general

It’s overwhelming, I know what you are saying. You just have to get through the maze one step at a time. I have learned not to wait for the school to help my daughter nad have hired outside tutors that specialize in her LD.

I know it wont make any difference to our child, but I am going to refuse to sign my daughter’s inadequate, out of date IEP. I have already sent it back with my suggestions written in and they responded with a phone call that my suggestions could never be implemented. This is a BIG step for me, because it has always been my philosophy not to make waves and to work within the system.

hello
my name is Jeffrey
I would prefer that you hold some fundraisings and then to buy some things to upgrade your school

signed JEFFREY

If the IEP isn’t right then I agree with your decision to not sign it and to do so in the most respectful way possible. Sometimes the decision maker isn’t at the IEP meeting and having a hearing is the only way to get it resolved. At the same time it doesn’t have to be adversarial. I think my comment was more along the lines of being overwhelmed with our child’s difficulties while having to deal with the crazy system at the same time. Good luck to you.

Jeffery, I have done so much fundraising for my daughter’s school. Yes, It has been worthwhile for the school:, new computers, books and enhanced class trips etc BUT I fail to see how this funding helps a child with LD. A child with a LD need way more then what a few bake sales can provide.

I have read several messages that disclose concerns with children’s emotions and self-esteem. I struggle with my son’s frustrations and feelings of failure more regularly than with his actual “education.” We’ve had ongoing discussions about his intelligence versus how hard he works to learn. I point out that he is learning although it is more difficult for him than others. I point out his artistic, athletic and social skills… but he continues to be moved to tears on a regular basis because he “can’t learn”.

Does anyone know of any resources or tools that can help me help him to be less demanding and critical of himself?

Can you get him involved in a sport or other activity that he will excel in so he get to experience success? Drama, music, or art might give him a chance to be seen by his peers as a success instead of as a failure. One of my son’s teachers started calling my son the “science guy”, and told the other students they should ask him their science questions because he knew so much about science. This did wonders for his self esteem and soon he was going willingly to school again.

Tammy,

Sports for my 9 yr. old son has been a god send he is an exceptional wrestler and has trophies all over the place his friends a too impressed.

He athletic ability make him popular and feel good about himself. Sports is not just fun it is hard work, dedication, learning how to loose as well as win, following coaches directions and sometimes giving up something you want to do because you have a game.

I have always found the coaches to be wonderful I will tell them my son is in a sped class and a visual learner and showing him will mean more than words. They don’t cut him any slack but will show him an extra time. His wrestling coach is a big guy who sometimes gets loud but loves the kids. My son just loves him and hates to disappoint him

Lisa,
I have a first grader who is verbally very bright but has lagged behind on reading and writing. He has memory difficulties and requires much more repetition to learn reading words, counting, etc. The best advice I’ve heard for dealing with schools is remember the three Ps: Be polite, persistent and prepared.
In kindergarten I met with the teacher at the end of Sept. to express my concerns with Tom’s memory difficulties. I stressed we work at home with him, read to him, etc. So it was clear we were involved and caring parents. I also inquired about services. Initially I was told he couldn’t get extra help or be tested for LD until he lags two years behind in school. I told the teacher this was totally unacceptable. He was tested by the OT and started receiving services to improve his handwriting and gross motor skills. We met frequently with the Kg teacher during the yr to see what Tom needed to work on, how we could help, etc.
In first grade, we met with the teacher at the end of Sept. and expressed concerns about Tom’s reading/writing. Due to our persistence, he received one-to-one for a 1/2 hr a day with a reading consultant who works with him on a systematic phonics-based program. It has helped a lot. You have to keep advocating for your child and also help him find something he is good at to keep up his self-esteem. If school can’t provide services, I agree that private tutoring is a good way to go.

