Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional "She doesn't need to be good at EVERYTHING"

Just wanted to vent for a minute on the "attitude" I sense from so many people regarding my 2e kids, DD in particular. Not from other parents (probably because i don't talk about her), but from school staff, medical personnel, etc. DD9 hardly ever writes more than 3-4 sentences which obviously isn't meeting the lang. arts standards for 4th grade. Since she writes well on a sentence level, she scores average, at least, on standardized tests for writing like the WJ. Basically, the giftedness covers up the disability, and even though she is completely unable to do things like write a report (even a short one), a journal entry, or a story, all people can see are composite scores like 110 on the Woodcock Johnson. They see the general ability index of 150, the state/district achievement scores for math and reading that are all in the 95th-99th percentile, etc. and that's all they can think about... and therefore I look crazy and am a whiny tiger mom who must need her child to be good at everything. Someone actually said that at a meeting (she doesn't need to be good at EVERYTHING). I don't care if she's good at everything but it would be nice if she was operating at grade level and there had been progress in writing in the last two years, which there has not been. For some reason, it didn't seem to bother the 3rd and 4th grade teachers that she hardly ever writes more than 4 sentences. I don't get it.

Because of EF issues, slow processing speed, and ADHD she is excessively slow at almost everything. She may score in the 99th percentile for the district math test on the computer, but she is sent back 3 times to do it, and the other kids do it in 45 min. When I asked the school to test her math fluency as part of a comp. evaluation, they actually refused (and sent me a prior written notice refusing). It's a 5 minute subtest! They finally agreed when I called the spec. ed director and wouldn't sign the evaluation plan. Of course, there was a huge gap between fluency and conceptual ability but the school made no mention of this in the report or meeting. All they care about is overall achievement and if she does/does not qualify for special education. Finally, when the school denied services and wouldn't even meet with us about the 504 plan, I took her to an actual neuropsych/educational psych to be tested and he saw the low fluency score on the school eval and said "I'm surprised they didn't do a full math cluster because this fluency score is so poor." FINALLY I found someone who isn't a complete nincompoop. But is it going to matter anyway? NO, because none of these fools in the schools understand 2e kids. They don't understand that 2e kids can have average scores and still have a disability that can cause them to actually fail or give up at some point if nothing is done. Already DD has shown a lot of anxiety and passive aggressiveness about both math and writing.

I guess I just needed to vent and see if anyone has had a similar experience. I did give the school an article about evaluating 2e kids before DD was evaluated and I don't think anyone bothered to look at it, or if they did, they disregarded it. The last person they want to give services to (or make accommodations for) is a kid who scores as high as she does on math and reading standardized tests. That's ALL they care about. She could be asleep all day at school and as long as she keeps getting those good scores for overall math and reading achievement, they are going to ignore the concerns.

I do not have a child like this, but I can tell you that it is a concern and a very frustrating one for some children at my child's GT magnet.

I have a similar kid but the opposite problem with the school. He's in grade 3 and all they can focus on is that his writing is slow and up until recently below grade. This year he finally managed to approach grade level but they are still freaking out because it doesn't come close to match his ability. We had to pay for our second full psych assessment out of pocket (the board's waiting list is years long) because the first one in grade 1 (that we also had to pay for) couldn't confirm an LD. He now has an official LD diagnosis and the school is going to provide a laptop and software.

That is all good and I'm glad they are on top of things but the downside is that they have used it as an excuse to not provide gifted services for him. It doesn't help that DS isn't exactly a cooperative kid sometimes and the school refuses to do any gifted stuff until he behaves better (which honestly will be a challenge until they give him something at his level). This year I finally managed to get them to differentiate a bit in math but it is still far from what he could or wants to do. The teacher just can't see it because she is so focused on the fact that he doesn't write out his solutions in 15 steps which goes back to the writing LD.

Anyway, that isn't really any help but you aren't alone in your 2e frustration.

