School research paper survey

> 1-How many people are in your family, and who of you has an
> LD?
There are three of us and my son is now an adult w/LD
What type of LD is it? Dyslexia

> 2-At what age was the LD member /s of your family diagnosed? Age 6 formally, suspected at age 4 due to langauge delay

> 3-Tell one major and one minor negative effect of the LD on
> your family
It is a major affect on family life in many, many ways. Teaching him to read after school failed was a major thing. Pulling him out of school and homeschooling was another major thing. The minor things are too numerous to consider.

> 4-Tell one major and one minor positive effect of the LD on
> your family.

His LD taught me that people are different without trying to be so. He made me into the teacher I always wanted to become.

> 5-What do you do to help your child, and how do you deal with
> some of the effects of the LD in your daily life?

Teach, preach, and screach (only a little of the latter…)

> 6-What methods that you have tried have worked for you and
> what methods have you tried that have failed?

Lindamood-Bell got him to Gr 3 reading and Orton Gillingham took him to high-school level reading.

> 7-If there is any other information that you would like to
> share with met that you think would be relevant feel free to
> tell me about your experience.
> Thank you very much again.

1. Five people in our family and two have LD. Two daughters with CAPD.
2. Noticed both at the age of 3 but formally tested at 5.
3. Very time consuming…spend hours afterschool helping children memorize.Worth all the time.
4. The children are very close and work hard to help each other. The child without LD really helps the others. Everyone is a close unit.
5. I help the children with self esteem. Very positive.I write everything down for them. If I want them to call me or give them directions…..I write them down.
6. I had the girls tutored in Wilson..very effective. I have math tutors during the summer months. I found that hiring tutors helped with my fustration.I tried Kuman (spelling). It is a math learning center…It did not work for my children and it was very expensive.
7. I have found that my family has developed patience. It brought us together and we have alot of respect and compassion for each other. People are always amazed how close my children are with each other. I feel that through the struggles…we became a tight family unit.

1-How many people are in your family, and who of you has an LD? What type of LD is it?

There are 3 of us. Both our son and I are dyslexic/dysgraphic, I am non-hyperactive ADD as well. He is now 20 yrs old, soon to be 21.

2-At what age was the LD member /s of your family diagnosed?

He was tested in the 2nd Grade.

3-Tell one major and one minor negative effect of the LD on your family.

Major: Trying to get our local school district to address the learning disability. We spent years of our lives in the help seeking gauntlet. The wasted time, effort, money, emotions… was pretty devestating. It was not the ld itself, but subject to having an ld issue that was the negative experience. (see attached letter below responses to your questions. For those who tire of it, please disregard; because the district’s attorneys tried to get me to agree to never speak publicly about our son’s case, I simply cannot ever comply… it’s part of the ld).

Minor: Homework mini-battles, battles of the wills between ld dad and son.
(Saving grace being mom in a referee uniform).

4-Tell one major and one minor positive effect of the LD on your family.

Major: Learned to be more compassionate with others. Demonstrated that as parents we would walk thru hell and fire for our child. Become more aware of learning differences and thought processing etc…

Minor: Countless good laughs at errors and goofs due to ld factors, stupid blunders of administrators and district personell etc… (the latter mostly down the road after the pain subsided).

5-What do you do to help your child, and how do you deal with some of the effects of the LD in your daily life?

He has long since become capable of self-advocacy. He deals with the school counselors at local jr. college etc… no timed testing, access to school computer lab…

Me? I type alot. Write as little as possible. Laugh when I still reverse letters at work. Think outside “the box” most of the time and generally survive the school of life (so far).

6-What methods that you have tried have worked for you and what methods have you tried that have failed?

Resource class with pull out did not work. Special Day Class was offered, we refused to experiment with that placement. Homeschooling for a little while while he was younger (4th grade partial) was ok, due to the one to one attention. School for LD children with small classroom worked very well. Mostly, smaller class settings with good structure is what helped our son; with teachers who cared and gave feedback. I don’t recall specific programs, but working with manipulatives is one that I remember that helped with math.

7-If there is any other information that you would like to share with met that you think would be relevant feel free to tell me about your experience.

Yeah, instead of fwding the letter, here’s our experience in public school. Please try to remember, we are parents who love our children, we are not in this to fight teachers. We have lives and complications within our lives already, we are only trying to help our children survive and make it to adults. Thank you for taking time to learn about how to help ld children.

