess my concern is - is this her processing deficit showing up and does this mean that as she gets older her lack of ability will become more and more obvious?

I plan to talk to my pediatrician (we already had a physical scheduled thankfully) and also to my OT. Just wondered if any parents have seen this and if there’s something that can improve it or we are at the “this is good as it gets” plateau. My biggest concern is that she will be devastated if she cannot continue the sport b/c she loves it. Any suggestions or comments? I wanted to cry after I talked to him.

LMB is in public school in Alachua County, Florida (I believe it’s Alachua). I think we will see more of this as time goes on b/c of the need and how the same curriculum can benefit both LD and non-LD students.

However, if I could afford it, I would probably still at least supplemental privately b/c of the great gains of 1-on-1 remediation.

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The most obvious of them is that the coach is noticing more flaws in her play because he/she is more intent on winning and the stakes are higher. We can afford to look aside when the stakes are low. Competition is a funny thing. Our competitive spirit can change our whole perspective, even when we really don’t think we would do such a thing…

As her mother, you would notice if her performance were that different. I’ll take your measuring stick over a coach’s. He/she may be justifying less play time. You aren’t justifying anything.

The other possibility is anxiety because her coach and/or peers may be expecting more, unconsciously treating her differently. (I certainly am not implying that they are being intentionally hurtful.)

Finally, if her physical performance were all that different…reduced in ability…your OT would have noticed very quickly. So would you, mom. You have an eagle-eye and 1/2!

Trust your instincts. What do you think is happening? Observe behavior carefully next game. Facial expressions. Body language.

Sometimes the LDer’s don’t get the body language, but they feel tension and it makes them tense. Sometimes they cannot even verbalize it. My son couldn’t.

Funny thing about the anxiety is that she seems to have NONE. Honestly, she has the highest frustration level I have ever seen. Very calm. In fact, recently she had to do a goal kick. (I broke into a sweat thinking - can’t he get someone else to do this?) She set up the ball, took a run for it and the referee’s whistle blew and she had to stop (someone was out of position). She returned, ran for the ball again, and (can you believe it) the whistle blows again and she has to stop (again someone out of position). Everyone (including yours truly) is thinking good GRIEF, they are only 9! 3rd time, she lines up, runs at the balls and boom goal kick. (Granted this was also an opportunity to brag :-), but wouldn’t you have to have nerves of steel to do that?) Doesn’t seem to line up with the anxiety in the game? You are absolutely right that the OT should have noticed somethign amiss with processing, tho, so that doesn’t make sense either. Also, sensory integration is a problem (we don’t have much that isn’t) and possibly during a game there is much more going on? The coach says that during 1on1 drills she is doing fine.

Geez, this is like trying to put a giant jigsaw puzzle together. I know her OT often tells me that these kids are very inconsistent. Your response tells me to talk to the OT and of course, keep my eagle eye honed in :-). As always, Hats off for your response

Go with your instincts, I always feel. Mom’s generally know best.

Leah,

Is she playing in a competitive league or recreational? Where I am at and everywhere else I am familiar, everyone plays in the recreational league. My son, who has made so much progress, is in a recreational league. We had one coach who didn’t play by the rules—which basically is everyone plays equally.
So my first reaction was who does this coach think he is (assuming this is recreational).

If she is playing travel, then maybe you will have an issue as kids progress. But then I would think the solution would be to put her in a recreational league.

As I have said several time, IM really has helped my son’s soccer playing. But even so I don’t know if my son will ever be good enough for travel league. And frankly, as a family, I don’t think we are up for it (three in recreational is enough for me!!!)

Beth

My son wasn’t obviously uncoordinated which is what is odd about him. He rode a bike at age 4 (later we realized he did it and everything fast because he couldn’t balance any other way). He could kick a soccer ball in about the middle of the crowd. He was 7 before we had the SID diagnosis. He was obnoxious as a preschooler and I now think that SID was behind his very DIFFICULT behavior.

If he had stood out more, I would have done more early on. The most pronounced thing was his behavior but that was easy to blame on our parenting. (of course, our other child was nothing like him but…) So it was easy to be in denial (even his nursery school teacher pooh poohed the small motor issues saying that he was no different than half the class.)

Beth