Wow, glad to find this site. I don’t even know where to begin.
My ds is 8 and in 2nd grade. He had some speech issues when he was 3, so we had him tested through the school district. He qualified for services for articulation. Expressive, receptive, and cognitive were fine. He was in the program for 3 months and then the school district said he no longer needed help. He had improved tremendously.
Problems popped up early in Kindergarten. He seemed really behind. Could not write sentences, was only stringing random letters together. Trouble reading, writing, you name it. He also had behavior problems — talking and staying on task. Towards the end of the year, his teacher recommended moving forward with a behavior evaluation with the school. They determined from that, that he had some tendencies for adhd, but due to some problems with social skills that he be evaluated by the autism panel.
We did the autism evaluation the beginning of 1st grade. He scored a 31 on the CARS, so he barely qualified for services. They also determined he had very low average receptive skills and below average expressive skills. (85 receptive and 78 expressive on the OWLS) They did the WISC-III on him also. I was very alarmed by this. He scored poorly on both scores and had a combined IQ of 78. The diagnositician told me not to be alarmed by this because he was only 6 and had immediately answered I don’t know to many things without even attempting it.
Way back in Kindergarten, his teacher told us to keep an eye out for dyslexia. She has it and is very sensitive to the signs of it. I asked for testing at the end of 1st grade. Was told by the ARD committee that he was too young. Asked for it again this year at our 1st ARD meeting. They just flat out told me it’s not necessary right now – but they’ll keep it in mind.
I revisited dyslexia just last week. Through my reading, he has 99% of the signs for it. He can read sight words very well in isolation, but when we place them in a sentence, he misreads them. Sometimes omits them, sometimes adds extra sight words in. Will misread longer words — most times saying a word that has no context in the sentence. He’ll also leave off the endings of words. IE, if it’s “talking”, he’ll read it as “talks”. Great difficulty with handwriting. He’s always had difficulty. One stroke letters turn into 3 strokes. Also has wrong starting and ending points. Most of his work is illegible. He has great ideas for stories, but can’t get the ideas down on paper. Cannot work well with margins. Most of his words in daily work will be phonetically spelled — even though he does well on his spelling tests.
I approached his teacher with this and she agrees that the signs are there. They’ve started an informal screening with him. The 1st day was phonological awareness. I was told he did great on this. This last Thursday was reading comprehension. Teacher didn’t have exact scores yet yesterday, but she said she got the impression that he had done very poorly.
I had a meeting with her also yesterday to discuss many of my concerns. Magically, she said my son is reading on grade level now. ??? I’m not quite sure how, because at the same time she told me his fluency, accuracy, and comprehension were still below level. Isn’t that how they determine if a child is on level or not? School is also pushing us to address his attention issues in class. He does exhibit the 3 core symtpoms of adhd — inattentiveness, distractibility, and fidgeting. But, that’s it. His behavior does not seem to be consistent with this in any other area. We’ve spoken to our ped and he is not willing to address this issue yet. He feels we need to get to the bottom of what exactly is going on before we push medication or anything on him. He feels if it is dyslexia or another language processing disorder — this would certainly explain his attention issues in class.
I just feel like I’m going in circles with all of this. I don’t have full confidence in any results from testing that the school performs. We do have him on 2 waiting lists for very highly recommended developmental centers here. I just feel like I’m losing faith in the school and now fully understand how parents are truly the only advocates their children have.
Michelle
Re: New here and feel like I'm going in circles
In my opinion, you should get a complete speech and language evaluation by a speech pathologist and an occupational therapy evaluation for starters. Medical insurance usually covers these evaluations with a referral from your physician, and these evals will be much more comprehensive (and reliable) than the ones you get from the school. Your best approach is to first ask around and locate a good speech pathologist and a good occupational therapist. Then call their offices to ask about insurance coverage for evaluations. Usually they can tell you exactly how the referral needs to be worded or coded for insurance to cover it. (Medical insurance will refuse to cover “educational” evaluations. The problem needs to be stated as a physical issue.)
Once you have the above evals, you will have much better information for making decisions.
