Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Pls. help me compose letter to psych

This may be the busiest time of year for the psych, in terms of school assessments. Each case report may require careful wording to ensure the appropriate details and recommendations are thoroughly communicated. In creating a preliminary report or brief early summary draft, there may be room for errors or inaccuracies in understanding and interpretation.

IF you were to contact your psych to ask for a preliminary report, you may wish to begin with acknowledging that this is a busy season for their practice. If you receive a preliminary report, you may wish to refrain from asking any clarifying questions or details.

In general, the fewer requests for additional reports which the psych receives, the greater amount of continuous time which can be devoted to each report, and the more swiftly each report can be accomplished.

While the delay of two weeks may be quite inconvenient, the psych may have experienced an unexpected personal setback, such as illness, accident, or death of a loved one... something which may have taken extraordinary effort in order to minimize impacts down to two weeks.

I like the idea shared by another poster: letting appropriate school personnel know that there is something in the pipeline. You may also wish to inquire as to what opportunity there may be to review the report with administrators over the summer, in order to have some plans in place as to how things will proceed when a full decision-making team is assembled.

You have lots of good advice already. Given that it is now two weeks out, I do wonder if something happened as Indigo suggests.

In your shoes, I would start with calls, rather than e-mails, so you get the tone of what's happening. I would probably call the school first, let them know you have a report in progress (with any luck, they already know why) and ask about timing for next school year discussions, etc. Then I would also call the psych's office, say you got the message and ask how sure they are about the new report date (maybe ask if everything is okay)... then mention that you are worried due to needing to make any adjustments with the school. Or something to that effect. Generally, I like to hear what people say before I put things in writing in situations like this... ymmv.

I am very surprised to hear that some schools are completely unresponsive in the summer. In our district, if that happened, I would just go over to the school in person. The teachers and students are not there, but there is always a lot going on.

Always good to hear about differences around the country and world.

And cmguy's advice sounds very good!

Our schools are unstaffed over the summer. I think you should get a discount on your fee. If she doesn't have time to produce reports in a timely manner (and it wasn't timely before this latest delay) then she needs to reassess how many tests she is doing.

I think you should just make the appointment with the school. You can always cancel citing changed circumstances if the report says not gifted.

I agree with the others stating there will be no good will coming from asking again for the info. You can of course reply to the psych stating that you will need to be kept abreast of further delays as the school term ends on... etc

I wouldn't write a letter to the psych - the time frame he's giving you really isn't terribly unreasonable at all, and if he's a well-respected professional, I'm guessing something unexpected came up and he'll do his best to get the report to you as quickly as possible, so all the letters in the world won't help you get it before then.

OTOH, I think I'd call and ask if you could get a list of the WISC scores - you don't need the full report, just ask for a breakdown of VCI/PRI/PSI/WM/FSIQ. Our neuropsych was able to give us that info on a sheet with date of testing etc that her computer spit out - I don't know if it's a standard WISC report or not, but we used it didn't take any time for her office to generate and we were able to use it when applying to a program that we didn't want to provide with a full neuropysch report.

Re school, why not ask the principal if you could go ahead and schedule the achievement testing while you're waiting for the WISC results? The one thing that I'd really consider is - your dd isn't going to be a different kid if you find out her FSIQ is 160 or if you find out it's 120 or if you find out it's 100. She is who she is, and something that's going on at school has led you to think she needs a larger challenge, right? So what happens if you find out she isn't "gifted"? Are you really going to think, ok, just leave everything alone as is, or are you going to still have a student who needs more challenge in school?

I think what I'd focus on right now, for advocating, is what has happened this year in school and what type of challenge do you think she needs. What other types of data do you have to show she needs something more? Work samples? Work she's done outside of school etc? Conversations you've had with her? Her teacher?

What does her teacher think? Having a teacher who thinks she needs acceleration may actually be a more productive tool when advocating than any set of WISC scores.

Best wishes,

polarbear

What Polar said. Totally agree.

Hey polarbear,
Those are all great questions, and yes, really all I want to know is the list of WISC scores. I know the school won't schedule achievement testing without at least that.

So, the problem with this kid is that I don't know what her deal is. She always gets 3s (highest) on report card. All teacher says is that she needs to work on math facts and is chatty. At 4 WPPSI FSIQ was 124 and she told psych she didn't try her best. CogAt last year she was in the 40th% for verbal which everyone agreed was not accurate. She had extreme psychomotor OE as a toddler and pre-schooler (I can't really explain why but I don't think it was hyperactivity.) She usually just doesn't or can't express how she is feeling so I just don't know if meltdowns are due to school being too easy or adoption related stuff or something else. If I find out her FSIQ is 115 then I will look to some other explanation and solution. If it is 160 then I would say we should for sure be looking at a skip. But even if it is over 130, I don't know if a skip is the right thing so I would like to see what IAS says.:)

This is hard because I understood older dd and could more easily figure out what she needed and why. I just don't know with this one. Does she need a larger challenge at school? I don't know! I don't mind waiting for the report but I need the numbers so if there is something concrete we can do at school I want to get it done before school ends. Which I now realize is May 21. That isn't much time.

I really appreciate the feedback. I feel like a bad mom for not getting this kid better, but she is challenging. (Also awesome. But a tough nut to crack.)

