NeuroPsych? EdPsych? (INDEP EVAL) - Best Option?

University testing is a good place to start as often the cost is less than private. Obviously, they must want her to go through a normal psycho-educational eval first, which makes sense to me. I think you’ll eventually have to see a clinical psychologist or psychiatrist to sort out her behavioral/ADHD-like issues.

But the reason she “outperformed” her ability level is that her problems impacted her performance on the IQ test. That’s a signal right there that the IQ test results could be in question. But school testing is so superficial. I really always recommend private testing for almost any child with learning problems. So you are on the right track! Good luck!

Janis

It really sounds like she has ADD issues that could be exasperated by the fact that she had a traumatic brain injury. Have you tried different meds? Perhaps the dosage wasn’t appropriate or she needs more help in modifying her behaviors. That would be something a psychologist could help with.

I am a speech pathologist so I understand the communcation needs of a kid with ADD… however, what types of activities does she participate in school and after school? Perhaps her behavior can be modified through a sport…Have you thought about getting her involved in a sport like swimming, that will help her learn to master her inner self and also strengthen her physically? Usually the kids that I have seen in swimming are disciplined because they are “busy” with practices and swim meets. Plus it takes a ton of concentration to pull it together. Usually the coaches work with kids who have needs like this and I have seen tremendous growth for kids with ADD as they work with channeling their energy in a positive direction as they learn to art of self mastery.

Because of the history of head injury, you need a private neuro-psych eval by a pediatric neuro or a developmental pediatrician. Make sure you choose someone who specializes in diagnosing and distinguishing LD and ADHD. School evaluations generally are the very bottom of the barrell. If you have a complicated kid or if you want a full picture of strengths and weaknesses, you need an outside specialist. A local Children’s Hospital or a university that has a med school are a good place to start. Or, ask your regular pediatrician for a referral.

Certainly pursue private IQ and academic testing to confirm or deny the school’s testing-I couldn’t tell from your post if she is very bright and just not doing above average work or if she has average intelligence and is doing well despite the behavior on tests in school; the behavior though is very concerning for a middle school girl, the norm for girls is stick with the pack behavior with the girls complying with the rules and the boys being less well behaved-don’t wait for an appt for testing to have the behavior evaluated-in a 7th grader who is non-compliant you want to look at everything, ADHD, drugs, sexual behavior etc.

First to Janis, thanks for your feedback. It’s good to know there’s a vote for university testing, and that there may be some validity to my lingering questions about the results the school gave us.

To “Guest”, that would be ideal if I could locate someone who can distinguish between LD & ADHD. Or better yet, how about between those two and MTBI. Or a combination of the three?! Gads… I do hope we find someone who is good, and who cares.

Patti, she has been tried on a few different ADHD meds, but the benefit from them wasn’t clear, the side effects were, and there’s a family history of bipolar disorder which leads to concerns re: the possibility that the meds might trigger cycling.

She does swim team in summer, but at this point, she couldn’t handle the load of year-round team. (I know - I used to swim!) I don’t want to throw her into it before I feel like she has a chance of being able to juggle it all successfully, and right now’s not the time. She does do volleyball & soccer, one practice/one game a week (different seasons).

This summer, she’s also looking forward to a volunteer program she was accepted for, and I’ve been trying to get the school to let her work with the more severely affected special needs kids, because she has a fondness for them.

I’m really concerned about all these negative messages she keeps getting from the repeated detentions, many of which I don’t think she gets “on purpose”.

SAR, you seemed concerned about those, which I have been as well. However, in thinking about your phrase “running w/ the pack” - it occurs to me that most of the detentions are resulting because she’s so desperately TRYING to “run w/ the pack”! That’s what the mints (now banned) are all about (the girls share or trade them, and they were getting to be a nuisance item). Also the passing notes, and the talking when she shouldn’t be, w/ fun kids she normally doesn’t see or get the chance to socialize with at lunch.

I do, however, think she’s sort of finding that she’s more comfortable at this point hanging around w/ the others who do less well in school, as she is doing, because she probably feels less pressure, and maybe doesn’t feel the “failure to measure up” as she was beginning to feel w/ her former grade school friends, who are all on honor roll. I think the kids were all just a little more oblivious to each others’ scholastic achievements, in previous years.

The “naughtiest” things she’s done have been coming to class late (she has difficulty organizing herself, so has had to return to her locker for books “unnecessarily”), and tipping in her chair, which I think is more of a fidgety/ADD-type behavior.