This may not help at all, but I recently saw this article in the news and thought of it when I saw your post.

http://www.disabilityscoop.com/2015/05/01/idea-twice-exceptional/20260/

Thanks for the article. I had given something similar to the special ed dircetor, who actually attended the meeting, and he said that nothing will be done because she is not failing. So even though she qualifies as having a SLD according to the discrepancy model, she doesn't have a composite score below 80 or whatever they consider below average. She actually qualified as having a math calculation disability as well but with achievement scores (untimed tests) at 99th percentile, giving her any services for math would be considered ridiculous. They only looked at one classroom sample of writing and it was 2 sentences long (probably the best sample they could find), and they determined that was sufficient. She was supposed to write a letter, and they said since her sentences were "long" her writing is fine. Basically they were looking for ways to disqualify her. With the independent eval. she was given the TOWL-4 and for the "story" she wrote had so few words it couldn't even be scored. I think she wrote 3 sentences in 15 min. I'm not sure if the district has seen the report yet. They'll probably say there has to be a number and it has be below 80.

chay--sorry to hear about your own difficulties. So far we haven't encountered that, the teachers just blew off the concerns and inflated her grades rather than helping her. They disregarded the 504. The language arts teacher in the gifted program said "a lot of gifted kids write bad and they always improve." I said "If other kids write as bad as her they should all be evaluated" and she rolled her eyes at me.

blackcat..we are in the same boat. 10yr 2e DD w/adhd. Except my DD's teacher said all she needed was some tutoring, of which we are paying for ourselves. I can pay a tutor for 20 years and I guarantee it won't make a difference on her writing but I can show the district that I am at least trying. Your comment about the schools not understanding 2e kids is spot on. The tutor we are using is a gifted class teacher at DD's school. When asked how many twice exceptional kids she had in her class, she didn't even now what the term meant. I explained to her and she said "I don't know if I have any". Can't offer suggestions, just camaraderie in this same ship we are in.

blackcat, I'm so sorry you're facing it, and also can empathize so much as we have faced so many of the same roadblocks advocating for our dsypraxic/dysgraphic ds. In fact, I am sitting at my desk this morning re-reading a book on dyspraxia looking for info to share with teachers.

My ds also couldn't get enough words down on the TOWL to be scored when it was given to him the first time (he was in 4th grade). This was something the school couldn't just write off as "he's ok". I am not sure what advice might help to respond to the school in your situation, but what worked for us was understanding the tests that our ds had been given so that we understood why he scored high on some of them and lower on others, and just continually - over and over and over again - explaining what the test results meant. For us, that non-score on the TOWL made all the difference in the world. DS had "advanced" scores on all of his state-testing except for writing, and on that test he was one point away from scoring "advanced". The reason he scored so high on the state testing was the nature of the test - the majority of it was multiple choice questions about spelling and grammar, which he can easily answer when he's not in the midst of trying to actually produce written expression. Same for WJ-III achievement tests - he had some subtest scores that were very high, but when grouped based on ds' challenges you could see clearly where the challenges were impacting subtest scores. I made a chart from the WJ-III showing how the grouping of subtests showed the disability, and collected all the work samples I could both from school and home and had those in reserve to show at our team meetings. Although the types of data I collected at home couldn't be considered "scientific" or done under controlled circumstances, they made a point, and I knew that if the school tried to say they didn't believe them I could always respond with "that's ok, you run the same test/etc" because I knew they would get the same results.

We were successful in getting an IEP for our ds in elementary school, but as you've probably read here, just having the IEP didn't make it any less difficult at school - teachers and school staff still didn't believe ds really needed help, and there was a lot of trying to "blame" his difficulties with writing on ADHD (which he doesn't have, but even if he did, he still needed *appropriate instruction* in writing), laziness, inattentiveness, checked out student, whiny parents. The best thing we ever did for ds was find a private school where the teaching staff listened to and respected what we had to say as parents, and took at face value what was said in a professional report. That didn't get ds the *extra* help he needed (we still had to send him through years of SLP therapy for written expression), but it did at least give us an environment where blame wasn't being thrown around and teachers weren't trying to accuse us (parents) as over-inflating our ds' intelligence.


