Ben has been diagnosed with apd, (tolerance fading memory and decoding). Ben’s attention to anything that is hard is awful. My personal opinion is that he simply tunes out because it’s hard for him.
I go for his IEP this afternoon. They’ve made me angry because they tested his IQ over several days without telling me. Knowing Ben, he didn’t cooperate AT ALL! The school psych was telling me that he seemed sad, then she tickled him, then he did a few questions, then he got candy, etc. I know darn good and well, he just threw stuff out there to make them shut up and go away.
Naturally his scores were awful. They didn’t believe that the scores reflected his intelligence at all, but they have to show them in his permanent record with an asterisk. Lovely.
I am going to have to spend the summer getting a better dx for him and a better grasp of what’s going on. Do I see a developmental doctor or a neuro psych as I’ve read on here? I’m hesitant to try meds. He is so far from hyper, it’s silly. His only symptom that would seem to possibly put him in the category is the inattention.
Thanks for any help/response.
Re: adhd/ capd question
Why would you even be thinking about meds, given that the school did NOT diagnose ADHD? APD sometimes looks like ADHD and vice versa, but they are not the same. If you really want to know what is going on, arrange an appointment with a developmental pediatrician or a pediatric neurologist with expertise in diagnosing LD and ADHD. In addition, see an audiologist and SLP for confirmation (or refutation) of the APD diagnosis.
Sounds like an excellent candidate for a more child-centered school. “Different” children (and they’re all different in some respects) are often regarded as PROBLEMS for standard classrooms because they don’t fit in and they require more personalized attention than the overstressed and undertrained teaching staff can provide. Plus the entire standard educational model seems to be based on the idea that all kids are supposed to learn the same thing at the same time in the same way. Of course, this isn’t true for anyone, but the further your child diverges from the “sacred norm”, the less well a standard classroom will fit for him/her. We homeschooled and used public charter and alternative schools (we even helped found a charter school!) because our kids clearly would not have fit into a regular classroom. We always chose schools whose philosophy put flexibility in meeting the child’s needs at the head of the agenda. Your child sounds like a very unique person who will learn at his own pace in his own way. I would strongly suggest finding a school that is less worried about scores and more worried about figuring out what works for your child. And if this isn’t available, I would bet that homeschooling would easily be more effective than what he is likely to receive in a standard classroom. We were really scared to start homeschooling, and it was hard, but not in the ways I had expected. Teaching and learning were way easier when we could adapt the schedule and curriculum to what our son needed. And we were able to create plenty of options for socialization that were far superior to throwing him into a class of kids who would make fun of him for being different.
Hope you will give my suggestion some consideration, as you don’t seem to be getting much respect from your school. Good luck!