Andy

––––––––––––—

Attn: LDA, State of CA

GRAM PUBLICATION OPEN LETTER TO PARENTS

Re: What was learned from the nightmare of a Learning Disabled Parent of a Learning Disabled Child attempt to obtain a FAPE in our local district.

To Whom It May Concern:

First, I ask your patience, because I, like my son, have a learning disability. I have difficulty with handwriting, so I always type. Typing makes the words legible, spell check makes the paper presentable, however, unfortunately, they have yet to invent the program to unscramble the word processing of a dyslexic mind.

Anyone who has lived through / survived the hellish experience of help seeking within the public school system for a child will know that this letter has the capacity for a 1000 page novel; I will do my best to be brief.

Our son was diagnosed with “LD” by the public school Psychologist in the 1st Grade. He was given an IEP, which was to begin his 2nd Grade year. By the 3rd Grade, with minimal and no provision of the services specified on his IEP, our son was floundering terribly. His areas of deficit were dysgraphia, dyslexia and other assorted invisible disorders, which clearly affected his performance in school.

By the second month of his 4th Grade year, having no RSP (as specified on his IEP), and no Counseling (as specified on his IEP), our son tried to slam his head through a window at home. He told us, with tears streaming down his face that he would rather die than go back to school, “where the teachers did not understand, and the kids were so mean about this handwriting”. He was 9 years old.

My wife and I sought help from the school; and the rest is documented history. Of course, it is also documented that the school claimed he was doing fine in class, the problems were coming from the home.

We (my wife and I) attended countless IEP Meetings (with and without advocates), we have attended Mediation Conferences (with and without advocates), I have represented my son in State level Due Process Hearings, and I have represented our son, alone, in Federal Court.

I know what it is like to be a learning disabled parent, seeking protection for our learning disabled son from a system that allows a school district to hire the representation of a “consultant” whose sole purpose is to keep the district from providing those services which are due the child by law. (I could go on and on about this one extremely unfair practice that is tolerated, the fact is, everyone knows this happens, and the child is still left without help, unless the parents can afford the services of costly consultants or attorneys).

I know what it is like to have an inexperienced advocate intervene and represent our son at Due Process Hearing, and have to sit back and watch an absolute kangaroo court in progress, while the Dean of the McGeorge School of Law presided.

Perhaps I need to digress for a moment and explain that during this time I was working, and unemployed at times, in the construction industry here in Southern California. It is common knowledge in the business world for sub-contractors to be loyal to the general contractor; the reason is simple, future contracts mean more guaranteed income. Even in the blue-collar world of construction, it would be abundantly clear that if the “inspector” worked for the General Contractor, the quality of homes could be jeopardized by the “partial” decisions made by a biased inspector. How obvious must it be for a law school like McGeorge School of Law to be a contractor with the State Department of Education to side in behalf of school districts whenever possible?

In June of 1991 McGeorge’s Year to Date Statistics show that the total number of Due Process Hearing Decisions rendered, parents did not obtain the services they fought for in Due Process 70% of the time!

If the hearing Officer finds the district to be within compliance, then the State does not have to enforce any “laws”, because there was no violation! This is absolutely ludicrous. The burden is entirely on the parent, and the power is entirely in the system.

I speak from experience. I will gladly provide a list of all the names and numbers of “protective agencies”, government employees, political figures etc., who were well aware of our son’s predicament. This is not limited to, but includes Chief Liaison to President Clinton, the Federal Dept. of Ed, State Dept. of Ed., Protection and Advocacy, the Governor’s Office, Congressmen, Assemblypersons, Senators, local agencies, OSEPS, OSERS, Office for Civil Rights (the list is endless)… The bottom line is there is no help, only a terribly tangled web of beaurocracy the feeds off of our taxes, and is simply impotent, inept and incapable of enforcing the laws that were written to protect children. The blatant and total failures of these public officials to enforce protections is disappoint, to say the least; corruption of this magnitude would not go on, if it were not tolerated at the higher levels.

I have scores of letters I sent to attorneys and agencies (and their responses) from across the country, begging for help for our son. My only request was to either enforce the law and provide him the FAPE he required, or release him from the system, and provide us with the funding to ensure he be educated and not destroyed.

One of LDA-CA’s past presidents, Joan Esposito, had written a GRAM which clearly outlined the problems parents like us have experienced. She is one of the only ones who understood the frustrations of what we were going through. (I can only imagine that she has an entire file cabinet with our son’s name on it!) I continue to thank God for her strength and compassion for our kids. The gauntlet is excruciating, the retaliatory actions of a school district are disgusting, and designed to exhaust parents. Our son’s last “active IEP” was his 4th Grade IEP, which was never enforced. He is currently going into the 10th Grade!