Tammy - my daughter is gifted/LD and has a 504. She is currently in 8th grade. When we learned of her challenges in 4th grade we were encouraged to find something for her to be good at. She was already taking dance lessons an hour a week, but they were hard for her because of her auditory sequencing problems. Nonetheless she wanted to stick with it and signed up for additional classes. She is currently competing nationally in several styles of dance both in groups and solos, as well as performances with the local symphony, and it is no exaggeration to say that this has been her rock of stability in a world where she is made to feel incompetent every day. It is expensive, but it is worth every penny to us to see her be happy. She has developed other talents in problem solving, art and design as well and we really focus on them as her avenues to success as an adult. I hope your son can find something he can be passionate and excel at so that he can weather the arbitrary structures of school. Good luck!
Frances

Hi Tammy,

We have been through the exact same turmoil. Emotional issues that require more work than the education itself. It just breaks me heart. Year after year my son told us how he hated school because he was stupid and everyone knows he is. The anxiety continued to build and I was told by the school “you are the adult and must make him accept what he has to do.” Well, in October, our son told us he would rather be dead than have to go to school anymore and he threatened to kill himself. How is a 9-year-old boy driven to this? We took our concerns to the school hoping for some guidance as to how to eliviate the anxiety he was experiencing everyday at school. They told us that there was nothing that they could do for him, even though they were the source of his anxiety, and that we would have to seek outside couseling with a pyschologist. We did that and the severe anxiety has lessened. But the question is, does a 9-year-old child have to have a therapist in order to cope with school everyday? We are going on 7 months of therapy. I feel that the school does not believe that they have to address the issue of anxiety in children, that it is not a legitimate concern of the LD child when it is actually a very REAL part of their lives everyday! I’m sorry: My point is, that having the psychological counseling has provided my son with some strategies to cope and it was a third party who had no connections to mom and dad or the school where he could vent about whatever was bothering him. My advice is to not ignore it, the anxiety will most likely escalate and not just disappear if it not addressed. Good luck to you.

I whole heartedly agree about the anxiety and feel very frustrated that my 10 year olds son teachers do not understand how school directly effects his anxiety level. My kid has been seeing a psych for almost two years. At least the suicide threats have stopped. But I don’t see him stopping psych services till he graduates from college!! His psych has told me that his teachers will probably never understand how the giftedness, ld and anxiety all interrelate. I can’t wait for summer. Significant decrease in anxiety then!!

Hi,

I’m an adult (age 40) with dysgraphia, dyscalcula, ADD, & CAPD. All of which I received therapy for from about age 8-9 to 14 or so.

The latter 2 things I didn’t get as much help with, and went through a lot of trouble as an adult becasue of them, heck the CAPD didn’t make much sense to me until I stumbled onto this site, but the rest I’ve done a lot ofwork on as an adult, first in college & then gradualy in the rest of my life after.

I can at least tell you something of my experiences in retrospect as they apply to some of what you folks have been discussing.

First off, the negative feelings and frustration associated with LD’s arn’t easy for a kid as you can obviously see. Hearing that you’re not like everyone else and having to learn to accept it is hard as a kid, and while there’s a lot of positive stuff that comes from dealing with them, and learning how to work around them, it’s still very hard, especially since they’re preoblems that can in some cases be overcome, and in others at least mitigated. The effort to do so is not easy though.

That being the case, the best thing you can do for your kid is to focus on, promote, and give weight and consideration to what a kid is good at. This is very, very important, and becomes moreso when it comes to HS, where kids have to deal with adolecence on top of LD problems. Things need to be balanced, and your kid is more than likely very gifted at something, and even if they’re mostly average, even sucesses with normal things take on added meaning, and are more welcome and important than they are with other kids. I grew up in a different time, and didn’t get much of that, and it’s quite regretable that I didn’t. It’s made my road in life far harder than it would have had to have been. It’s nice for kids to have ammunition to fend off teasing about any LD problems they might have. So if your kid is really smart in some area, make sure they understand that as well as they understand their disabilities too.

Also, be proactive, & develop ways to provide material that you find to teachers and schools. If you can do that, you’re making things better for your kid, and as you should point out in many ways, you’re doing what you can to make things easier for the teachers by doing it.

Make sure there’s time and oppertunity for LD stuff (and to the the extent that you can) ADD & ADHD etc. to be as minimal a factor in activities as possible. Everyone needs downtime, everyone needs to feel normal, and with addtional attention paid to LD problems, kids can feel like a bug under a microscope, and learn to dread dealing with LD stuff. So offsets to that will help diminish those feelings and offset them, so they’re important to have I think.

Don’t be afraid to consider moving someplace that doesn’t suck if wherever you’re at has a school system that isn’t well developed enough to cope too well. On the other hand, whatever you bring to the table to help the situation might be more well recived than you might expect. It was a real mixed bag for me and my parents, (and later me alone in college) in terms of how well educators reacted to my problems.