As for her IQ vs. performance, guess I made that clear as mud! :wink: I don’t think we truthfully have an accurate read on her IQ. I’m also not sure that we can *obtain* one. But considering that they say she’s getting grades that most kids in the 105-110 range get, and she’s managing to get those grades despite huge fluctuations in test scores, and a failure to turn in many small assignments, and some large projects, I have to figure that the points which are counterbalancing all these low ones are most likely coming from a kid w/ a higher IQ than that - which is just a guess. That’s really all I have to go on at this point.

Still gladly taking any more feedback & comments…and thank you to all who’ve responded thus far.

Sincerely,
Lei

Hello. I’ve spent the past 30 years working with individuals with disabilities and have had access to all of their school, hospital, Social Security, doctor, therapy, etc., etc. etc., reports. Needless to say, I’ve seen a lot of false starts and hard to diagnose situations.

To be fair, things are seldom clear cut and simple, especially if the TBI happens before a formal LD/ADD/psychiatric diagnosis is made.

–—> I’d like to know more about the 2 mild head injuries. When did they occur, exactly was involved and what treatment was required? Did she have any behavior problems prior to the 2 TBIs? The timeline is extremely important.

Meanwhile, my advice is to spend your time interviewing prospective clinicians about their practices and their educational/philosophical background. If they typically work with TBIs, then they will usually see things in a different way than someone specializing in, say, LD/ADD/ADHD for instance. Of course, a psychiatrist or psychologist specializing in treating mental health patients/clients could see the same behavior and problems and come up with a totally different diagnosis.

Again, all I can say in call and ask around for references and then quiz the best of the bunch even if you must pay for an hour of their time. It’s still less expensive than paying for testing that won’t meet your needs.

John

I agree with Janis … I’d want a look at those results, anyway. What were the strengths and weaknesses — what was the ‘spread’ of subtest scores?

I hate to be a harbinger of horrors but I saw a few too many students enter my middle school “pretty good kids” — but they got discouraged, and the unfairness of everything got to them, so they started hanging with the non-academic kids who were a whole lot better at being bad… and then found out that hey, the school really didn’t notice anyway which made them act out more — so the detentions started … and they got to hang around even “better” influences. And since they weren’t as skilled at being bad they tended to get caught more, which made ‘em madder, which meant they went on to the high school bitter teenagers. I do dearly hope that all those good years of parental support meant it was a phase — but a phase I’d rather not put anyone through.
Keep her talking to ya. Acknowledge the unfairness and value, value, value her work even if the grades don’t show it. Think of her Big Future and that even if she’s not on honor roll, she can do college on the basis of good work habits. (This is much more true than people realize — more true in college than high school, in a way, since you can adjust schedules and courses and instructors and postsecondary programs and… and…)

John, thanks for your interest! I think the way that so many of these behaviors/symptoms “overlap” is a large part of what I find so discouraging. They might mean one thing, or something altogether different. Or, maybe there’s a combination of not-necessarily-mutually-exclusive things going on. It seems impossible to know for certain that you’re on the right track when so many conclusions are - at least in part - arrived at subjectively. Argh…

I guess the bottom line is that what we want most is for our daughter to achieve what she’s truly capable of. To that end, we need to discover what strategies are the most effective in helping her reach her potential. And, since she won’t always have a stay-at-home-mom in her life to help pull the picture together, we need her to climb on board w/ the entire process…and to have a desire to implement the strategies for her own benefit.

As for the head injuries themselves, I regret to report (because you indicated this might complicate things…) that they both occurred before she started school. The first incident was at age 3 yrs. 2 mos. when she fell & hit her right temple on a brick hearth, requiring stitches. She didn’t lose consciousness that we are aware of (she was at a sitter), and still has some recollection of the event.

Looking back on this now, we are concerned by the fact that she began wetting the bed and having daytime accidents around this timeframe. She hadn’t been trained for very long a period of time prior to this, however, so we weren’t sure what to think at the time. We didn’t know there might even be a correlation between a head injury and a bladder control issue. Several people told us that since she’d just had a younger sibling born, it was probably a case of behavioral regression. Both the night and day wetting continued for several years afterward, however. (The actual head injury occurred within a week after her sibling’s birth.)

The second head trauma was to the back of her head, at the base of the skull (she lost her balance or footing when climbing down from the counter to the toilet, and fell backwards into the side of the tub). There was no loss of consciousness this time, either, but it occurred a mere 7 mos. later. :cry: Again, she required stitches.