Thanks for the additional info deacongirl.

Do you know what the school's requirement for FSIQ in order to trigger the achievement testing? I know that this sounds like it won't work, and it might not, but fwiw you may have some room to "push" (politely of course :)) and request that they schedule the achievement testing this spring.

One thing I was wondering though - was achievement testing included with your outside psych testing? Was any other testing included?

Are the meltdowns she's having at home or at school or both? It is really tricky at your dd's age to understand what triggers behavior such as meltdowns - it's possible that all the testing in the world might not reveal the answer to that question.. yet. What will be really helpful is that it's likely that over the next few years she'll mature in a way that will give her both a better self-understanding of what is triggering the meltdowns and she'll also be developing better expressive language skills which will help *you* understand better what's going on. She'll also, over time, be developing her own ways to cope that may look or be different than what she's doing now with the meltdowns.

One of my dd's has a lot *lot* of adoption-related trauma. She's also dyslexic, and when she was younger she had meltdowns that were just beyond impossible to deal with. Anxiety can be *very* tricky to understand and deal with - for instance, my dd will get very frustrated over certain types of school work that are very difficult for her, but if she gets upset *enough* (to a point where it's difficult for her to calm down), the adoption-related past trauma comes back into play and she gets really upset over that all over again which just re-fuels the already melting-down storm. My gut feeling is that perhaps what you need to consider is to proactively try to address the adoption issues (whether or not they are bothering her or she says they are bothering her) (this might not make sense - ask me to explain better if it doesn't!), and at the same time keep pursuing trying to figure out what is triggering the meltdowns. Try to get the ball rolling for the acceleration (if that's what's needed) at the very start of the school year, but don't over-worry if it's just not doable. For my kids at least, sometimes what mattered most (first) was having a parent understand what was up (even if the child hadn't been able to figure it out for themselves first)... then know that their parent was doing their best to help them. If you find out she's PG and she's still not skipped at the beginning of the next school year, having an explanation for her of why school was frustrating and letting her know you're doing everything you can to make changes to help will potentially help her a lot to cope until the changes take place.

One other thought - if you can't get the achievement testing through the school and the psych hasn't already done achievement testing, can you find an affordable way to get the achievement testing outside of school? We were able to get testing through a contact made through friends who homeschool.

Honestly, I think sometimes we put all our eggs into believing that the issue is school, when really we need to focus on what is triggering behaviors in our child and look at it from what I can't think of anyway to describe other than a "whole life" perspective. There may be a lot you can do over the summer to better understand what's going on with your dd just at home. You'll have what sounds like it will be a comprehensive professional report in your hands mid-May. You may not be able to make a skip happen by the end of this school year, but you have a ton of potential progress that you are making and will continue to make in understanding your child. It will be ok - hang in there

Best wishes,

polarbear

Thank you Polarbear for your compassionate response.

"One of my dd's has a lot *lot* of adoption-related trauma. She's also dyslexic, and when she was younger she had meltdowns that were just beyond impossible to deal with. Anxiety can be *very* tricky to understand and deal with - for instance, my dd will get very frustrated over certain types of school work that are very difficult for her, but if she gets upset *enough* (to a point where it's difficult for her to calm down), the adoption-related past trauma comes back into play and she gets really upset over that all over again which just re-fuels the already melting-down storm. My gut feeling is that perhaps what you need to consider is to proactively try to address the adoption issues (whether or not they are bothering her or she says they are bothering her) (this might not make sense - ask me to explain better if it doesn't!), and at the same time keep pursuing trying to figure out what is triggering the meltdowns. Try to get the ball rolling for the acceleration (if that's what's needed) at the very start of the school year, but don't over-worry if it's just not doable. For my kids at least, sometimes what mattered most (first) was having a parent understand what was up (even if the child hadn't been able to figure it out for themselves first)... then know that their parent was doing their best to help them. If you find out she's PG and she's still not skipped at the beginning of the next school year, having an explanation for her of why school was frustrating and letting her know you're doing everything you can to make changes to help will potentially help her a lot to cope until the changes take place."

Yes, I think this is absolutely true, and part of what is happening with her. Like this:
https://gobbelcounseling.wordpress.com/2013/06/13/trauma-doesnt-tell-time/

I think I need to be way more conscious of this stuff Karyn Purvis talks about (Christian but I think applicable regardless of faith): http://empoweredtoconnect.org/

So, I don't expect that some magic solution at school is going to solve all of our problems, but I think it could be helpful at least.

So as far as details, the way to get achievement testing done is to fill out a request to accelerate form. Then the child-study team meets and says, yes, we think further testing is indicated and we will use IAS or no, we don't think it is indicated. I filled one out in kindy and they said no. This is a kid who I think has a lot of anxiety and also does not show her teachers who she is. And at that point especially she would act very silly when anxious. So, I just would 1) feel ridiculous asking them to schedule the testing before we have some more data 2) am sure they would not do it until we have more data. If I were going to pay for private testing I would do it with current very expensive psych (well...theor

FWIW the principal is very nice to work with and the skip for older dd was really smooth and easy. But when I filled out the form we already had WISC and Explore scores, plus she just presents as very mature--all of the teachers supported it.

So. Yeah. I think you are absolutely correct that there is more to it than school.

Thank you for the encouragement. It is helpful!