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Well, we’re coming up on our six month anniversary of Z starting speech therapy. Time sure does fly! Little Z is now 30 months old and talking up a storm. He had a tremendous spurt in language in the past month and will be graduating from private speech therapy next week! He’s now officially average, which I never knew would feel so good.
Z has made a lot of progress with his atypical phonological process of initial consonant deletion. While it’s possible he would have corrected this himself, I have no regrets from the past six months of therapy. He enjoyed the play-based environment and his therapist had a gift for motivating him. He would often do things for her that would surprise me. I think I got used to translating for him and perhaps enabled him as I didn’t want him to feel frustrated.
One of the best tricks I took away from speech therapy was to use fading cues. This method has worked really well with Z, especially to initiate multiple word phrases and asking questions, both of which he struggled with. It seemed that putting multiple words together was just as hard for him as putting multiple sounds together to make a complete word. While we do not know exactly what caused his speech delay, it seemed likely a problem with motor planning/praxis, i.e. apraxia. Even now, his sentences often sound disjointed, as if he is saying each word as its own sentence with pauses between. However, this is improving and he can now say two word phrases rather smoothly. The same is true for words where he used to delete the initial consonant. At first he learned to segment these words “maaah p”, then he started to put them together “maaahp” and then finally say it smoothly “map”.
Z had no problems making any of the sounds individually, except maybe r’s, which are difficult and later developing for most children anyway. Z actually had many speech sounds ahead of schedule and can say all of the letters of the alphabet and their sounds. The issue has always been using these sounds in words, putting them together. In fact, when he first started to use two word phrases, he would often simplify the words even if he was able to say them correctly independently. Often he’d drop the initial consonant off of the second word in the phrase, for example. It seemed like his brain would already be focused on producing the ending sound of the second word and would just skip over the beginning.
It’s hard to know whether any of these issues will affect him in the future or whether he will need any more therapy when he is older. We’re very optimistic, though and are thrilled with his progress. Early intervention will still be out once a week for another couple of months, but after that we should hopefully be done with speech therapy altogether!
C has been continuing to use EPGY at home, since his school has been less than supportive. After a long period of not requesting to use EPGY at school, C did ask for it two days in a row. The first day they had trouble getting it working and the next day they insisted he do his classwork first. His teacher’s reasoning was that she needed to see that he knew the material they were working on. While I can understand her perspective, we had C work up through EPGY starting at grade .5 to ensure them they he was not missing anything. He quickly did the worksheet with no problems, but then had only 12 minutes left to do EPGY. I think he found the whole experience frustrating and hasn’t requested EPGY again at school since. He really has never been the kind of child who is motivated by extra work. If EPGY can get him out of the boring work, that’s one thing. If he has to complete the boring work to then get the “reward” of yet more work, he’d not too interested. We found this out last year.
One positive thing about C’s school is there is very little homework. Well, I guess there is a fair amount of homework for the average child who needs to actually study the spelling words, practice the math and who reads at grade level. The reading the school sends home is much easier than the reading C does on his own, so he whizzes through it. He has never reviews the spelling or math at home, but has great grades. Therefore we use the time he would be spending on homework on EPGY sessions. Usually it’s just 20 minutes a night, and there were a number of days we skipped around the holidays and again in January (he only did about 10 sessions that month). Somehow he still managed to finish second grade math over the past three months and is now about a quarter of the way through third grade.
I suppose it may be because EPGY math is broken up between K-2 and 3-4, that there has been quite a lot of review so far in the third grade curriculum. It seems like C has spent a great deal of time reviewing addition with carrying and fractions, despite getting nearly all the problems correct. So far there has been very little geometry, which he usually enjoys. Hopefully things will pick up soon, because I can tell that he’s getting tired of the repetition. Previously EPGY would switch strands often enough that he wouldn’t get too bored. Currently it seems he can spend an entire session on one or two strands.
At C’s current rate, he will complete third grade math by the summer. It’s possible he may finish fourth grade math over the summer. I keep expecting him to hit a wall and slow down, but so far it hasn’t happened. Mathematical concepts seem to come to him easily. His biggest weakness is math facts, which he just recalculates instead of memorizing. I’m hoping that the repetition will help him commit the facts to memory eventually, or that he’ll at least start to use more shortcuts. We spent some time working on multiplication tables, but he’s had very little multiplication thus far in EPGY, so those skills are now getting rusty.