There was a CAT scan done for complaints of “seeing lights” and “blurry things” (almost sounds now like a visual migraine, which I had never heard of at the time), but that wasn’t performed until those complaints surfaced an entire year later. And, nothing out-of-the-ordinary was supposedly detected on the CAT. At that same time, she was complaining of having trouble swallowing (what this has to do w/ anything, I haven’t a clue - ?), so a barium swallow/x-ray was done, but again there was nothing uncovered, and the complaint eventually subsided.

The *only* potential behavior issues I can come up w/ for her prior to the head injuries are: 1) Her extreme clinginess/separation-anxiety like reactions as a baby/toddler (this has cropped up again & again since the potential MTBI’s, too, although it’s only in very selective circumstances now); and 2) Slightly delayed walking (she wasn’t solidly on her feet until 14 mos.). I attributed the late walking largely to the fact that it was so difficult to ever put her DOWN w/out her screaming bloody murder! Thus, she didn’t have the opportunity to develop the eye/hand/etc. coordination as she otherwise would have.

One interesting “gauge” that we have is a friend of ours who lived here in town when she was small, and went away to school for several years before returning. He perceived her as a bright, verbal little kid. His wife worked at a preschool, and she was consistently intrigued by his descriptions of our daughter’s comments, observations, etc. She seemed to think she was “ahead of the pack” at that time. When he finished school and returned to town, he seemed very taken aback to discover that the same child was struggling in school. We’d watched the situation evolve, so it hadn’t come as such a shock, I guess. But to him, this didn’t even sound like the same kid.

My 3 yr. old niece right now behaves much as our daughter did at the same age, and there are many comments about how “bright” she is…if I didn’t hear anything at all about her for several years, then found out she was having trouble in an educational setting, I suppose I would be equally bewildered.

Anyway…I think I’ve probably answered your question (and then some!). As I said above, THANK YOU for your interest & insights. If you have more after reading the above info., I hope you will share them!

Lei

What type of testing did the school do and what were those test results?

Ah, those bulletin boards!

If it takes too long to compose a message, it turns into an “invalid session.” Sometimes the back button gets me the message back, and sometimes it doesn’t, so if I think it’s been a while I’ll copy the message. If it’s “invalidated” I’ll back all the way to the thing I”m replying to and go in again and paste the message and post it.

The log-in thing has quirks but they haven’t tripped me up yet. Hey, I was just pleased to get on it before “Sue” was taken ;)

The unfairness — at least where I was in Virginia— had a lot to do with the pretty rigid academic/social caste system with its associated halo effects. I had great respect for the students who found their own places and in hindsight wish I’d told them so explicitly.

Is there some reason to work on a report and then decide not to get credit for it? I suppose there could be — fear that it’s really lousy or any of the forms of Teenage Logic that defy all reason. However, it’s also possible that she is as frustrated with her memory and organization as anybody else. I know that was (is) the case for me. Seemed when I actually planned ahead and got something done I was *more* likely to forget it, since once it was finished I stopped thinking about it. ONe of life’s injustices that served me well was that it is acceptable for a student in the “smart” caste to be “absent minded” — when if you’re in any other caste you’re “irresponsible and defiant.”

Forgetting is just that — forgetting. If you’ve forgotten something, it is *not* in your mind. You can’t decide that you’re not going to forget things any more than you can decide to know somebody’s phone number before they tell it to you. The information is “unplugged” from the rest of your mind - so it may be there, but access to it isn’t happening. One strategy is to approach it as a problem — forget the blame thing, it’s just a problem in need of a solution; not a “behavior problem” to be rewarded for correcting, but a memory problem in need of strategies, sorta like a dog that needs walking even when you don’t want to do it. However, be prepared to deal with many strategies not working — just keep looking for ones that do. Consider it a mutual quest — this is something to be conquered, or at least confined, in a way separate from her worthy and wonderful self. *Anything* you can do to help her believe that she really is “one of the good kids” even if she’s not on the “brain train” will help. (I didn’t realize until I was a teacher and heard teachers talking in the faculty room that I had done things that must have simply appalled my teachers — forget tipping chairs, I would have full-blown pounding-on-my-desk tantrums… in junior high. Somehow, my mother managed to keep these as “bad things that a good girl had done.” Those occasional days spent at home were “to give everybody a break and think about how to do things differently” — but I never realized that everybody else would have said I was suspended! And they did come on a 28 day cycle, even before I had periods.

