Looking for old friends - Beth from FL, Laura from CA ??

Hi Karen!!!

I was just thinking about LDonline the other day. I saw your message but it took me awhile to figure out how to log on again!

How are you doing? And how is your son? Is he in the same school?

My son is doing well. He is going into eighth grade in the same parochial school we moved him to four years ago. He got B’s and C’s last year with a sprinkling of A’s. We have continued to try to inch him along, using summers mostly now that he is older. He is doing some NN again this summer.I can see reading comprehension issues catching up with him now that he is in middle school. He still isn’t great at abstract thinking so literature is his weakest subject (he got C’s all year) The school tracked math this past year which worked in his favor. The faster kids were put in a different class. My son kept a solid 90 average all year in his class. Social Studies is his strongest subject—he usually gets A’s in it.

Socially, he has done much better after we moved him and retained him a year. He has friends and ironically is popular with the girls. He is clueless enough that I guess they find it charming, but he really doesn’t have anything to do with them. He is never going to be cocktail party social but he doesn’t stand out either. Some humor goes over his head but he fakes it pretty well. I don’t think boys in general are as socially sophisticated as girls which works in his favor.

He has made several of the school sports teams which has been a big boost to his self esteem. I always knew all that NN and IM would come to some good! This has been a big advantage of a smaller school.

He is active in boy scouts and is even patrol leader this year. He has taken a real interest in backpacking and has a reputation of being a tough hiker.

We expect he will enter a college prep circul. next year. He will never be star student but to think I feared that he would end high school with no more than a certificate of attendance a few short years ago. His biggest challenge is organization—he is a certified slob!

We are leaving tomorrow night for a family vacation out west so if I dont’ reply later that’s why (the challenge is to keep it a family vacation—Nathan wants to climb a mile mountain in Nevada. His middle aged mother does not!)

Beth

That is such good news!!!

We moved our son 4 years ago into his LD school and he is still there. He has one more year and then will return to the mainstream for high school. We haven’t done any additional therapies other than the intensive OG program he is in and some psychotherapy for anxiety. But he’s not even doing that right now. His academic progress has been miraculous. He tests very high for reading now if you give him extended time (and lots of it!). His school doesn’t think he needs an LD school anymore and we are trying to decide if a mainstream public school or private school would be better. There are pros and cons for each, and this puzzle is one of the reasons I came back to LDonline.

I remember someone, I think you, saying that great things happen to some of our kids when they hit puberty. (the bar mitzvah effect?)… it has been true for us. He’s still a bit quirky and shy, but his interest in girls has motivated him to be out there. He has made alot of friends at his school and feels very confident that he can make a fresh start at a new high school.

his biggest issues now are the slow slow slow processing speed and inattention. We had some luck with straterra for the focus, but its incremental at best.

I’m so glad to hear how well things are going with you!!!!! I have alot of questions about public school, IEP’s etc, having never been in that world with him. So write back when you can. : )

Hi, Moms, I check in every so often and I am very happy to hear that your sons are doing well. Time marches on and all your hard work is bearing fruit. My son is now 20. He graduated with a diploma from a private ld high school. He was accepted at a 4 year college. He waited a year before going away to the college. Freshman year is behind him. Wow was it hard, but he earned good enough grades and gained so much independence. Reading and spelling are still not that easy and asking for help from Disabled Student Services was difficult for him. But, he did seek help when he needed to and he dug in his determined heels and succeeded. The cell phone was his lifeline and just being able to call us and vent helped him to get things off his chest, so that he could try again. We are glad to be past so many significant hurtles. He plans to good back to college in Sept. so, we’ll take it one semester at a time. Best regards.

Angela,

I am glad your son made it through the year successfully. I know at one point, you were concerned. Freshman year is hard for all kids so some of what he experienced had nothing with being LD.

Karen,

My thoughts on high school are mainly from watching my older daughter and realizing the same school will not be right for my son. She is going to be a senior in falland is going to a private Catholic high school. While there are a number of private Catholic high schools in the area, this one has the reputation of being the top rate school.

First, you will want an IEP for your son regardless. The slower processing speed will cause problems for him for standardized college testing and the only way he will have extended time is if he gets it in high school.

Second, you need to get the pulse of the school. The school with the best reputation may not be best for your son. My daughter’s school really caters to the top students. It focuses extra attention on those who they think have a chance of being National Merit Scholars. For example, those students receive twice as much tutoring in SAT prep as other students for the same amount of money. I know all these things because my daughter is smart enough to be in this circle of kids, but does not have the test scores to be included in the school’s inner circle. The school uses the number of merit scholars as part of its promotional materials so its self interest is obvious.

Processing speed matters a lot in honor and AP courses. My daughter was at a disadvantage here—she read at low end of average in speed. In middle school she always just worked harder but in high school this didn’t work. She wanted to be in the honor classes with the more motivated students but all the kids were as smart as she was or smarter. You can’t necessarily work harder when everyone is working hard. We eventually had her do some NN which helped. She took 2 AP classes and 4 honor classes this past year and got all A’s. I think she still worked harder than other kids but some of that is her personality. She is perfectionistic.

I know at another Catholic high school in our area they simply do not have as many honor courses. So kids, even the best, have to take some regular classes. We are thinking of sending our son there. We know kids who are B students who have been quite successful. I know other kids who were frustrated because the school wouldn’t allow them to take more than a handful of honor classes and transferred to the school my daughter is at. We also know a family who felt like their son, who is a C student, was not getting enough attention and is transferring him to a smaller private school.

I have several friends who had kids with LD who did better in less high achieving environments. In both cases, the kids’ dads lived in different school districts and the girls went to live with him part way through high school. Both girls felt like failures in the high achieving high schools but were much more successful in less demanding environments. Ironically, the school districts their mothers lived in had the reputation for being the best while the other school districts were not as highly rated.

Personally, I think is probably less important whether the school is private or public than who they are interested in. I think that a school who is seriously interested in helping B students be successful is likely to be a better match for your son than one that is most interested in those who can earn 1400 or more on their SATs.

Hope this helps some.

Beth

Hi, everybody! I saw Beth’s name and I had to come here to say hello! Beth and I used to email all the time! I think when the format of this forum changed, it really reduced the posting. I couldn’t get the page to load right on my school computer, so I could never read it there. But for some reason I decided to check in here tonight to see who is around.

My daughter will be in 6th grade and she will remain at the charter school where she has attended since first grade. I agonized over whether to send her to a larger public school or a smaller Christian school, but she was happy where she was, so we left her there. Our problem will be the state tests and whether she can remain in a school that uses them through high school. Private schools do not have them, so that is our back-up plan if the tests become an obstacle.

I start back to work Monday teaching LD reading in a K-3 school. I love it and look forward to this school year!

I hope all of your children have a great year! It was fun for me to read about their progress!

Janis

Hi Janis,

I have thought of you often and wondered how things were going for you and your daughter. I am glad to hear she is doing well enough to stay in the school she likes.

I know your daughter did some V and V a few years back. How much did it help? My son’s comprehension still isn’t where it ought to be so I am curious. I am not sure he will ever do V and V though. I wanted to finish the NN math program first—figuring that it is more foundational than V and V. We are close to doing that now (that is what he has done this summer). But he is not easily compliant any more—he has years of therapy and now is a teenager. But maybe he will decide he wants to do V and V for himself at some point.

Beth