After 6 years of attempting to “right the wrong”, and taking both the local school district and the state dept. of Ed “to task”, I have only learned that I could do the impossible for our son. That was to survive the stress of war, stay married to his mother, see that he finally get an appropriate education (outside of the system), and move on with our life.

I have since passed on my “law library”, a virtual war chest of cases, laws and protections for learning disabled children to a local (San Diego) advocate. She has my permission to copy and pass along any and all data I compiled; including phone numbers, addresses etc. My hope and prayer is some other parents may get the help our son never received. It was quite a paradox to find all the protections, and rights our child had, yet been completely incapable of finding any authority to enforce the law!

My wife and I went to a leading “special education attorney and we begged for her to help; she felt to “untangle this case at this stage” it would cost an estimated $70,000.00, at least. It might as well have been $70,000,000.00, if you can imagine the devastating news to hear such a proposal. The up front money was to be a minimum of $15,000.00. I don’t know about anyone reading this letter, but that is a substantial amount of money which we did not / do not have! It is probably noteworthy to mention that there are not very many lawyers who specialize in the highly complex field of special education law; and those that do, usually work for school districts and the states, those that don’t are extremely expensive!

Out of necessity for our son, I virtually became the closest anyone will probably come to being a lay-lawyer in the highly specialized field of Special Education Law. For over 2 years, I stood alone, as a parent, in Federal Court, without an attorney, and did the best I could. With my wife’s help, we won some Motions, lost a few, and even had Court Decisions OVERTURNED, without help from attorneys! Truly, I will admit that the damage and suffering of such battles was more psychological and detrimental to peaceful family existence, and the fall out was financial, emotional destruction. It was as close to divorce and stress that I will ever hope to experience for the rest of my life.

Ultimately, the Federal Court Judge Ordered me to find an attorney for our son, because, if I did not, he said that our son’s case would lose at the Appeals level, due to the child not being properly represented in Court. What an irony, even if we could have won at the first level, they would have had it overturned because of how he was represented. Again, after an exhaustive search, we finally located a young, fresh out of Law School attorney, who offered to represent our son “pro bono”. Remember, we had been in Federal Court for over a year prior to her having even graduated from Law School! Within 3 months, our son’s case was closed, and the State Dept. of Ed and the local school district were absolved of any responsibilities.

I believe it is important that you understand the following, which is of public record in the Federal Court system in Southern California:

The District admitted to not providing services on our son’s IEPs.
The District could not provide original copies of documents where my name was added to agreements. (Reviewed by a documents fraud examiner).
The District failed to properly diagnose our son’s disabilities.
The District contracted a Dr. (for $14,000.00, on record)) to diagnose our son during the pending court case, to determine “what would have been appropriate 3 years past; when this same district had tested him 7 times within 12 months during the time in question.
State level investigations were useless.
OCR findings were biased and inaccurate.
McGeorge School of Law hearing transcripts are of record, and the Hearing Officer’s failure to acknowledge or address blatant violations of Special Ed Laws are abundant.
Numerous other violations of Education Law were proven clearly on Court Records.
Our son NEVER had another “active” IEP from the time when we filed for Due Process; the two parties (parents and district) could never come to agreement, so…

Our son’s case ended over a year ago. The scars my wife and I carry may never go away. Time is the healer and seeing our son doing well as a soon to be 10th Grader is the soothing ointment to assure us we did the right thing. He has no IEP, he gets no special help, and he is working very hard. He is alive, healthy and we are grateful. We stood by our child and did what we thought we had to do, protect him at all cost.

Adding insult to injury, after the case was closed, we received legal documents from the school district’s attorneys’, attempting to bill us for the legal costs they incurred! Some of these costs included the depositions they took of our son’s “expert witnesses”, a document fraud examiner and a Neuropsychologist; both who are highly qualified specialists. These testimonies clearly demonstrate among other issues the district’s blatant failures to diagnose our son’s disabilities, their (district’s) inability to explain how my signature ended up on a copy of an education contract that I had refused to sign. The irony is the district DID NOT enter these depositions as evidence after their attorneys deposed these witnesses, I DID!