I would also recommend getting a developmental vision evaluation. Medical insurance usually does not cover this (where we are, the cost is about $175), but some of the symptoms you mention are typical of undiagnosed developmental vision delays — ability to read individual words but not text, handwriting problems, fidgeting and inattention, etc. Developmental vision problems are not evaluated in regular eye exams. A child can have 20/20 vision and still have severe developmental vision problems (convergence, tracking, focusing, etc.). For more information about this type of problem, see http://www/childrensvision.com . If there is a vision problem, it may show up in the occupational therapy eval as a visual-motor integration problem.
The OT evaluation is important, because some of the symptoms you describe could also be the result of sensory integration disorder (SID). SID is usually very responsive to therapy.
The complete speech/language eval will include an assessment of reading (should include a test of phonemic awareness, such as the LAC, as well as a reading test such as the Gray, plus much more).
One thing’s for sure — you don’t want to rely solely on information from the school. Most schools are not equipped to make thorough evaluations, and many are under pressure not to spend money on services.
Nancy
Incidentally, if your physician will not give you the referrals, I would change physicians.
I would recommend
A speech and langauge eval, including receptive and expressive vocabulary with the ROWPVT, or EOWPVT, Expressive or Receptive One word picture vocabulary test or the PPVT-III and the EVT which are another companies receptive and expressive vocabuary test. Also request an assessment instrument which will show his strengths and weaknesses in both spoken and written language. I like to use the ITPA-3 Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities-3 because it has a strong written language subset of tests which will definitely show where his strengths and weaknesses are written language and spoken language. I would also ask for the CTOPP to be done the comprehensive Test of Phonological processing.
He could very well be ADHD and have a language processing disorder BECAUSE the ADHD has NEVER been treated. I have seen this numerous times as a speech pathologist in both my own child and in kids I have treated who have Dyslexia in both elementary and middle school.
Keep talking to the other parents here. Many of them have been through the same circles.
No, it doesn’t sound like you should trust the school’s evaluations.
For one thing, they seem to be more confused than you are.
For a second, they are using the least effective reading approach, memorizing sight words, when instead he shoud definitely be getting systematic synthetic phonics - see the LD In Depth page (click above), Reading, National Reading Panel - Teaching Children To Read — this gives the theoretical backup that you need to fight for a better reading program.
For a third thing, the school seems to be fudging the scores to cover their own tails; if he is reading on level then everything in the garden is lovely and they don’t need to pay for services — the fact that the services will be ten times more expensive and a lot less effective if they delay until high school keeps escaping this kind of administration.
You need to work on two or three fronts:
(1) Getting a proper evaluation and getting services from the school and medical services are obviously very important, and you have started on that, good. Keep working on it, and realize that it is a long-term and continued process.
(2) *At the same time* you need to work on his reading. If you let things go the way the school wants to until Grade 5 or Grade 8 or after he is out of school at age 16, you get the situation I am working with now, with one student in Grade 5, one in Grade 8, and one out of school and in adult ed, all having gotten this far with a Grade 2 reading level and inaccurate at that — this is as far as you can get with that kind of sloppy memorization, and the kid treads water for years with no progress and complete destrustion of self-image as a learner. The leaving off endings and replacing words at random is a red flag — this is *not* reading, it is a guessing game which the student always loses. You can’t wait until you have the absolutely final evaluation, because there never is an absolutely final word, and as years go by doing testing the child is falling behind.
You can hire a tutor who knows about research-based reading methods, you can go to a reputable clinic such as Lindamood Bell or Phonographix (NOT the big commercial tutoring chains, which do basically more of the same as the schools), or if you have more time and dedication than money you can do it yourself. I send out my packet of tutoring notes/book in progress to anyone who asks; you can email me at [email protected]
(3) It sounds like your child could use speech therapy and possibly other therapies. Keep working with/on the school board to get whatever is possible. Go to your doctor and pester for referrals about speech and hearing and see what your insurance will cover.
Many parents here have used a number of other therapies for language and cognitive development. There are PACE and Audiblox for cognitive development, Interactive Metronome or IM for processing speed and timing, Vision Therapy (which doesn’t sound like your issue but you never know — do NOT be fooled by the reading confusions and not “seeing” endings, these are most often effects of the other problems you outlined, not visual problems per se), The Listening Program for auditory development, and Fast ForWord for auditory development and sound-symbol relationships for reading, just to mentiona few that have been discussed on these boards. You can look into these on the internet and definitely before spending a lot of money and time you should talk to other parents here with experience in them.