In situations like this, I reply with a really nice, polite email summarizing the situation/discussion, restating what the teacher said that includes documentation from someone/somewhere/somebook/somepaper/whatever, a brief paragraph, a one-pager at most, that explains the impact of ds' disability on the specific skill that the teacher is thinking will just improve on it's own. I try to make the tone of the email entirely non-confrontational or lecturing, but with the tone of just trying to help the teacher understand. The teacher may not understand it or care, but if he/she *does* read it it does sometimes help to understand. Even if they don't read it and/or don't care, you have one more piece of documentation showing how the impact of the disability is being misunderstood in the classroom.

Best wishes,

polarbear

[/quote]She actually qualified as having a math calculation disability as well but with achievement scores (untimed tests) at 99th percentile, giving her any services for math would be considered ridiculous.[/quote]

Part of the key to an IEP is qualifying - once you've qualified, no matter what the qualification category - the school should be able to provide individualized instruction and accommodations in areas where she needs it. Does your school district ever qualify students who have ADHD diagnoses as OHI (Otherwise Health Impaired)? When we were advocating for an IEP for our ds, the school wanted us to keep his ADHD diagnosis (even though it wasn't correct) because they felt it would be easier to qualify him - didn't have to follow the same strict guidelines that they do for SLD. Second thing, those guidelines (minimum scores etc) for qualifying under SLD are just that - *guidelines*, not barriers. The decision for eligibility is supposed to be a team decision. FWIW, the SPED teacher at ds' elementary school did not vote to qualify ds because she felt *very* strongly that giving an IEP to a student who wasn't poor and wasn't low IQ took away from other students. Everyone else on the team though felt he qualified - a previous year's teacher, parents, school district rep. Is there anyone else who is a resource who might be in favor of getting your ds qualified that you could call in to participate when you have a team meeting?

polarbear

Laurie918, I can so identify with your frustration, having a 2e ds who struggled tremendously with written expression and still does. I can't help but wonder though - if you were able to find a tutor who understood the root of the issue with writing for your dd, if tutoring or some type of therapy wouldn't help? Speech therapy targeting written expression helped our ds tremendously, and although he still struggles with it, it's been extremely worthwhile having pursued it. One other thing that happened with improvements in his written expression - it didn't all happen smoothly and obviously - there were many times he'd go for long stretches seeming to not be making any improvements and then suddenly all the work leading up to that point would click and he'd make a big leap.

The gifted class tutor might not be the person that your dd needs for tutoring at this point, particularly if she doesn't understand 2e or if she doesn't understand what is at the root of your dd's challenge with written expression. Have you ever had your dd evaluated by a speech pathologist? Speech therapy targeted at written expression is what helped our ds the most, and it's not something the school suggested or I ever would have thought of had I not read some obscure reference to it in one of the Eides' books and then read about others online who'd approached written expression challenges through speech therapy.

Best wishes,

polarbear

I do have a similar kid. Essay writing is like pulling teeth. For DS16 his problem is in creating content to write about and not about the execution. He has written only a few sentences on essays that teachers are expecting pages on because 'he has nothing to say'. First day of his gifted pullout in 4th grade and the teacher assigned a 'tell me about yourself essay' and my son wrote one sentence.

I have not had the same attitude but rather the reverse. Since he struggles to write essays, he couldn't possibly be gifted. He can't take the honors high school English & Social Studies because he can't write well enough. So he is stuck in regular English classes bored to tears with most the the material. Gets mad because he has to read the abridged version of the book. Thankfully this isn't necessary for math class, but it has hurt him in science.