We’re not sure whether C will continue with EPGY next school year. His current school seems unwilling to support it and our public school has only offered to compact their curriculum. It may be that we end up continuing it at home or finding something else for enrichment, like the Life of Fred books. So far, though, EPGY has been working well for us overall.
It’s been hard to stay positive the past couple of weeks. While I was thrilled to be one of the select few applicants to get an interview with my first choice graduate school, the interview itself was extremely disappointing. I was scheduled for an hour with the department head, but she rushed out after half the time due to a visit by a previous student with her new baby. It’s hard to compete with that!
After that, I met with a professor who would most certainly be my advisor if I were accepted. Although she started the interview by saying that she also discovered her passion for psychology after her getting undergraduate and graduate degrees in unrelated fields (as I would be doing), she then went on to point out how weak my background was and to say how they had limited spaces and more qualified candidates. At that point I wondered why they even interviewed me in the first place. I found myself in a defensive position for the rest of the interview and felt like I was never able to get the conversation back on track to my passion and my purpose.
I’m still waiting to hear from my second choice school, but have spent some more time reviewing their program and find myself more and more disappointed. Almost all of their classes are at night, which would take me away from my family. The school is also not in the best neighborhood to be hanging around at dark. While their program fits better with my background, I’m not sure it would ultimately get me where I want to go… i.e. working with gifted and twice exceptional children.
I feel like I’m back to the drawing board at this point. While I still have to wait to receive a formal rejection from school #1, I would be fooling myself if I thought there was much of a chance of being accepted. So do I start job hunting? Do I stay home with Z another year and take some online classes to bolster my applications for next year? Do I start looking for schools out of state? How much am I willing to sacrifice for another career which will likely pay less than I was making before?
On top of all of this, C’s school unexpectedly insisted on having a conference this week, without many details for the reason. I knew they would be talking about their plans for next year, but they made a point to say that was not their primary reason for meeting. During the meeting, which I had to attend without my husband so that he could be home with both kids, they basically presented a plan on how they would un-accelerate C. They would have him repeat first grade next year, although there is no academic reason to do so, and have him attend math and reading with second grade. Then the following year he would move on to second grade and repeat second grade reading and math, with what appeared to be some sort of gifted pull-out which we would have to pay considerably extra for.
Their plan, as ridiculous as it is, was not the worst part of the meeting. No, that would have to be when they started to build a case that C has Asperger’s syndrome. They admitted that they weren’t qualified to diagnosis such a thing, but went on to refer to it again and again and push for C to be evaluated. I know a child with Asperger’s and know the clinical definition for Asperger’s and C does not fit the bill. What has me so worked up is the fact that C is going to a school where they totally don’t “get” him and that his school seems set on trying to find things wrong with him rather than what is wrong with their program.
C obviously behaves differently at school than at home. Whether it’s anxiety, SPD, ADD or who knows what, it makes me feel horrible that he is not in an environment where he can just be himself. This then further feeds into my fears, which started in September. We agonized so long about where to send C to school this year and I can’t help but feel that we failed him. My mother seems to like to bring up at every turn how he would have been better off at this expensive prep school he was accepted to, even though he would have had to repeat kindergarten and we would only be able to pay for it through loans. My husband seems to be the most sensible one at the moment, reminding me that however bad things are now, it may still have been the lesser of evils for this year. C is not unhappy, and I need to remind myself of that. He likes his school for the most part. Still, I feel that environment has been unhealthy for him overall.
C is currently on the waiting list to see a local psychologist. We’re hoping to get some clarity on things (including a possible ADD diagnosis or anxiety issues) and give him someone objective he can speak with. I feel like I really need to speak to someone as well. It’s difficult to know what’s what anymore when C’s school is telling me the opposite of just about everything I knew to be true about my child.
A few weeks ago the New York Times posted an article about the inaccuracy of preschool IQ tests, in particular in relation to competitive kindergarten admissions in New York. Recently they posted an article about a number of states (including Pennsylvania) that will soon offer testing allowing students to graduate from high school up to two years early.
