Advice on Self contained vs. inclusion please?

I personally would be reluctant to move a child who is basically suceeding to a self contained classroom. I have a hard time imagining that she would not be way beyond the other kids there. I certainly would insist on visiting the proposed classroom before deciding anything.

I also think that the fact that your daughter is happy in her current situation, despite its imperfections should be taken into account.

Beth

I would focus on the tutoring and home support, and continue with full inclusion in a regular classroom, unless the self-contained were a ‘gifted LD’ program, which it does not sound like it is, from what you say. To be truthful, as soon as possible I’d drop the pull-out, if tutoring can be provided outside school hours, but that’s a whole discussion on it’s own…

Many self-contained classes become a warehouse of despair for gifted LD kids — plus the self-image problems that may ensue from being placed with children whose disabilities are varied and quite different, including intellectual and behavioural problems, can also have a poor effect on a child whose ‘learner self-image’ is already compromised.

My belief is that some of us simply must struggle! The tutoring will help skills to develop. My son doesn’t get great marks yet — but he is managing in a regular grade 6 program, great marks in reading, social studies, science, D’s in writing (we are focusing on that, now that reading is where it should be) and D to R (the old F!) in math.

I don’t worrry about math at present — I have asked his teacher to include him in ANY remedial help offered, but I am focused on writing at home. All I do for math is help him do his homework, which he can manage with some support although he never ‘gets’ many concepts well enough to do well on tests.

I chose to rank the skills and attack each in order. Hence, when the principal in Gr. 2 (after school psych testing dx’d ‘specific learning disability in communication’) said I HAD to ‘designate’ him as exceptional as he would never manage the ‘normal program’ and would NEVER be able to pass the Gr. 10 literacy test, I decided that I knew better, and chose regular program. I didn’t even take an IEP, as a tutor who got him reading during a summer program after Gr. 1 told me it would be best NOT to go this route for him. Since she had earned my great respect, and you might guess that the principal had already gained my disdain and distrust, I decided to go with my heart and good old fashioned hard work and struggle.

NOW…during this struggle, don’t think that my child had a terrible life under mama the tutor from H*ll. I focused on the WHOLE child — so when my program resulted in much struggle in Gr. 3 and still a great deal in 4, I didn’t waver. He was happy and healthy, had good self-esteem in general and understood that his visual dyslexia and learning style was a barrier to good grades, but that we were working to FIX his difficulties, and that patience and hard work would help us achieve our goals. He was not the hyper-worker who wants to be perfect, so the poor grades were acceptable to him, and I taught him that the grades do not define us — they simply show us where we are, and where we need to go. Yes, he did endure some pain from teasing and from teachers who actively worked against me, being sure that he was ‘just lazy’ or ‘didn’t belong in their class so why should they try’. But he had plenty of support at home from mom and dad, who told him that the opinion of others does not define you either — we believed it, and believed in him — since belief is catching, he believed in himself.

So, the child who was predicted to NEVER read well — is now reading so well, that his new gr 6 teacher was shocked to learn that he had any trouble learning to read, or that we were thrilled at his D’s in spelling since this was his first year of 50% correct — previous testing was usually in the 20% correct status, and written work was an excercise in translation. Now, his reading and comprehension are at or above grade level — mostly because he spent a good 1.5 hours average EVERY day, in Gr. 2, 3, and 4, reading aloud with his mother — by Gr. 5 I could allow him to read silently, cuz he was ‘there’, and my bookstore bill was astronomical to provide incentive, but he still read an average of 2 hours daily, from comic books, comic novels, novels, internet investigations, etc. No magic — just good solid work using the right program for him!

Now, we are focused on writing and spelling. Math will take it’s turn, but I can already see he will use his personality and language skills to build a career, and will only need ‘adult level life skills’ math — I know he will have that by HS graduation, and so I leave that skill in the ‘tomorrow’ basket. I am not going to make a kid miserable that he can’t get a decent mark in algebra in the 6th grade, and jeopardize our relationship (with teen years looming!) when it will NOT matter one bit to his life as a whole whether he gets it or not! I don’t care if he has remedial math and tutors all through HS – through working with my child, and his tutors (we ran out of money for that after gr. 2, but had EXCELLENT people for two years prior) I KNOW how he learns and have a good idea what he will be capable of. I’m not worried at all…

