Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Things to request in an IEP for ADHD

We have a meeting tomorrow for DD in 5th grade and one thing that I've been thinking about is the unfinished classroom work. I think that she does far less than her classmates because she is so distracted and off-task. The problem that we have encountered the last few years is that hardly any class work actually comes home. So we don't know what she's doing, or not doing. When I try to ask teachers, we get non-committal answers like "she's doing great" with no evidence to back it up, then we get the notebooks/folders home at the end of the year and it's obvious that things were not "great."

Is it reasonable to put something in the IEP, like they have to send her work home on a regular basis? If she is graded on anything, there isn't even an online gradebook and they only do report cards twice per year. So for all I know she is failing quizzes, tests, not doing half of the assignments and we don't even know.

There is no accountability on the part of the school.

Personally, I think she probably needs a para for the parts of the day when she is most off-task, but if she doesn't get that we'll be left to wonder what they are actually doing to keep her on-task and if it's working.

How do we address this?

Here are a few suggestions off the top of my head:

1) Seat near the front of the class.

2) Frequent prompts and reminders to stay on task.

3) All missing or incomplete assignments are marked as such daily by the staff in an assignment notebook, and the assignment notebook comes home to parents.

Thanks, BSM. She has an anxiety issue so we have to figure out a way that they can get her on-task without exacerbating the anxiety. The more that people tell her to "focus" the more anxious and unfocused she gets. She also makes excuses all the time about why she needs to leave the classroom (nurse, bathroom, drinking fountain, missing supplies, etc).

For a math test, she would not do it at all (probably a combination of no focus and anxiety), so finally the teacher got in a para to sit with her and read the questions to her. But I don't know if that's realistic long-term.

As someone who has dealt for a long time with a child who has anxiety and attention issues, I know what you are going through. It is a tight rope walk, as you want to motivate the kid, but not push them so hard that they get stressed.

If she's only in 5th, having the para for now might be the best approach and you can request that in an IEP. Kids change so much as they grow however, that she may have different needs in the future. I've learned to avoid longer term thinking.

Blackcat, I can't remember if your DD is in a regular of gifted class, so my first question is, how much of the unfinished work is important for her to do, and how much is busywork? We were in a similar situation as you with DS up grade 5, where absolutely nothing came home, ever, and we had no ability to try and scaffold writing or executive function, no matter how many times and ways we asked to try and work on these issues together with the school.

Now we are suddenly in a brutal situation where DS has hit middle school while simultaneously switching to a gifted class with a massive workload, mostly writing (and mostly in social sciences areas where he struggles even more than usual because of his total lack of interest/ ability to engage in the topics). For his entire elementary school career, he was not finishing large quantities of work (fun combo of writing disability, slow processing, ADHD-inattentive and anxiety), and his teachers were shrugging it off, since they knew he didn't need the practice, and they knew how hard writing was for him. This year, we are seeing disaster result from DS's total inability to understand that work given to him must actually be finished. And that work not completed in class must be brought home, completed, and submitted next day. DS honestly figured anything worked on in class was class work - and if they class moved on to something else next day, then he didn't need to worry about it any more. With the best of intentions, his teachers have created deeply ingrained bad habits that combine with his glacial writing and total lack of executive function to make his life now stunningly difficult.

Long way to say - our experience has been that it's a very, very bad thing when teachers shrug off unfinished work. Some day, that suddenly won't be OK anymore, and the child is left with no clue what the new rules are and when they apply - what they are supposed to be doing, when, where and how. Throw in the ADHD that causes our DS to miss most instruction, and whatever-it-is that makes him even more likely to miss implicit instructions, and toxic soup emerges.

So, what would have helped avoid this? If you have a child who for combo of ability and disability isn't really expected to finish everything, they can really benefit from clearly-defined expectations at the outset. e.g. Here's the worksheet, I've circled the 5 you have to do, and we will make sure these get done. Anything therefore not completed at school will go home, every day. For multi-day projects, the teacher and child will work together to create a schedule/ workplan, and the project will come home regularly to ensure each individual milestone is caught up (and NOT send the whole thing home on the last day to do a month's worth of unfinished work!). I think these are reasonable and IEP-able requirements, and shoot, do I wish we'd had them in place for the last several years.