Also in the news, the University of Iowa has received funding for it’s National Institute of Twice-Exceptionality (NITE). Another article can be found here. It looks to be a great resource once they get things up and running.
I also came across a website with a lot of information about speech and phonological processes. While they lump initial consonant deletion in with final consonant deletion and label it appropriate until about age 3 (which many sources disagree), there is still a lot of useful information on the site. I found the explanation of phonetic vs. phonemic problems very easy to understand.
Last week Carnegie Mellon announced their C-MITES weekend workshops in Lower Merion. C and a friend are both attending for the first time, though different classes. C will be newly 6 and hopefully not too much younger than the other kids. It will be his first experience with a group of other children like himself, even if just for a few hours. When he’s older we’ll explore summer options too. I looked into SIG last year and this, but it’s just way more than we can afford while I’m staying home with the kids.
We’re now in the waiting phase for C’s ADHD evaluation by the school district. They have 60 days to complete their end, so it’s likely not much will happen any time soon. If he qualifies as OHI (Other Health Impaired) then the district will have to develop an IEP for him, which will also encompass his GIEP. I found a useful article on OHI while researching the term last week.
Another link I’ve been meaning to share is for the University of Connecticut’s SEM-R program. Last month the NAGC presented a WOW webinar on Challenging Talented Readers which included this link. Much of the webinar information is freely available on the site. Though it’s geared towards educators, it’s useful for parents as well. Their page about Talented Readers gives a good introduction to gifted readers and their needs, like being challenged. Sally Reis spoke much about the need for a “supported struggle” where gifted readers are encouraged to read books 1-2 grades above their independent level. The data is backed by research and worrisome statistics that show many gifted readers become lazy readers when left to repeatedly read below level at school. I debated for a few weeks whether or not to share this information with C’s school after being called “pushy” back in December, but finally decided I wasn’t going to let them bully me into silence. It’s my job to advocate for my kids!
A lot can happen in a week. First, I got invited to an interview at my first choice graduate school. I’m very excited and also terribly nervous. I have a bit less than two weeks to prep for the interview. I’m not even sure exactly what prepping I should do, but have already started to pick the brains of everyone I can think of who ever went on a graduate school interview. What am I going to wear?!
Next, we finally got an updated copy of C’s GIEP less than 24 hours before our meeting with the school district. It gave us very little time to digest what we were reading, some of which was quite surprising. It turns out that C’s testing last week didn’t go as smoothly as we thought. While we were only told at the time that he was fidgety and lost interest before they could complete the testing, but the report contained a rather lengthy list of test behaviors going as far as quantifying how many times C dropped his pencil during each test.
I was a bit heartbroken when I read the report, because C was obviously in distress to have been acting the way they claimed (which included rolling around on the floor). It was quite a lot more than fidgeting and if we had known the truth we wouldn’t have taken him back for the afternoon session. His test results (the pieces he actually completed) ended up being skewed and did not reflect his actual knowledge or abilities. They said he had trouble measuring and telling time, two things he has no problems with at home. More important than the test results, they confronted us the next day about having C evaluated for ADHD.
Back in August I shared some of my thoughts about ADD. Since then it’s been in the back of my head that C may need an evaluation at some point, especially since attention and distractibility came up as areas of concern on C’s sensory profile at his OT evaluation in December. Still, there is a lot of overlap in behaviors between giftedness, SPD (Sensory Processing Disorder) and ADD/ADHD. Allergies can cause some of the same behaviors as well and C is a very allergic kid. So I’m still not convinced C has ADD, but it looks likely that our school district will label him as such.
Of course I found a way to stress myself out even further by panicking once more about little Z’s speech development. He’s been making progress with initial consonant deletion and putting two words together more often, but seemed to have made very little progress towards sentences. Most of his two word phrases were just describing objects (blue circle, big shirt, etc.) or asking for more (more shapes, more crackers). He rarely put three words together and often sounds like a broken record, repeating the same word over and over again. Suddenly it hit me how far behind he is from many other kids his age (and his brother at that age, even though I know I shouldn’t compare). I read a comment that his cousin who is 5 months younger said a complex sentence and then just started to second guess everything. Is he really making enough progress? Are we even working on the right things? Is there something bigger going on?