My advice to anyone who will listen. If you are an advocate, thank you for your strength, courage and perseverance, and for trying to help protect our children. To you parents, until there are drastic changes in how the laws are enforced, do what you have to do to save your child. Our experience dictates that it might be wiser to pull your child and put him/her in a safe non-public environment as soon as possible. The money will be more effectively spent there, and less stress placed upon your family.

You see, for those of us who do not have a lot of money, we need to determine where best to spend the limited resources we have on what we find to be most precious to us, our kids. Moreover, for those who have enough money for attorneys and consultants why would they spend it on fighting a system? They can afford the tutoring, counselors, private educations…

Absolute power corrupts, and all the laws in the world are useless, until they are enforced. God bless you Joan, Mary Ann, Chris, Sandy, Adele (retired), and the rest of you advocates who fight for our kids!

Sincerely,

Andy

Ps/ Everything we experienced is of public record; I wish (pray) to God somebody had the time, money and courage to look at what clearly was the “Anatomy of a Public School’s Failure”. What has happened to my family, and specifically to our child, is the story of one; however, it will clearly show what happens to all who get involved and try to help a child (anyone’s child

1. Our family has 5 members two of which have LD’s. The two effected members are my sons. The oldest sons official dx’s are ADHD, inattentive, CAPD, and receptive/expressive language disorder. My youngest sons is dx’d with PDD-NOS.

2. My oldest son has been through a few dx’s as you can see. 1st dx was developmental delay at age 4, ADHD, inattentive in 4th grade, receptive/expressive language disorder end of 5th, and finally in 6th grade CAPD. My youngest sons first dx was Static Encephalopathy at the age of 23 months along with a 60 percent hearing loss, when he was 4 1/2 his dx was changed to PDD/Autism, and at age 6 PDD-NOS.

3. One of the major effects of the LD’s was trying to give all the children equal time, alot of the time my NT daughter would feel left out. Another major effect was poor self esteem for the boys at time causing family tensions. A minor effect is having to have a rigid schedule.

4. A major postive effect the LD’s have had on the family is that we have all learned to have a little more patience. Another major positive effect is that we have learned to slow things down, be more observant and enjoy the small mericles of life.

5. To help each child directly we help with homework. Explain to them we all have strengths and weakness and openly share my weaknesses with them.

6. We have tried many things to help the kids do their best. What has helped the most is working with language with them as a family. What we do is we read a book together, we discuss the vocabulary, the plot, the setting, ect. We also have a family game night where we play a game together and have free talk. I think these have helped to supplement the therapies we have tried such as Great Leaps, partner reading, Reading Reflux, audioblox, ect. What has not worked for us is changing the childrens diets, using supplements, ect.

7. What I would share with others is that you should listen to the advise dont judge a book by a cover and also dont be consumed by stereotypes. What I mean is dont treat an LD child as an LD child first. Treat the child as a child who happens to have an LD. Don’t lower expectations because you are told a child cant learn maybe because they are autistic. What you need to do is learn who the individual is, how they learn, think, feel, and deal with the individual and NOT the label.

Thanks for your concern about this interesting group of people. Good luck to you on your assignment.

> 1-How many people are in your family, and who of you has an
> LD?
There are 4 of us, two adopted children. 10 year old daughter is dyslexic and ADD. Since my daughter has been diagnosed ADD, I am almost certain I have the same thing, but at 43, I have decided I will just learn to live with it.

What LD is it? Dyslexia

> 2-At what age was the LD member /s of your family diagnosed? Age 7, although always knew something was amiss since about age 3-4.

> 3-Tell one major and one minor negative effect of the LD on
> your family
Major: Financial and exhaustion in dealing with the expense of tutoring and all the extra time it has taken to get to and from different experts and tutors.

Minor: Jealousy (although this might be more major than I realize) from non LD sibling..

> 4-Tell one major and one minor positive effect of the LD on
> your family.

It removed some of the stereotype I personally had - I thought those who couldn’t read weren’t very bright. (SORRY - boy have I learned some things).

It has made us more aware that everyone is different, and everyone has strengths and weaknesses. And NEVER to laugh at anyone’s weaknesses.

> 5-What do you do to help your child, and how do you deal with
> some of the effects of the LD in your daily life?

Advocate, advocate and advocate. I also tell her that one can be smart and not read and spell well. I help her to see her strengths and also acknowledge her weaknesses. Of, and Concerta, really helps.

> 6-What methods that you have tried have worked for you and
> what methods have you tried that have failed?

Lindamood Bell and sensory integration OT.