Of course I can’t say whether this has anything to do with your daughter! I would also want to know just how much stress she was under when correcting the spelling. THat’s the kind of “short circuit” thinking that can be from MTBI or from stress or fatigue (or both). I see it sometimes in my tutoring lab at the community college (from any of the above causes).

I would really consider reframing your thinking about the indifference and disorganization. If it is an attitude thing, then approaching it as a problem that simply must be solved will still be a nuisance :-) My main rule of thumb in dealing with students — who I didn’t know well enough at first to make a judgement on attitude — was that it had to be harder to be forgetful or irresponsible, but that it also had to be possible to still please the teacher. So when somebody tipped a chair, they’d have to stick around long enough after class to explain to me that they had tipped their chair, and why that was a problem (and if I had to explain it to them, then they still had to explain it back — so it was easier to explain it the first time)… so if they really didn’t know, now they did. If they did know, they had had to stay after. Tardiness meant you copied from a poem, enough to take 2 minutes or so. One of my kiddos who honestly had difficulty negotiating distractions & distance to get to class on time had “Keep a Goin’ ” memorized by the end of the year… and didn’t think I didn’t like him, just recognized that for the action, there was a consequence. IN his case, I didn’t increase the ‘sentence’ for ‘repeated violations,’ and he did get better through the course of the year. Sometimes teh “stop that unacceptable behavior immediately” approach works — but sometimes the “this is a skill you need to get better at, but it will take time” approach is better (espcially if you remember to keep track of the improvement!).

Well, I’ve rambled myself- hope something useful is in the mix.

Second and third everything that Sue wrote. I too got through high school by being “eccentric” while my brother was the “troublemaker.”

Yes, these are problems looking for creative solutions, not moral flaws of character. That is an important lesson.

I have to tell you that as a teacher I *hate* tipping chairs. Until you have stood up in front of a classroom and tried to explain a complex and difficult problem, you will not realize how incredibly rude such behaviour is. The person tipping the chair is not only paying more attention to the play of balancing than to all your hard work attempting to help them, they are also distracting all the other people around with the motion and noise, and of course there is the hilarious fun when they disrupt the entire class and lesson by going over on their back “accidentally” (If you deliberately tip the chair, then falling is no accident, sorry, it’s a natural consequence of your own deliberate choices.)
Yes, a lot of teachers just ignore it. A lot of teachers just serve time in the classroom and don’t care much whether your kid learns or not, so of course they can just ignore lack of attention.
A teacher who cares about teaching your child will work hard to stop self-distracting behaviour, even if it would be so much easier to just let it pass and blame the kid for not being able to learn.

One approach to explaining why these things are problems is a little reality therapy. Next time she wants to ask you about something important, say signing a permission for a field trip or going out with a friend, tip your chair back, rock it, stare at the ceiling, and say “What?”. She will probably very quickly get angry and ask why you aren’t paying attention. Point out that you are paying exactly as much attention as she does. The fur will fly, but after a couple of examples the point gets across.
In extreme circumstances you can “lose” the permission slip just as she loses her papers, and start a discussion about why this really is a serious issue and not something to pass over.
My point here is not to suggest being rude or difficult to your child as a habit, just to do a little acting to teach the idea that she is hurting herself. Once she understands why everyone is after her to change, then you can teach coping skills that will help her.

and that is why I suggested a team sport such as swimming. No coach that I know would put up with those type of shinanigans and she would be surrounded by kids and adults who would hopefully be stronger role models for her in the school environment and in her spare time after school.

There are researchers who have found one can’t remediate until one gets the child to focus and buy into the “program” No matter what the psyche testing shows the strongest determiner will be her own will and drive to succeed. If that isn’t present, then you are back at square one.

I think your best bet is to ask around locally about references for educational psychologists (for private testing), or neuropsychs. I’ve done the private testing with my child and learned a lot from it. A good educational psychologist can look at what’s been done and tell you where you may want to go from there. For really complex kids a good neuropsych might be the way to go.

Look for local special ed. meetings, seminars, etc.. and try talking with other parents about testing. That’s one place you may be able to get recommendations. Also, private special ed. schools, and even service providors for PACE, VT, etc… I’ve found there’s a real network out there if you look for it, and oftentimes that’s the best place to go to learn about quality local resources.

I was looking at the sight for From Emotions to Advocacy and I found a Yellow Pages. Click on your state and see who pops up. I was amazed at the number of resources for testing (educational diagnosticians, psychologist etc.) It might be a starting point to call some of these people and start asking questions. Best of luck and let us know how it turns out.