It is important that your child is writing AT grade level. And you should keep pushing this because it will come back to bite you at the later grades. I don't have a lot of suggestions except to keep pushing. And if you can get her outside help in the meantime. What I've found is not a lot of people know how to help DS with the 'having something to say' part of writing.

Depends on who you find. Look for an educational therapist rather than a run of the mill tutor. My older DD went to see one for years and it helped a lot. But I've struggled to find someone to work with my DS. We have had bad luck. We found someone who started to look like she was getting somewhere and she turned around and quit on us for personal reasons. There are tutors out there that can help with this kind of thing, but it's not your run of the mill 'writing tutor'.

I'm guessing tutoring options are limited because someone who hasn't heard of 2e is not ideal. Will she take direction from you or is she just doing what doesn't work at school again?

I have had the same problems with writing with DS. We did some stuff at home last year (essentials in writing) and he is now back at the top end of where he should be but he dislikes it and still avoids starting. it is a bit topic dependant too.

What is essentials in writing? I think I'm going to have to teach her myself. Even the special ed staff don't necessarily know what to do. I'm pretty sure my other kid (in a different school than the one I described above) has dysgraphia but his problem is more handwriting and dd's problem is more the result of impaired executive functioning. She has no clue what to write or how to organize her thoughts to get them on the paper. She also now has anxiety about writing, making everything worse, because teachers have mismanaged her for so long. If she was sitting there staring into space rather than writing they would yell at her to focus and make better choices. Her math scores are similar to writing. For instance applied problems pulls her overall score up into the average range. She qualifies according to having a severe discrepancy, but I don't think that school districts are forced to give a student services unless they are failing.

polarbear, I moved DD to the school where DS is a couple weeks ago. The gifted program seemed hopeless, like DD would continue to spiral downhill and even if the teachers DO finally understand her issue, they are so disorganized they are never going to pull things together and consistently do accommodations/modifications. The new school actually increased DS's services for writing (practically tripled the pull-out time), but in terms of DD, they will not do anything unless the initial team from the old school makes her eligible. Since she was just evaluated and then we had an IEE they will not evaluate her, and they will not make their own eligibility determination (even though legally I think they are supposed to).

In terms of evaluating for "Other Health Impaired" for the ADHD, I had to basically tell them to do it. These people are clueless and I doubt that the psych has ever qualified a single kid for an IEP if they have ADHD. We have been dealing with this psych for years and at first she told me that DD doesn't even qualify for a 504 (after observing her working in a group of kids for 20 min and that's it). I think she could easily classify in that OHI category because her slow speed and focus issues are having an adverse effect on performance, but they give me the same exact line about how she needs to be failing. There is NOTHING in the State manual stating that to be the case.

Another thing you might look at is Writing Strands. Not for everyone but you might like it.

That is exactly my ds' issue too - had no clue what to write or how to organize his thoughts to get them onto paper. This is also what speech therapy helped with soon so very much.


DS' teachers also didn't understand that either - and he spent a lot of time stairing into space during writing assignments in elementary school because he was simply clueless and had no idea what to put on his paper. The teachers were really quick to place fault on ds, rather than admitting that he actually needed instruction.


I think that if you could find a local advocate it might help. I do think that school districts can't deny services just because a child isn't failing - I think you could google around the boards here and wrightslaw and find articles that specifically address that issue. What may be more relevant in your school/district's case though is the reality of ability to provide services - our school district has been very short-staffed and stretched to the limit to meet the needs of all the students who *should* qualify for IEP services, hence there are a lot of kids who are given quick excuses for why they don't qualify and only the kids who have a strong advocate fighting back ultimately get the IEP. At one point in time a friend of mine who teachers high school (regular academics) was extremely annoyed because the only way for high school students to get IEPs was basically to get denied and then have to go to due process or sue the district, which meant teachers then had to be pulled out of class to testify.


