Pros and Cons of having your child labelled LD

Pros -
1. You get services.
2. You get modifications of work.
3. You get accommondations like seating, a set of texts at home, books on tape, an alphasmart.
4. The issue of retention should never come up.
5. Child does work at his level and gets a feeling of success.
6. Special help.
7. More contact with school personnel bec of the meetings and constant communication.
8. Can sometimes have a say in teacher choice.
9. More transportation options (sometimes).
10. Exemption or modification of high stakes testing.
11. If there are behavior issues, you get a bit more protection.
12. Easier to get the untimed SAT.

Cons -
1. The special help often involves being pulled out of class at the worst possible time.
2. The special help is totally inappropriate, but nothing else is available.
3. Child still has to sit for and pass high stakes test or else they fail, are retained, don’t get a diploma.
4. Child spends his day in classes that are not as his level and not presented in a way that he can learn. (Imagine you taking a chemistry class in Chinese when you’re 10 years old English speaker.)
5. You have to provide all the help outside the classroom on your own dime (you may have to do this anyway).
6. Make get undesirable teachers.
7. You get the label of being a Parent in Denial.
8. You have to spend hours hovering over HW that is way too much and too advanced for your child, possibly to the point where to get it done you have to do it yourself.

I also think a lot has to do with how far behind the child is and what steps are being taken to remediate the child. If the help the school has is not a proven multi-sensory, sequential reading than it’s pretty worthless.

The best thing is a private school for kids with learning disabilities.

My child was labeled at the end of kindergarten. His IEP team including us determined it was better to label him as LD on his IEP so he could get all the services available to him without the county asking why he was getting the services. Now I am starting to doubt myself because I am not sure he is being pushed to perform his full potential.

The last person said a private school is the way to go. That makes me feel very sad because so many cannot afford so it makes us feel inadequate as a parent. Any alternatives?

I have no problem with the label, provided it gets your child effective services. This can, and does, happen in the rare classroom where the sped teacher is given an appropriate case load, and a relatively homogeneous group of students.

I had this group for one year during my tenure in the public schools. There were eight first and second grade, LD/ADHD students in my class, and they were served for two to three hours each day. There were no significant emotional issues (but a VERY high activity level) and everyone had intelligence judged to be at least in the average range. With three distince reading groups, my students (and I) had a great year, and they all made terrific gains. Three years later, half of those students were receiving no pull-out, except speech, and looked pretty average in the classroom. They continue to function at an acceptable level in middle school. Even those who continue to receive services are reading adequately and have an independent future ahead of them.

The next year, my system adopted two philosophies that had a significant impact on caseloads. First, virtually all students were returned to their home schools and numbers went up. Second, remediation was to take place in the general ed classroom to the greatest extent possible. Within two years, it became very obvious that I was not a good enough teacher to meet the needs of students at a minimum of five distinctly different reading levels, some with significant emotional issues, in the same two hour reading period, especially when I had to teach in the general ed classroom with another teacher teaching an entirely different lesson. There was no way I could give the remediation needed to the two students who had a similar profile to my group of eight. It broke my heart to realize that these students would probably never graduate from high school because I was unable to meet their needs.

I’d love to disagree with the previous poster, but I can’t. I truely believe that a private school for students with LDs is the best choice. In that setting, you’ll get small, relatively homogenous groups that allow real learning and teaching to occur….something that is not possible when the resource room becomes a dumping ground for any and all students who don’t fit the general education slot in some way or another.

The best alternative if you cannot afford private school (or even if you can) is to research methods that will best help your child learn. Either way, you will empower yourself to become a more equal part of your child’s team. Don’t assume that the school will take care of your child’s education.

A good place to start your learning is the in depth section of this website. Take your child’s IEP, locate areas that indicate weaknesses, and begin educating yourself. There are a number of parents at this website who have done just that and are now successfully remediating their children themselves and with the help of qualified professionals.

That was probably, bar none, the best advice that I have ever heard fal from the lips(or onto the screen, as the case may be), of an educational professional. It pretty much mirrors my experience of the public school system special ed department. It also gave me a rare insider’s perspective of what special education looks like from the other side of the fence.

I agree completely. Sometimes parents get all wrapped up in the IEP content, but in truth, it is very rare for an LD child to be remediated in a public school. To me, the IEP is good for accommodations to help the child survive while the remediation is taking place elsewhere. We have no private LD schools where we live. So if the current school doesn’t work, homeschool is about the only option.

Janis

I think you’ve gotten the straight stuff. I would add two things: 1) make very, very sure you get the right label (the one that actually describes your child), 2) a correct diagnosis is important to the child understanding his/her own needs and compensating/self-advocatin/doing-what-needs-to-be-done to succeed.

I would send mine to a private LD school if there was one here but there isn’t . I do what many do-paid for the remedial help and testing as needed; keep an eye on school to ensure they are helping and not hurting. But I know the school will not take care of it, I have to. The school will accomodate my child,(she is quite high IQ and now reads at grade level), in areas like spelling and study guides. But it is up to me to be the case manager -to learn as much as I can about what my child needs, to understand what works for my child and to ensure that my child gets what she needs. I have been lucky, I found: the reading tutor from heaven, a good developmental optometrist who didn’t cost a bomb, a child who responds to Adderall, books on tape, most of all, this board.

Its a big job; a responsibility that has flattened me at times. But it is mine.

I labeled my son but then unlabled him. At first, I thought labeling him would get him the help he needed. It just didn’t work that way. He was frustrated in the 2 teacher class where he saw his friends on the other side of the room working on interesting projects while he did rainbow spelling. He was miserable. The teacher treated him like a child who couldn’t learn. He kept saying, “Why do they think I am stupid.”

He is now completely mainstreamed. I have found that the schools basic skills help is better for addressing specific areas of need than the special ed program which just tries to meet the needs a wide variety of issues in what I thought was a dumping ground approach.

I did most of the remediation on my own. I taught him to read with phonographix, am currently teaching him to spell with sequential spelling did interactive metronome, vision therapy and little audiblox etc. We have worked on skip counting and times table in car rides, with plenty of books on tape to keep his comprehension up while learning to read.

He gets writing help from a basic skills tutor after school. I just told the school, “I have done everything else but I just don’t know how to teach a child to write.” I asked for a recommendation for a tutor I would pay for privately but they just provided it for free.

The school has not always agreed with me but it isn’t their child and I had the big picture in mind.

It is exhausting but worthwhile. He is an amazing kid turning into an amazing person.