Caran

Hi, just wanted to drop in quick & let everyone know I’m still watching for new responses, and appreciate all of the feedback. My computer has some kind of glitch which makes it unpredictably incompatible w/ the bulletin board system, and since it is a freeware situation, the administrators don’t receive any tech support. They were very nice & offered to send posts thru for me, but that’s a bit cumbersome. When I can sneak a post thru, I may try that. Meanwhile, I do appreciate your comments even if I don’t directly/immediately post back.

Does anyone happen to know JohnBT who responded to me earlier in this thread? He’d asked for some specific info. about the head injuries I mentioned, and although I wrote back & provided some of the data, I don’t believe he posted again afterwards. I was curious to know if he had any further thoughts.

Better go before I’m guaranteed another invalid session! Thanks again.

Lei

Hi.

I’ve been thinking on it from time to time, but haven’t organized my thoughts. I use my free time and odd moments to mull stuff over and I haven’t had much of either.

Unfortunately, I’m thinking on too many work-related clients this week, we just found out today that the boss will be gone to Hawaii(free trip) for a week-and-a-half starting Monday, we have a state-level meeting tomorrow to discuss beginning the Order of Selection (what to do in July when the state money crunch hits our department), and my elderly widowed aunt in Delaware just had a stroke.

But hey, at least I can walk a ways on my bum leg after having back surgery in November for a crushed sciatic nerve. No disc damage, the doc just had to peel the nerve off the vertebra and ‘fluff’ it up a little - if 3 hours qualifies as a little. :) Actually, the worst part was the 2.5 days in the hospital hooked to the morphine machine. Once I got off the morphine I felt pretty good.

Anyhow, I’m at work and should be working through my break to meet my yearly production quota of vocational evaluations. :)

I’ll try to drop back in this weekend when there isn’t so much going on.

John

Hey, John -

Thanks for the response, & no problem if you’ve been busy. Boss isn’t gonna letcha tag along on that free trip to Hawaii, huh? ;) I do hope your aunt’s doing as well as she can under the circumstances, and glad to hear that your “nerve-fluff” did you some good!!

I informally met w/ a gal I know who works at the university last week, and she looked thru my daughter’s records for me to see what she thought. We had standardized testing results from 2nd grade up, and when she lumped everything together and averaged it across the various subjects for each year (coming up w/ one “average” for each year), you could actually see her scores going in the WRONG direction. They especially began to drop off after 4th grade (again, she’s now in 7th).

That’s not the whole story, of course. She had two years, in 3rd & 4th grades, where she scored in excess of the 90th percentile in Math. She has always scored in excess of the 90th percentile in spelling. This past school year, however, she scored in only the 16th percentile in Math! From the 90th+ to the 16th, all in the course of a couple years…kinda bewildering.

The way her overall average keeps dropping made me personally wonder if she sort of stopped learning back around 4th grade, aside from her spelling words — especially where Math is concerned.

The Multidisciplinary Testing done last school year noted her “long processing time”. They recorded a very high verbal score for her, though - in excess of the 90th percentile, again. It just keeps seeming like something doesn’t add up about the whole picture. I don’t know what piece we’re missing here.

The woman mentioned above teaches special ed. & communication disorders, and does a fair amount of work w/ individuals who have suffered head injuries. She said our daughter has many of the behaviors associated with brain injured patients, and believes there is sufficient evidence to qualify her for services. She said she believes that she is in need of services. She did, however, seem concerned about the standardized testing performance pattern. She suspects there may be something else going on in addition to the head injury, but we are left to figure that one out! And the initial LD testing didn’t turn up anything, so…? Hopefully, a good battery of neuropsych. or ed. psych. tests might be able to uncover something missed that first time around.

I never really realized this before, but in talking w/ my husband earlier tonight, it came up as sort of a side discussion that there were really only TWO of the seven kids in his family that graduated from high school as planned!

I’ll spare you the particulars, but what I’m getting at here is that I really wonder if there’s some underlying circuitry that could be amiss. And, just in case you think I’m casting all the blame over yonder, I do NOT necessarily think that it all comes from his side of the family!

I can remember sitting in classes, and being totally unable to follow what teachers were talking about…I just couldn’t stay w/ it. I remember being half-panicked that I might be called on, because I almost never knew the answer, if it was something that had just been learned during the lecture. However, unlike my daughter (who is relatively apathetic about school), I liked to learn, I just didn’t mesh well w/ the auditory presentations. So, when I got home, I would pick apart my books, or whatever else they’d given me to look at. I had to see it in order to make sense of it.