I don't know what the legal responsibility is in that situation, but it would be interesting to see what an advocate had to say about it. So if I understand, your dd was evaluated at her old school (the gifted school), found ineligible, you disagreed and the district paid for an IEE, the IEE shows that dd has a disability or meets criteria for some services based on discrepancy, and the old school still said no she doesn't qualify?

Do you have any pro-bono legal groups in your town that offer advice to people with disabilities? If you did, I'd make a call and just ask what they think about the situation.

I do also hope the new school works out much better than the old school - sending you lots of good wishes!

polarbear

ps - re the writing and getting ideas out - I can send you some of the things our slp did with ds if you'd like - a lot of what they did together could easily be done at home without an slp - send me a pm.

pb

Essentials in writing is a home school but public school style writing and grammar programme. I watched the short (less than 5 min) video then we talked and did the workbook together. Because it was so quick it wasn't painful and it helped (I think) him see more structure in writing. He doesn't like creative writing and was getting stuck. I don't know that it was the programme that helped him really but it helped me. It has a a good return policy if you want to look. Also 4 square which is basically a structured graphic organizer might help.

puffin, thanks, I will check that out.

polarbear, I will send you a PM

This describes DS16's problems with writing to a T. Issue came up again tonight unresolved. Tonight was particularly bad because he was supposed to write about himself. He just gets stuck and had ZERO idea's and then he gets anxious and the situation gets even worse. What's frustrating about the whole thing is once he gets past this stage the mechanics of writing come easy. So when we get over these humps, he gets good grades on his writing. But writing almost always gets turned in late.

My DS16 does had a 504 accommodation for this that we got this past year. But all his accommodation gives him is the right to turn things in late. When he gets stuck there really is no way to push through it and he need to look at it fresh the next day. All the teachers and tutors we have keep trying to emphasis pre-writing skills like making outlines or brainstorming. But that doesn't always help particularly if it's creative writing. Sometimes it helps to re-frame the question. I'm going to have to ask his English teacher to do this tomorrow on his current assignment. Since DS is a sophomore in H.S. he is supposed to talk with her himself. (Doesn't help that this is a 2nd long term sub for this class this year.) This seems to be a unhelpful perfectionism where he can't write something stupid or wrong or incorrect. And he seems particularly incapable or writing about himself.

I find questions that are personal are WORSE that stuff that is concrete. So "write an essay about an experience that happened to you" is near impossible but a social studies report doesn't cause as many problems. So sometimes a prompt can be re-framed. DS's Spanish teacher this year figured this out. And since all she cared was that he wrote a paragraph using specific vocabulary changing the prompt made the assignment a lot less difficult.

Thanks bluemagic, sorry you are dealing with this too. Since DD is only in 4th grade most of the writing has to be done in school. She just ends up zoning out there and looks really unfocused. Then as teachers berate her for not doing the work, she gets more and more unfocused and anxious (but it doesn't necessarily show up as anxiety--it's not obvious). She ends up looking passive aggressive which makes everyone more frustrated with her because it looks like she's not even trying and doesn't care. I don't even know how to fix this situation with a 504. It's not like a regular classroom teacher is going to be able to give her a pep talk and coach her about what to write every time she needs to write something in class.

For the standardized tests (like WIAT and TOWL) she was given prompts like "write about a favorite X" or given a picture and she was supposed to write a story about it. She didn't write more than 3 sentences for either test. For the "write about a favorite..." question she wasn't even on-topic.

I just started her on a new medication and she wrote a couple paragraphs of a story without making a fuss about it. She also organized all of my tupperware. I'm not sure if it's a coincidence but I'm praying that this med is doing something to the part of her brain that isn't working quite right. When she was most recently tested, she wasn't on stimulants and now she's on a really low dose.

blackcat, just wanted to share with you that this is the exact same line being given to my friends with 2E kids. I don't know if it's legal. It doesn't SOUND legal, But that is also what they have been told. He/she is not failing...get out of my office.