Kids need to transition to different ways of dealing with LD issues as they grow, and this is especially true of adolecence. You can NOT shield your kids from the world as they start to hit it. Being overprotective also can be pretty harmful too, when in fact your newly minted teenager might need a bit more slack than other kids on things that are important to their social standing. Not that delinquency is ok, but this is an area you can make a difference in too. You can’t shield your kids as much as you might like, but you can be a rock for them and shelter. It’s the difference between getting in the way and backing them up.

Have some faith. Your kid might have a rougher time than normal growing up, you may have a lot more parenting work than others would too as a result. But it’s worth it, your kids will turn out ok, and probably better than you’d expect. Watch out for your own anxiety levels, and your own emotional state over problems along the way. I wouldn’t reccomend concealing information or being closed off, but kids pick up on more of your emotional state than you’d think when it’s so obviously related to them. So calm and confidence and maturity on your part really can help them a lot, becasue it gives them the example of how to treat their problem. How you treat the problem of thir problem teaches them how to deal with it themselves, it’s that reflected behavior & example thing… The better you do with this, the less your kids will have to teach themselves (or relearn) about how to feel and how to cope later on as adults.

Good luck too. You and your children are probably more blessed than you’d think, and you’ve been gifted with a richness of life that others won’t have. You and your children will never lead lives of mindless medeocrity becasue of this.

I don’t know if they offer this where you live, but perhaps you could put something together along these lines. There is a class called “Kidesteem”. It’s held on Saturday or during the week after school. It is run by two psychologists. The kids all go into one room with one psychologist, where the interact either playing games, role playing while they talk about things involving school, home etc. Basically all kinds of self esteem issues. Most of these kids all have some kind of self-esteem issue, whether it is due to a lack of socialization or a learning disability. The parents meet with the other psychologist in the room next door. We discuss things going on at home or with our children. We all try to provide feedback as to what we found has worked/not worked in regard to helping our children feel better, behave better. My son loved it because it was like a play date with 8 other kids every week. It also made him feel better to see that there are kids that have the same problems and feelings as he does. I loved it because I had a chance to speak to other parents going through the same frustrations as myself.

I know you have heard this before, but you must do the research yourself. You must educated yourself. Most schools cannot meet the needs of these children. Teachers are overworked, schools are underfunded, the federal special ed money often times goes into the general education fund and not into special education, and frankly you most likely will either have to seek outside help or home school; which is what we finally did. I was extremely moved by Tim’s posting. When my child is an adult, I will encourage him to help parents and children dealing with these issues. Those parents and especially children who have gone through this are going to be the best think tanks for the future. I hope they will be the ones to shape the future of education for all children. Good luck! It’s a long road.

For a new resource try looking at the Why Try program. You can find it at :
whytry.org. It was founded by a man who grew up with LD problems and he now is a motivational speaker for kids like himself. It’s interesting.

Dear Group:
I would like to say that I have a 11 year old son who has been diagnosed with a non-verbal learning disability. He gets some assistance from a T.A. in the classroom and in the group setting. He is doing well and I encourage everyone to fight for their children.

Tim,
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking the time to show us that we will endure, struggle , and hopefully survive all this. It is a treat to hear you made it through college and have grown into a functioning and I am assuming productive adult ( teasing , of course). Right now my sons whole goal is to work at “Subway”….. what the heck if he does it well I can at least look forward to some nutritional meals in my old age….Thank You again for yor time and please excuse my smart alec comments….all in fun….June M
“I did the best with what I knew…..When I knew better, I did better”

Tim,
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking the time to show us that we will endure, struggle , and hopefully survive all this. It is a treat to hear you made it through college and have grown into a functioning and I am assuming productive adult ( teasing , of course). Right now my sons whole goal is to work at “Subway”….. what the heck if he does it well I can at least look forward to some nutritional meals in my old age….Thank You again for yor time and please excuse my smart alec comments….all in fun….June M
“I did the best with what I knew…..When I knew better, I did better”

Lisa:
If your child is not in the special education program already, write a letter to the district special education director outlining your child’s developmental history, behaviors, etc.
Request that formal testing be done. When the request is in writing, the process begins. The district must keep within a specific timeline to get this process completed.

If your child has school anxiety problems too, be sure to talk to your child’s doctor about it.

Be your child’s advocate. Keep on top of this. Read the IDEA law to know the rights for your child and you as a parent.

Good luck
DR
SPED teacher/6th grade