More testing…

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.