accomodation questions

If he’s crying in class because of the amount of work, I would reduce it. Perhaps his tears come from being overwhelmed. Ask what this will do to his grades.

I would have him assessed. Find out exactly what the difficulties are, so you can start remediating. He is 8 years old, school will progressively get academically and socially more demanding and he will continue to be more frustrated until you find out how you can help him.

I started to have him assessed at the school he was attending last year but removed consent because the school psychologist was proving to be adversarial and unethical. During IEP meetings for my autistic son I found out she had illegal records in her posession that were from testing done by an unexperienced school psychologist in early interventions. The original testing had been done without consent and included results of a parent questionaire that had been filled out by the school psychologist herself. The state repremanded the school and said the records had to be removed. the school claimed to have removed them but the new school psychologist showed up with them and refused to acknowledge that they were illegal. Anyway, we are getting our son assessed privately this year.

If teacher is willing to help…informally…and you ARE pursuing private testing to ensure nothing ‘slips through the cracks’, I don’t think you need worry about the accomodations. Read this site, ask specific questions, and let your gut feelings and teacher’s suggestions guide you. He is in Grade 2, not Grade 10…he needs to get qualilty work done, not quantity. He needs to learn, not achieve! As for grades, my personal take is that grades do NOT define us — they simply show us where we are, and where we need to go. Elementary school achievement or lack thereof will not affect his college/university applications!

If his personality type is ‘needs to achieve’ (non-achievers like mine DON’T cry when they can’t keep up, they gaze out the window quite happily — only get stressed if Ms. Mean teacher makes them uncomfortable!) then he will NOT suffer from doing a bit less. Sounds like teacher is willing to help and do what he needs — sometimes formal IEP, etc. should wait. Especially if you have no confidence in the school psych and are pursuing private testing!

Explain to him that we all have different ‘pace’ when it comes to the early grades of school — that you are getting him testing so you can help him achieve ALL his potential — but that he should NOT be upset when he can’t get it ‘all done’ or do ‘as much as the others’ — you (parents) and teacher will help him slow his pace to produce his BEST work, and quantity will improve in the future. Best to learn early not to compare oneself with others, IMO!

As in teaching cashiers — accuracy comes first —speed will follow naturally. In grade 2, 3 correct problems out of 10 is MUCH better than a meltdown that negatively affects learning and self-image!

GOOD LUCK…hope you will hang around so we can hear your future success stories! This is a great place to come — I’m just an LD mom (and was a ‘gifted but won’t work to potential’ myself) but there are many highly knowledgable folks on these boards who will have great input about specific accomodations as you move along. Best to you and your boys!

I hope you kept a good paper trail, you really should go after the school, sounds like they really messed up. You can probably request to have the testing done at another school. This would be a good question for www.Schwablearning.org the folks on that site are so knowledgable regarding testing and rights.

I believe it’s a good idea to lessen his work load right now, poor kid sounds very frustrated. Private testing is probably your best bet right now so you can help him. And you’ll be able to show the school and teacher the recommendations for assistance he may need. And you’ll have some thing to compare when you have school assessments done.

He sounds alot like my 7 yr old, doctors kept saying he had ADD/ADHD among other things. Finally after testing(privately) because of resistence from his school ( because he was not performing 2 grade levels below his grade, because he is highly gifted) we found he has CAPD ( Central Auditory Processing Disorder) which looks an awful lot like ADD/ADHD.

Oops! forgot to put my user name in, the above comments are from taximom.

Thanks for helping me put things in perspective. My own experience with school was so terrible and the fight for an appropriate education for my autistic son has left me with such an emotionally charged worry about my son’s needs getting taken care of that perspective is good. I’m caught in that place of doing everything to make sure he succedes and then having the school ignore his needs net. The school he is at now is a VERY small public school. We fought really hard to get the boys in there. I feel very lucky we were able to win the fight because I believe that it is the best school for us. I know I need to get testing and have documentation for the future though.

Meanwhile, we homeschool through Summer so I think that cutting back on the quantity of his work will not set him up to fall behind in skills.

Yes, we have a HUGE paper trail. The list of compliance violations is in the legal file we have prepared and the legal file is thick. I won’t bore you with the long gory details. What’s really shocking is that the schools have been so outrageously behaved when they know my husband is a lawyer. Of course, they didn’t realize they were dealing with a seasoned trial lawyer and they fought with us just up to the point of going to court. Then they replace the offensive/offending administrator until things smooth over. So, the file remains on the shelf for now. In one way they win because I’m left feeling like, if I have to fight so hard do keep services for my autistic son how much harder will it be to battle for a son with “mere” learning disabilities. I’m not even asking for services, just that my son not be damaged by the educational process. I believe he will be safe at the school he is now at.