My other kid had an IEP written and he definitely wasn't failing. His lowest score on the WJ-Ach. was in the 80th percentile. The difference was that they had to get a POHI teacher involved in his evaluation (it's a state requirement) and the teacher they found was contracted and she was one of the contributers to the State manual for evaluating other health disabilities. She probably told the district they needed to qualify him. I initially was given the same runaround with him, they refused to even evaluate him, told me he would never qualify for anything, etc. I talked to a free legal group for people with disabilities and the woman told me my district is terrible.

Pohi?

Ohi is other health impaired right? What is pohi?

I'm sorry this is happening. Correct me if I'm wrong, but is this the second school at which this is occurring... did your kids change schools prior to this school year?

Have you looked into the Wrightslaw website and the book From Emotions To Advocacy? There is also a website specifically to support the book - fetaweb.com.

To be honest I feel stupid because if you look back this has been happening to my son for years but I didn't really realize how bad it was till last year in 9th grade. DS had major problems in 6th grade with anxiety and meltdowns and one of the triggers was writing assignments like this.

The problem we had in identifying this as a learning disability (we didn't do that till last summer when he was 15) was that DS would write he writes well. And some grades & teachers never saw the problem, for example his 8th grade teacher for honors humanities. Still not sure what magic she had as a teacher. Plus the fact that he has labeled as GATE and so much of a better writer than his sister who has a language processing LS made me a bit compliant. When he was having these problems in his 6th grade gifted class, I overlooked the problem and rationalized it that they were asking above grade level. I found him help for his anxiety and social issues but didn't look for the root of the problem and try and work on his writers block.

I'm not sure how you can convince the teachers but you do need to work with this now. In order to graduate H.S. DS needs to take 4 years of English, and writing is 50% of his grade. In our H.S. most writing is still done in class. All the A's in math & science class won't change anything.

As I said in a previous post you can find specialist that will work with your daughter on this kind of problem. Although honestly most English tutors told me this is the hardest part of writing to work on. You need to find someone special. I ended up doing a full neropsc test last summer that really helped clarify all the issues my son has been going through and made it easier to get the 504. Although the 504 only gives him accommodations like more time during in class writing and the ability to turn in homework like this late. Because my son was already the agreement was the H.S. was going to accommodate and I was going to work at home on getting him help. He had a tutor for a while that did help but she left and I never found one to replace her.

POHI is physical and other health impaired. To evaluate DS for the "physically impaired" category they had to have one of these teachers on his eval. team. Of course, our district doesn't have such a teacher because they don't write these kinds of IEPs or give services, so in the rare instances when they need to (for instance when crazy parents like me make demands), they contract out for the services.

They completely messed up even evaluating the "other health impaired" category (for ADHD). For instance they were supposed to have a spec. ed teacher observe her, do a full achievement test, etc. and they didn't. So even if they had wanted to qualify her, there would have been no way for them to check off the boxes for the state.

If they refuse to evaluate for disabilities because the child is "too successful" or "too smart":

http://www2.ed.gov/policy/speced/guid/idea/memosdcltrs/041715osepmemo15-082q2015.pdf

https://www2.ed.gov/policy/speced/guid/idea/memosdcltrs/13-008520r-sc-delisle-twiceexceptional.pdf

Thank you for the links. I will check them out. I have a feeling I will need to go to due process with the district. They will probably have an attorney and I won't.

bluemagic--don't beat yourself up. It's incredibly difficult trying to figure out what is going on with these kids. I made the mistake of increasing her meds because teachers kept telling me she wasn't doing work/wasn't focusing. So she was probably over-medicated.
she's in a new school and will have the same teacher next year as well. So far the teacher seems very reasonable in terms of listening to my concerns, however I don't think she has any idea how to really help (any better than I do). The biggest thing right now is to try to reduce the anxiety. It's almost like she now has a panic disorder from being mismanaged for so long. I am still waiting to get a copy of the neuropsych/ed. psych report that we had privately and I hope he has some really good suggestions. I told him that he needs to lay everything out for them/us in detail, like Step A, Step B, etc.