Now, he is a certain type of learner — not all kids can ‘follow our plan’ and get the same results. Beth’s son, for instance, has very different skills and talents. They had a very different program of remediation and made some different choices, including repeating a year which was not an option for us. But ask her how he’s doing — the ‘WHOLE’ child — she’ll tell you he’s doing GREAT. Like mine, plenty of work still to do — not time to relax yet — but a happy, healthy kid who manages the regular program expectations, quite well, I believe and has a great image of himself as a learner! Check the archives and you can read all about him — his work and commitment (and hers!) make us look like we had it on ‘easy street’! But we are just two ‘success stories’ — hang around a bit, and you’ll find many more…unfortunately, none that I can remember were due to school effort alone!

You sound, from the quote at the end of your post, as though you are motivated and able to help your child find HER INDIVIDUAL path, to ensure that she works through her difficulties and achieves goals commensurate with her potential. Read, read, read, about the various problems she has and the choices available to help those problems. Work to develop a plan to help her remediate her deficits. It doesn’t matter whether you work with her yourself or use tutors, provided whatever you choose WORKS. But my advice is NOT to depend on the school to lead the way — they have two standardized programs, and getting ‘what she needs’ from them will be a result of good luck alone — regardless of how good and easy the program offered SOUNDS. Remember, they don’t CARE how she turns out — she’s their JOB. Not their child!

Best wishes to you and your daughter! I hope you’ll keep us posted on her progress…

Instead of moving a child who apparently does not have a learning disability to a self-contained classroom , why not explore other options for treating what sounds like ADHD? If adderall was not helpful and had bad side effects, you might consider a non-stimulant such as Strattera. You might also try another stimulant. Some children will do well on one stimulant but not another. You might also consider non-medication options like Interactive Metronome. There is some research supporting the effectiveness of IM in reducing ADHD symptoms. Your doctor can give you specific advice on whether this is something to explore with your child. Also, has your daughter been evaluated for auditory processing issues? Her complaint that she has trouble hearing when there is a lot going on in the classroom raises that issue in my mind. I have a GT/ADHD child (and also a GT/ADHD/LD child) and your description of your daughter’s classroom difficulties sounds very familiar to me. When my kids were able to get their ADHD under control, those kinds of difficulties were greatly reduced.

A couple more thoughts. I agree that you really ought to have her auditory processing evaluated by an audiologist specializing in auditory processing disorders. My son has been diagnosed with both ADD and Auditory Processing Disorder and truly it is the APD that causes the issues with noise, for him at least. We have done tons of remediation and it really isn’t an issue any more while he still has some mild attention issues.

We also did do Interactive Metronome and it helped his attention and processing a lot.

Finally, I totally agree with Elizabeth that you need to see yourself as the expert on your child. The schools have their opinions and offer their help but in the end you are the one who has to live with the results. I have done all sorts of “radical” things along the way that have worked out well. In second grade, I pulled my son out part time and homeschooled him because, even with an advocate, I could not get an appropriate reading program. It was due process or homeschooling and I decided on the later. But I put him back in in third grade when there was a much better teacher (the principal later told me I helped get rid of the first) and kept him there for two more years. For us, the pull outs worked because the teacher was using materials similar to what I was doing and he got more attention than in the classroom. Then I changed schools (to parochial where my other two were) and retained him. The research on retention of LD children, especially in upper grades (he was repeating fourth grade), is pretty discouraging. But we thought it was the best thing for a variety of reasons and now a year and a half later, I am sure it was.

I tell you this not to encourage you to make the same choices but to encourage you to trust your own instincts about your child. It was easy for me to begin to do this because the school was so blatantly incompetent. After my son did not learn to read in first grade even in special ed, the school psychologist told me basically that it wasn’t their program that was the problem but the fact that I, overeducated that I was (I have a PhD), had not accepted that I had a child with a disability. I kept my mouth shut but I was furious and vowed I’d do whatever necessary to teach my child and that I would never trust them to look out for him. Once, several years later, at an IEP meeting I had the district audiologist tell me that my son was going to be just fine, despite his very significant learning disabilities, because I was such an advocate for him.