Well, little Z had a surprise in for me and started this week to put three words together more often (though still infrequently) and using -ing words. He’s talked about hiding, eating and reading in just the past few days. It was just what I needed to get out of panic mode and put my thoughts back to all the other (more constructive) stuff I should be focusing on!
I did finally talk to C last weekend about the testing. I was quite surprised that he had no questions at all. I told him he’d be going back to the same school where he did some tests before to do two more math and reading tests and he just accepted it. This is really out of character for C, who usually questions everything to the point that I lose my patience. I guess he’s either so used to this kind of testing that it doesn’t phase him anymore or maybe he already knows what’s going on.
It was a lot to ask of him in one day, to take two math and reading tests in a strange school with strange people. Although they said they give their students the same tests, they don’t take so many at once, and C did not get to work on them independently. There were sections where he had to read aloud, which I’m kind of doubting they have all of their students do unless they individually administer these tests to each kid. I just don’t want them comparing apples to oranges.
We’re still waiting on the results and an updated version of C’s GIEP from the school district. We’re set to meet with them on Tuesday and I’ve been e-mailing and leaving voicemails asking when we would have the information so that we have time to review it prior to the meeting. No one has gotten back to me and likely won’t until Monday. Unless it shows up in the mail tomorrow, we will have little or no time to review it before the meeting…
Time is just flying by and now C’s additional testing with our public school district is just days away and I still haven’t mentioned it to him. I will have to this weekend, but still am uncertain how I will approach it. I’m not sure whether I should be honest and tell him that it’s likely he’ll go to public school next year. I’ve tried to get a sense of how he’d feel about that, but it’s been hard. On the one hand, he’s not as happy with his private school as he once was, but on the other hand, he seems to still like it for the most part. He has made a couple friends that I’m sure he would miss.
Along with not wanting to put any stress on him thinking about a move to a new school, I also don’t want him telling the world he’s going to a new school next year. Last year around this time he visited another school we applied to and then announced to his kindergarten class that he was going to a new school! Of course we were just looking at different options and he didn’t even end up going to that school. He also didn’t make it clear that we were looking at schools for next year and that he wasn’t leaving mid-year (something I needed to clarify to his teacher). I know he’s a year older now, but C is still unlikely to keep the information to himself. I figure that I’ll need to explain to him that we’re just keeping our options open and that these tests will help… somehow…
The district will be giving C two math and reading tests, one of each from the end of first grade and another of each from mid second grade. He will have all four tests in one day, but broken into two sessions separated by lunch and a little down time. Unlike the IQ tests he’s taken, these content tests will probably be boring. They seem to me to be a necessary evil. I don’t want him to be tested further, but the district needs the information to gauge where C is currently academically. The achievement testing they did in the summer showed little more than the fact that he’s gifted. It didn’t indicate what curriculum he needs. We’re hoping to get subject acceleration written into C’s GIEP or at least a clearly defined and measurable plan for differentiation.
On a different topic, C had his last session of occupational therapy this week. We’re still waiting for the school OT evaluation. Since his school dropped the ball with the paperwork, we’ve been waiting over 3 months now. The report from the private OT lists C as having “impaired sensory processing”, which isn’t very descriptive. I’ve been reading The Out-of-Sync Child: Recognizing and Coping with Sensory Processing Disorder and have learned that there are many aspects to Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD). C seems to fit into some of the sensory seeking categories, but nothing is clear cut.
One thing that really caught my eye in the book was this statement in chapter 2 in a section titled Sensory Combination: The Sensory Fluctuator – “I love this, I hate that.”:
“The need to feel in control of people, objects, and experiences is a major issue for the child who does not feel in control of herself.”
This seems to describe C perfectly and really stuck a chord with me. The book also mentions how a child’s behavior can vary between different environments like home and school. This too explains a lot, as C’s SPD seems dramatically magnified at school. What had seemed like a very minor issue at home really caught us off guard this year at his new school.