Blackcat, aside from the EF issues, your dd sounds very much like my dd12. Her teachers thought she had them, though, because she could NOT do writing at all (zero words on the TOWL, only 13 months ago) and all her work is incredibly slow. She now has an educational therapist who is helping with idea generation and organization, and the difference is like night and day. We probably spent five months looking for the right person, but after six months of therapy, her writing is acceptable, at least when it's not personal opinion. We're continuing therapy; I can't wait to see the results after a year!

There is hope. It gets better. Our private testers were able to recommend the therapist that suited us; perhaps yours can help you find someone?

ljoy- What is this educational therapist's background? Just trying to see if we could replicate your search! DS11 has similar challenges, including those with EF and written expression. Just the act of writing is difficult with his fine motor issues, so a lot goes into the production of writing. Its hard to get him to keyboard when everyone is hand writing. Just started posting here- SO wonderful to see that our challenges are not particularly 'unique'!

ljoy, I wish I could clone your therapist. I was wondering about one of those chain tutoring places, but those tutors most likely don't even have a degree in education and are probably paid barely over minimum wage. We had tried OT about a year ago, and the OT was trying to work a bit with the writing and the slow processing speed, but it was clear she was just randomly trying things and didn't understand the issue. I'm just so tired of trying things that don't help and if we get the wrong person, it could make things worse. She had a teacher last year (a long-term sub who retired as a full-time teacher) and the teacher would constantly bark at her, tell her to get going, make better choices etc. Even after giving so many people articles on slow processing speed (like this one) http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10782.aspx things still don't necessarily change. I always get the impression that people skim through articles like that and then promptly dismiss them or forget about them. It really makes me wonder how many truly good teachers there are out there, if they are unwilling to spend 10 min. reading an article that could really help.

on our therapist:

1) several people told us not to even consider a tutor, specifically look for an Ed. Therapist. They were (mostly) right. We ended up with one of each. The tutor teaches again what she missed out on in class, in mostly the same ways, and helps with homework; DD is now caught up and we are done with tutoring. The Ed. Therapist gives her new strategies and tools tailored to her particular profile, and gives separate assignments. We will continue with her. Therapy is about twice the price of tutoring.

2) We tried out five different ed. therapists. One worked but had a full schedule, several others didn't have enough time to even try out, one was a complete disaster from the moment we met so we didn't go back. The final choice was recommended by our tester and is located at a large but local tutoring center that ALSO offers ed. therapy.

3) The person that worked for us has a BA in Psychology, MA in mild/moderate special ed, and specific training in Lindamood-Bell, Orton-Gillingham, Reading Apprenticeship, and lots of assistive technology. Note - no degree in teaching, exactly. A lot of her approach has been to break down the shame of what DD does poorly and get her to allow herself to do better, which is much more psych than teaching. We knew she was a win when after seeing our testing results she did her own research online and discovered, then forwarded to us, a link to the 2E section at Davidson's. My sense is that she is herself more than a little gifted.

I hope this helps others. We do feel very lucky - but we also found several people who might also have worked, but whose schedules were just full. Our therapist seems wonderful but not unique. Good luck!

When we began our search, I just sent out huge number of email queries asking if such-and-such a place offered educational therapy and asking for bios of the people they had. All the reputable places were forthright with us and gave straight yes/no answers, and the bios clearly stated education and primary ranges of experience (autism? EF? low achievement?). It helped a lot to narrow the field, and it helped a lot to send copies of the same text over and over instead of composing yet another new email or telephoning yet another new office.

DD loved her sessions with both people who would have worked out. She wanted to go back; they made her feel good. Don't return to a person your kid doesn't like.

This advice is excellent. Don't go through the chain places. I tried that for my DD first. We had a excellent educational therapist that worked with my daughter for years. She had a PhD in education and worked with kids who had problems with language and reading issues. Well worth all the money we spend on it.