I also reached young adulthood amazingly oblivious to “real life”…I’ve seen LD questions of some type that ask about a tendency to take things literally - so how about this: I am working in a sandwich shop, and someone tells me to make an order w/ a turkey sandwich and some potato salad, and says - oh, they want extra mayo on it. You can already guess what happened!

Or, how about being all the way up to 19 or 20, and having no “support net” (my family had alienated me), and needing to find something out fairly desperately, so I actually tried calling “Information”! HA!!! Sure, it’s a roll-on-the-floor-laughing moment now, but at that time, I was honestly that clueless. I truly didn’t know any better.

I never even remotely suspected a language “issue” of some kind until fairly recently, when I read a little more about dyslexia, and realized that it entailed more than I was aware of. Now I wonder…

Anyway, I’ve rambled enough for tonight, I’ll get going and let someone else take a turn! Thanks for any insights you may have!

~~~ Lei

Lei,

Family history certainly indicates issues are there in the genes! So have you made the appointment for the university testing?

Janis

My mother went through MTBI 18mos ago and had many symptoms of lights flashing etc. She is now having severe memory problems. The neurologist just sent her to a neuropsychologist for evaluation. Therapy helped her so much after the inital injury but was DC’d because of Medicare not paying. We hope it isn’t too late for her to get therapy that will help her but we won’t know till we get this report from neuropsyc.

Having said all this, my son has a LOT of the problems you are describing. He is gifted,ADHD,LD in written expression and slow processing. He is on med. but we don’t see a lot of effect from it. We did when he was on Ritalin but they had to take him off that because of exaccerbation of OCD symptoms. We pulled him out of school after 2nd grade because the system wouldn’t even talk to us about helping him. They said he was getting good grades so there wasn’t a problem. He could not make it in public school now I’m sure. With his writing difficulties and slow processing, he would be WAY behind. By homeschooling I’m able to accomodate him and give lots of oral testing use tape recorder and will start next yr. with voice activated software (reccommended by neuropsyc). He was able to get accomodations on SAT this yr through our homeschool group. They had him in a quiet room with a teacher and didn’t time the test. This is important to do so that when he gets to high school he will be able to continue to get these. If you don’t set a precedent early they may or maynot give accomodations on ACT and in college. they will say since he didn’t need these in highschool why should we do it now!! Good Luck, Jan

Leizanne,

I haven’t read all of the posts in this thread, so hope I’m not off-base suggesting this, but have you considered a program such as PACE (Processing and Cognitive Enhancement, http://www.processingskills.com ) for your daughter? This program tends to be very helpful for dyslexics and for children who just in general seem to perform at a lower level than their intelligence would leave you to expect. It’s a great program to do over summer vacation.

Sometimes spending money on remediation is more fruitful than spending it on evaluations — especially with older children. The PACE pre-tests are free, in any case, and can give you some indications of exactly which underlying areas are strengths and which are weaknesses. These are “thumbnail” tests, not in-depth tests, but they do seem to correlate well with other standardized tests of cognitive skills.

Nancy

“Sometimes spending money on remediation is more fruitful than spending it on evaluations —”
Nancy, how true. And often times the results of the evaluations do not really change the remediation and the accommodations that have already been put into place.

Leizanne —

Doing well in math to Grade 4 and then dropping, doing well in spelling but not other subjects — these are flags to overuse of rote memory and underdevelopment of higher-order thinking skills. Now don’t get me wrong, a good base of well-known facts, good basic arithmetic and good spelling, are good things to have. The problem is to move on from these, and it seems like that’s where you are stuck.

I don’t know your daughter and can’t say whether this dependence on memory comes from her or from her teachers or both.At any rate, she needs to be taught reasoning skills. In most cases, it’s best to go back to earlier levels, materials designed for Grade 2 or even 1 or K, and start there — if she hasn’t picked up on things on her own as they were presented inductively in school, she is not going to pick them up easily starting at too high a level.

[quote=”KTJ”]”Sometimes spending money on remediation is more fruitful than spending it on evaluations —”
Nancy, how true. And often times the results of the evaluations do not really change the remediation and the accommodations that have already been put into place.[/quote]

But, to be the devil’s advocate, how do you know how and what to remediate unless you first evaluate? The problem with relying on the provider of a service to also diagnose the problem is that the service provided 1) may have a financial incentive to find certain things wrong that their treatment is said to address and 2) even if the service provider is totally honest (and many are) there is a certain bias that accompanies true belief in the benefits of a particular program. Of course, some doctors could be accused of having a similar sort of bias in favor of certain diagnoses, I suppose, but at least they have to use standardized testing to make the diagnosis of LD, as opposed to proprietary testing.