Perhaps not surprisingly, it’s been a bit hectic lately between Z’s speech therapy and C’s occupational therapy. The good news is that both seem to be going well. Z is coming up to his two month mark with Early Intervention and has been going to private therapy for four months now to work on his phonological process issue of Initial Consonant Deletion. During that time he’s been slowly adding on beginning sounds, first W’s and H’s, and in the past month he started adding a lot of B’s and P’s. Things seemed to have clicked for him and he’s been able to segment words much more easily, either repeating after a model or segmenting words entirely himself to be able to get both the beginning and the end. We’re really thrilled with Z’s progress and that he’s been putting two words together more often. All of a sudden he seems to have more to say. It may never be quiet around here again…
C has been going to occupational therapy for almost a month now and his last appointment is next week. The OT has worked on his hand strength and sensory integration. It’s up to us to continue the work at home, including the brushing program. Also, on the OT’s recommendation, I checked out The Out-of-Sync Child: Recognizing and Coping with Sensory Processing Disorder from the library and need to start reading that. I feel like we hopefully have the sensory piece under control, but am left wondering about attention issues. C’s sensory profile showed attention/distractibility to be an issue and C’s teacher has said she’s also noticed it, in particularly when he needs to work independently. His mind often wanders and he’s left off task.
It’s ironic, because I was always worried about C being mislabeled with ADD due to the overlap with gifted traits. Now that I actually have a concern that he may have an issue with ADD, the OT turned out to be completely dismissive about it. It may be because she didn’t see any attention issues in her brief sessions with C and could only go by that. So I guess we’ll just have to see how things go. C is still waiting to be evaluation by an OT at school, which may give us more answers. It may be that the issue is more with C’s school environment than with C himself.
Last month, I got called a pushy parent by C’s school. I’m not too surprised about that, because I’ve spent months going back and forth with them about getting accommodations for C. This is despite the fact that I let them know about his needs when we applied last year and again over the summer before he began. So, I’m sure to them I’m a thorn in their side and seem pushy. However, I don’t see advocating for my child as being a negative like they do.
It’s been almost dizzying the back and forth about using EPGY at school. Shortly after my last update, they tried to pull the plug on EPGY yet again and told us to pick up the laptop. They made this decision after C chose to do the classwork over EPGY a few days in a row. Therefore they decided he should never have the opportunity to use EPGY at school the rest of the year. When I told them how disappointed C was and how we had mistakenly thought he had the choice of which to do depending on whether he was engaged in the classwork, suddenly they reversed direction again and we were told we can leave the laptop. This on again, off again way of dealing with accommodations is very difficult on C and us.
By now C knows that the school does not support him using EPGY or doing anything differently from the rest of his class. He’s pretty good at figuring out people and situations and now seems to adapt what he says to whoever he’s speaking with. There have been a few situations so far where he’s told me and his school the complete opposite. He knows what we want to hear, and is more than happy to oblige, regardless of the truth. I feel bad that he thinks he can’t be himself.
While I was not surprised to be called pushy by C’s school, some of the rest of their message was a shock. They went on make a series of critical comments about my parenting and how I’m going to damage C. They also turned my asking for C to experience at least some academic challenge into my wanting him to constantly learn new material without any down time or review, which they go on to say is unhealthy and inhuman. Of course I never advocated for such a thing and in fact had only asked for a 20 minute per day accommodation of C having the choice to use EPGY. They also said that C needs time (i.e. no accommodations) to level out his asynchronous development. That’s an interesting theory of theirs, but I’d rather address his development where it is instead of ignoring his asynchrony, crossing my fingers and waiting for him to reach adulthood (which is probably how much time he’ll need to level out).
Their latest message, received last week, suggested that they probably won’t want C back next year or at the least won’t allow him to progress to the next grade despite his achievement. So, we’re back to looking at schools for next year. Our hope is that we can get his public school GIEP improved and send him there for second grade in the fall. It would save us a lot of money and at least there they’d be required to follow through with his accommodations. Along with the EPGY saga, C’s current school had told us he’d receive enrichment twice a week with the learning specialist, but C tells me that he only goes once a week.
I hate that all of our educational options seem to be choosing the least worst fit. I hate that a 5 year old has to go through all this. Each time he gets tested I tell him it’s so that they can make school better for him and then it never happens. Now he’s due for more testing this month from the public school to work on his GIEP and I haven’t even mentioned it to him. What do I even say anymore? Somehow this process has seem to become all about the adults, the schools and my battles with them… and C gets lost in it all.
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