Beth

You have received some excellent advice, and I would like to concur that the ADHD and auditory processing need to be evaluated. Putting her in a self-contained special class will likely doom her to being behind forever. I would pull my child and homeschool long before I’d agree to a special ed. class all day, particularly when she is very bright and has been found NOT to have a learning disability. I think you can argue that it would not be the least restrictive environment for her. But it would be your responsibility to follow-up with the doctor on the ADHD and get an auditory processing evaluation after you get the ADHD straightened out.

Janis

Your right, I have gotten a volume of good advice here, and plan to print it out so that I can share it with my husband and make notes for myself.

I thought that I might add a couple of details to what I have explained about our situation. When our daughter was in first grade the school did their psycho-educational evaluation and declared her learning disabled in the areas of math and reading. We believed that she was having difficulty, but I had always suspected some form of Dyslexia but learned through reading that most schools will not specify Dyslexia as the problem because they would then have to provide specific Dyslexic Programs that they don’t normally offer and that would cause them to encur extra expenses. It was then, ten months after the schools evaluation, that we took her into the local University and had her tested. They use graduate level students to conduct their tests and have them supervised by a degreed psychologist for the final findings. They were the folks that declared she had no noteable learning disability but some difficulties in attention, spelling, etc. I even sent off for a mail in evaluation for Dyslexia in hopes to better clarify what was going on with those characteristics that we were seeing at home, but no one else deemed noteworthy enough to make a diagnosis. It seems that all the testing show her with many Dyslexic traits, but not enough to label her as a true Dyslexic. I have found many of the learning methods advised in some of the Dyslexic programs helpful with her, but of course I haven’t studied all the info there is. As you know it is difficult when you are gettting conflicting advice from those who supposedly are learning specialists. Our Pediatrician felt comfortable giving our daugher the diagnosis as ADD, the inattentive type, from what she had heard from teachers, home, and witnessed the lack of impluse control in her office, etc., that prescribed the Adderal. We have very recently started a trial of Strattera with her, but she still says she has no appetite when she takes it. We are concerned about forcing it on her after the negative Adderal experience, still the Pediatrician is persuading us to follow through.
We even tried the Homeschooling experience but I think I was a miserable failure at providing enough structure and routine in the schedule. Also, our daugher is the queen of manipulations and she would throw crying fits and do anything she could to disrupt the study time and change the focus. She made it all but impossible for me to maintain our objectives and my temperment. We felt she was not progressing, so we felt compelled to try public school again. During our Homeschooling year, our neighborhood was rezoned and we were able to use a different school, which to our surprise has been a very positive experience thus far. The faculty there and her classmates have been very welcoming and much easier for us to work with. Still, the regular classroom teacher says she is worried she isn’t helping our daughter enough. Our daughter feels she benefits from being pulled out for special ed. When the special ed teacher gives her the one on one time, she says that is when she learns the most. She told me yesterday, if she could go to the tutor every day she would do better. Unlike silly ole Mom, the tutor has her respect and attention and apparently is able to explain in ways she can understand. Even though that is expensive, we are tremendously grateful that she is progressing with her. Unfortunately, we can’t afford to send her everyday.
Anyway, you all have been extremely helpful here. My intuition was nudging me and that is why I posted. I suspected you all would say that we should be cautious, but it really helps getting advice from people who have been there. It sounds like we need to have her privately tested by an Audiologist. Am I correct in thinking that the school probably has not done this? Her speech teacher, we had at the beginning of the year told us she did not seem to have processing problems, but it sounds like this is slightly different than what she might have checked for. It would be helpful if the school would pay for the testing as we are running low on funding, but I am uncertain if I can trust the finding the school comes up with. I agree, we need to trust ourselves first. Thanks for all the input and we will keep you posted.
Deb

I agree with the others-she is bound to be above the level of the majority of kids in the self contained classroom. I would NOT go for that option!

My son has appetite issues on Adderall. We tried Strattera in the hopes that it would be better but it was not-strat does take awhile to ‘settle’ so your experience may be different-Id give it 4-6 wks

I know its hard to see your kid look like he or she has been starving in some foreign country. I was especially worried with my son hitting 13 and puberty, but we are weathering it fairly well. The ped took his XR dose down and we were able to maintain the good effects and lose the trouble sleeping. Appetite is still an issue but we only give it for school

So Xmas vacation put on a few pounds and summers and weekends help. I use high calorie chocolate shakes to up calorie intake-not the healthiest in the world but hes not one to take ensure, although some familieshave had luck with it, especially if partially frozen

IOW Ive made the decision that the weight loss is worth the success in school. Obviously, thats an individual choice but I, for one, dont feel you are endangering your childs health. DS is a bit over 5ft 4in in bare feet and weighs 83 lbs so yep, I understand

Homeschooling for 6th grade was a huge help. I focused on the reading-like the other poster said, I learned to focus on one thing at a time. His spelling is STILL horrid(ps 7th gr)and writing leaves much to be desired but he is reading and comprehending and made high honor roll!!!!!!