Nancy, thanks for the link & info. that you passed on. I could definitely climb on board w/ the remediation aspect, in any event! I just hope I eventually gain a better grasp of whatever the issues are that are complicating things for her.

We already see some definite patterns to the types of things that pique her interest. I think she is pretty narrowly kinesthetic, for the most part.

Aside from having her “do” something w/ her work, I’ve noticed that she responds well to personal stories that the teachers sometimes tell. Those moments seem to take on a special significance for her. Maybe those moments are like a tiny oasis for her! Too bad more of them don’t work in ways to tie in their material w/ stories like that, but I don’t think I can really blame them, in middle school! ;)

So, at the end of her day, I might hear about looking into a microscope, climbing up a tree to get a ball that got stuck, and/or some random thing that a teacher related to the class. Other than that, I think she feels like she’s being warehoused, to some degree!

Honestly, I feel a little that way myself. I wish somehow we could work it so that her time at school was condensed in a meaningful way, and then if I had to, I could work w/ her in the afternoons 1:1. How much point is there to spending half your day staring into space & killing time?

>> Doing well in math to Grade 4 and then dropping, doing well in
>> spelling but not other subjects — these are flags to overuse of rote
>> memory and underdevelopment of higher-order thinking skills…
>> <snip>… it seems like that’s where you are stuck.

>> … she needs to be taught reasoning skills. In most cases, it’s best to >> go back to earlier levels

Victoria - thanks for your response!

What you are saying here matches almost exactly w/ the woman from the university who’s been helping me has explained about individuals who’ve sustained brain injuries. She said that two times when kids are likely to begin experiencing problems are ~4th grade, and again around 7th grade. (Maybe this goes for other kids too, I’m not sure.) She said it is due to the nature of the material that is being presented at those levels, and not necessarily something that is happening developmentally to the child. (If there are other opinions about this, however, I’d be curious to hear them.)

I noticed recently that her 3-yrs. younger (4 grades lower) sibling is quickly closing in on her reading level. :( We actually ordered her a book from the littler one’s book order recently. It’s at just about the right level, I think.

This friend of mine claims there are “exercises” you can do to increase abstract reasoning abilities & so forth, but I haven’t gotten to explore any of that w/ her at this point. I’m concerned to begin doing them early w/ my younger child, who also sustained head injuries when younger. My entire immediate family has experienced moderate head injuries. :( Although that child is currently doing extremely well in school, I’m deathly afraid that we may find problems cropping up at some point. I pray that we don’t!

>> The problem with relying on the provider of a service to also
>> diagnose the problem is that the service provided 1) may have
>> a financial incentive to find certain things wrong that their
>> treatment is said to address and 2) even if the service provider
>> is totally honest (and many are) there is a certain bias that
>> accompanies true belief in the benefits of a particular program.

Good stuff to keep in mind - thank you for your comments.

Janis, you wondered if I’d made the app’t. yet - no, but I did talk w/ the head hancho of the Ed. Psych. program. It didn’t really sound like what I was expecting, for some reason. They weren’t too concerned about what our situation was or what we were experiencing on our end, they just seemed to have an agenda of sorts, and needed willing participants - that was the “read” that I got on the whole thing. That’s not to say there wouldn’t be any benefits for taking the ride, but they explained up-front that most insurance programs don’t cover them.

The first thing they shot at me was a behavior modification thing (re: her organizational issues), telling me that grades aren’t ample rewards, and we needed to come up w/ something different. All I could picture was another one of these silly deals that requires X% of compliance to earn some piddly thing…

At a psychologist’s office (re: an anxiety issue) once, it was cutesy little erasers. Once you have 2 or 3, do you really need or WANT any more? At school, it’s been stickers when she was younger, or “points” which led up to a whole whopping Hawaiian Punch @ the end of the week if she had enough. At the university, maybe they get a little more sophisticated w/ the rewards, but the bottom line is that she will know there is an atempt being made to manipulate her, and will likely find it to be as patronizing as she found the previous situations to be (you could just *sense* the resentment).