Platypus--that's basically the kind of mess that we have been dealing with as well. She did one whole grade acceleration and one subject acceleration for math. So it seems to be about the right level and it's important that she actually does the work. I don't see any of the assigned work so far as being a waste of time. They wrote in her eval "modify work". Ummm, how? Unless there is some sort of specific plan, no one is going to modify work. If they do, it will be to just ignore the piles of unfinished work and give her an A anyway. We did go to the meeting and basically for goals they are saying:

--she will be able to paraphrase directions and get started
--stay on task with cues
--complete tasks
--follow the steps of the writing process
--write well developed paragraphs

For organizational skills:
--complete assignment notebook
--get necessary materials ready to go home
--turn in assignments

Then they have a bunch of adaptations listed as well. Things like this:
--break down assignments
--provide extra time to complete tasks, esp. novel tasks
--check in with her after giving directions (have her paraphrase directions)
--end of day check outs to make sure she has her assignment notebook
--visual task lists
--graphic organizers/templates for written expression
--access to computer or tablet for A/T.
--cheat sheet for multiplication facts
--access to quiet work space (the hallway?!)
--opportunities for movement
--sensory tools like gum/headphones.


Of course nothing about a para and I don't feel like they have a grasp of what is actually happening in math class. I'm not sure how many times I need to ask them to look at her math notebook (which stays in school). And for the tests which take her forever to finish, the teacher has been sending her out in the hall by herself.

They did say that the goals will be more measurable but they have to collect data about current functioning. All in all, it's not terrible, and she is going to get writing services which was my main concern, but I want to make sure this is done right because it will be a pain to change things later. I just wish there was a more specific strategy to get her to speed up and stay on task. It's one thing to say they have a goal to get her to stay on task, but how do they do that?

Blackcat, I'm sorry I don't have more specific advice, but fwiw, we've been advised that requesting that classroom work be sent home to be reviewed by a parent *can* be specifically added as an accommodation to an IEP/504 plan.

I also don't have an IEP with me at the moment, so don't remember the specific terminology, but they usually have "goals" (as you've listed above) and something that I can't remember the name of, which are objective (measurable) things that will happen as services in order for the student to meet the goals. We had issues with our ds' IEP services not being followed through in elementary school, and were advised that we could ask for a log of services received.

Did they specify a plan and a timeframe for collecting data that represents current functioning? Did they have an eligibility review? And my very basic question.. wasn't data re current functioning collected during the IEP eligibility process?

Also re goals, two of the goals seem very non-specific:

--follow the steps of the writing process
--write well developed paragraphs

I would ask that they define what steps of the writing process they expect her to follow (even though I am sure this is basic and they use the same steps for all students, it still should be defined in the IEP), and what exactly do they mean by a well developed paragraph?

Hang in there - it's a lot of work to get develop an IEP, but it's work well worth putting time and effort into - the more well-defined the IEP, the higher the likelihood it will be followed, and the higher the likelihood it will make a difference for your dd.

Best wishes,

polarbear

Just thinking out loud here... is ADHD her only challenge? Is it possible that anything other than ADHD is getting in the way of staying on task or moving faster with her work? If so, then including specific goals for the specific challenges will help.

polarbear

Her other challenges besides ADHD basically include all aspects of executive functioning (planning, organization, task initiation, processing speed, etc). They refused to write her up as SLD as well even though she met the criteria because they said that her individual sentences are finely crafed (and long!) and she does not present like the SLD students they already service. I told them that she is gifted with a 150 GAI so she is not going to "present" like those other students. At first they wrote her eval like she just has a problem with "incomplete work due to ADHD." Ummmm, no, that's not Ok. I asked them to re-write it to be very specific that she has information processing difficulties. But yeah, there are other issues besides the ADHD. I think she is borderline dysgraphic but since she performs in the average range on tests like the WIAT and WJ they will not classify her as that. They ignored her TOWL-4 result, done as part of our IEE, where the "story" was unscorably bad, claiming that it is not an acceptable test (even though it's in the State SLD manual). To them it's all about individual sentences, but they do admit that she has a problem with organization and extended writing.

I don't have a final IEP, or even a draft, so it's possible they will put in something more specific about what they expect from her in terms of written expression (i.e. what is a paragraph).

I want to pick my battles though since I'm sure I already come across as crazy.