Your tutor sounds like the best solution-dd is very wise to see how different she learns one on one. I know that was what made the difference for us with homeschooling. Now its as if it doesnt matter because he’s relatively ‘caught up’ and able to function in and keep up in a crowd(his classes are on the small side though-taking off a year to homeschool stuck us in a low performing school which means smaller classes because its less popular with our choice system-funny how we find good things where we least expect it)

So, to reiterate what the others have said-test for CAPD with a trained audiologist-NOT the school system unless thats your only choice financially. Experiment with other ADD meds. Consider biting the bullet on the appetite issue-try some high calorie supplements.

Good luck

ADHD could be the cause of your daughter’s dyslexic-like traits. Recent research has shown that many children with ADHD have reading and language difficulties that cannot be diagnosed as true dyslexia.

marycas — although I avoided all medications except antibiotics for my daughter, nonetheless she was terribly underweight, to the extent that I was in the nurse’s office doing a weigh-in weekly for her first six months of life. Combination of a milk allergy (even human milk) and not believing in sleep, burning off everything she managed to absorb.
Considering that nine out of ten people in the rest of the family have to fight overweight, I figured as long as she was above the fifth percentile (barely) we would consider ourselves lucky. I let her eat what and when she wanted, and she seemed to need six small meals a day — hummingbird metabolism. She eats meats and veggies, always liked broccoli, so I wasn’t concerned about nutrition, except getting the calcium supplements down. I, too, was the “have another doughnut, dear” mother. Luckily she liked doughnuts.
Anyhow, puberty was a whole new world. At the age of fifteen suddenly, it appeared to be overnight, she became three times more solid, literally gaining bone mass as well as muscle (never did have any visible fat). For a while I was going around saying “Who are you and what have you done with my daughter?”
So, be prepared for Lord knows what in the next four or five years!

“ADHD could be the cause of your daughter’s dyslexic-like traits. Recent research has shown that many children with ADHD have reading and language difficulties that cannot be diagnosed as true dyslexia.”

This is true. Kids who cannot attend have trouble getting things to stick in short term memory. Yet, when you give them a CTOPP to check for processing issues realted to reading, they score okay. I am not a medication pusher, but for a child who isn’t learning, you have to make tough choices.

Janis

I think that is the question. On what basis did the evaluators conclude that your child was not dyslexic? Sometimes only a discrepancy model is used—in other words, was the child far enough behind. In early grades, even my very dyslexic child was not far enough behind. In fact, because of our efforts, he has never been far enough behind to qualify for labeling on that basis.

The CTOPP is an excellent test and I think would give a definitive answer to whether your child has processing problems related to reading. If she does not, then I too would have to conclude that it is ADHD related.

Beth

I’ll chime in my support. I would not go the self-contained route-you might never come back, literally.
Make sure the pullout is working. Monitor it. Ask questions about the material covered and check with yur child regularly. Sorry to sound negative but parents receive a lot of ‘happy talk’ and sometimes, not a lot of action.
Do pursue alternate meds. Lots of people have to do the trial method. No two kids are alike. We can’t do Ritalin but Adderall works (thank heavens). Strattera was a bust for us.
Do pursue remediating underlying processing problems-interactive metronome, vision therapy, whatever.
We too did one thing at a time. The most critical for us was reading. A great tutor helped her get on track but it was another 4 years before she read for pleasure.
I too could not tutor my child-its common. don’t worry about it. I feel that my main job is Mom. I can hire some to tutor but there’s only one Mom.
It is critical that your daughter is supported and knows you love her even if she doesn’t get her homework done. The expectation is that she tries and comes back for more.
Does she have an out-of-school activity that she is successful at? Ours is hoseback riding. But swim team, gymnastics, whatever turns her crank

Good luck