The other part of all this is that I don’t think she does this stuff (forgetting books at school, failing to take completed homework along w/ her, etc.) purposely. It upsets her immensely when these things happen (well, at times it does…she kind of goes in waves w/ things). So, bottom line: I told them I wasn’t interested in this @ the present time.

The other thing they have going, I’m not 100% clear on what it is. I asked if the woman could mail, or at least e-mail, some information to me, but she was talking a mile a minute, and never responded to that part of my request. Something that’s happening this summer…and something that required some type of follow-up at home on a nightly basis (for how long, I don’t know).

To be honest, it sounded slightly gimmicky. Something to produce short-term results, but which probably wouldn’t be something the average family would adhere to from now until their now-7th-grader graduates - know what I’m saying?! Anyway, we’re supposedly “on a list” for that, but I think she sensed my skepticism, so perhaps we’re at the BOTTOM of it! ;)

Jan, I was sorry to read of all your mother’s difficulties…that’s especially discouraging that therapy which was helping her had to be discontinued just due to Medicare reasons! I’m so sorry… My aunt, I recently learned, had purposely waited over a year for a dermatological problem to become severe instead of taking care of it, because Medicare would not pay to have it dealt with until it was “bleeding”, and she’s too honest to fudge a complaint! :roll:

As for your son, I’m unable to see your post now due to the way I linked into my reply (I guess?), but it was really interesting to me to read about your homeschool GROUP! I didn’t honestly know that there were such things. In talking w/ my mom today, she was apparently aware of them, but seems to think I wouldn’t be able to contribute anything to one! (Nice, huh?) ;)

Can you tell me anything more about that, like how many kids are included, what the age range is like, and what your “input” requirements are? (Generally speaking.) I feel like my daughter is definitely getting WAY behind due to the school situation, but I cannot even fathom the idea of being her teacher exclusively (organizational issues of my own, there!). However, if the load was shared somewhat, and my own focus was narrowed, I feel it could be a different story.

I really wish we could somehow get an accurate read on her “true” IQ. Then, we would have a much better idea how far she is lagging behind in areas that she “should not be”, if you know what I’m saying. Instead, since they tested her and came up w/ a low number, anything she does above that level on is just supposed proof that they’re doing really WELL w/ her. They’re “helping her to outperform her ability level” - OK! How her ability level is that low & she still manages to get upper 80s and 90s on the stuff she hands in & cares about, they need to explain to me, please!

She struggles w/ her writing too, but has some good ideas. You sort of have to pull the ideas out of her, then encourage her to polish them (which she isn’t too “into”!).

There was more I was going to say re: your son, but I can’t refer back to the post from here right now, darn it! Thank you for sharing!

Leizanne,

We are actually in 2 homeschool groups this yr. We had to join one just to get on their waiting list for classes next yr. Every state is different about homeschool law. You can ck. out the law for your state on the HSLDA website. Our 1st group has children between 4 and 17 yrs. We meet on Fri. and the kids take all kind of classes depending on their age. We have 30-40 students in that group.This yr. Michael has taken Literature, Greek and Latin, Ballroom dancing etc. they have a Science Fair and International Fair once a yr. YOu don’t have to participate but if you want to you can. We are required to get in 180 days of school between May 30th to May 30th. You choose what days are best for your family. We get 10 abscences a yr. and 5 teacher workdays a yr. You MUST keep attendance records and our state law requires 3rd and up to take SAT. These are administered at the school. Most of the homeschool groups (umbrellas) are affiliated with a church. Some require a statement of faith and some don’t.

Our other group that we just joined this yr. has 230-250 kids from pre-K to 12th grade. They offer all sorts of classes. They also have guidance counselors to help in highschool . They have graduation just like any school with a diploma etc. They also offer Science Fair etc that compete in not only regional but international Public school fairs.

The good thing for us about homeschooling is that we can teach to Michael’s gifts and work around his problems. He loves Science so he takes Robotics with a homeschool mom that is a Science major. We also do lots of Science at home. He was on 2 Robotics teams this yr. 1 highschool team and one middleschool team. He is in Destination Imagination also. This team is independent but we compete with public and private schools.They actually won at regional and State level and are going to Global competition in May. He is also on the Puppet Team at our church. You see, these kids are not socially isolated, they are very involved in outside activities.

Michael was a Student Ambassador last yr and got to go on a learning trip to California. He got highschool credits for that.All I’m saying is that he is so much happier now that it is worth every minute of effort I put into it. He has a great self esteem and enjoys learning now. Sorry to go on soo long!!! E mail me if you have any questions. Jan