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Thanks. The psych she's seen just once so far isn't convinced that it is ADD, though, so I don't think we are going to get a dx and meds for some time if that's what it is. She feels that anxiety is just as likely. Dd has her next appointment on the 16th, I believe. We'll see what we get from that.

Where I am so torn is that she sees placement in non-GT classes as proof that she is the slow one in the family. We haven't found a way to support her belief in herself as able and intelligent in either set-up. She makes too many simple errors to get As in the GT classes and she feels stupid in the regular classes b/c her sister was in GT and skipped a grade and, since nearly a quarter of the school is in GT, the kids in the regular ed are often so far in a different direction than she is that she doesn't really find any friends. She then identifies herself as slow b/c she must be in her mind since this is who the school thinks she belongs with. Unfortunately, she also winds up being rejected by the kids in GT b/c she isn't one of them.

They actually are in different schools and have been for the past three years. Her older sister did attend the elementary dd10 is attending for one year only (4th grade) before skipping 5th. We are planning to send dd10 to a different middle school than her sister attended as well.

She definitely has sister shadow issues in her mind.

Is there a way you can convey the information you are posting here to the psych? I respect that the psych isn't just rushing into the ADHD diagnosis.
In a way, your younger DD would be better off in a school that didn't have a gifted program. Are there any around? My son's district just offers Heterogeneous classes until High School.
I'd still try to talk to the Math Teacher and make it sound like the medication is coming 'any day now' to try and get the teacher to treat your daughter more kindly.

Best Wishes,
Grinity

I've been communicating w/ the GT teacher via email and here's the game plan for now:

Dd is going to go in before school the next time they have a math test and start the test early skipping page one. She'll then put the test in her folder and when they are handed out in class since page one is still blank hopefully it won't be obvious to the other kids that she has already started. We're hoping that this extra time will allow dd to review her work, re-read directions, and generally make sure that she hasn't overlooked anything. Testing alone for part of the test might also be good in terms of anxiety. The teacher will, of course, be in the room correcting papers or setting up, but I think that dd likes her well enough that hopefully she'll be calmer.

The teacher does agree that dd seems to understand the material better than she's showing on most of the tests. I'm not sure that she sees dd as as able in math as I do, but that isn't a big deal I guess. I just see a real creativity and artistry to how she approaches math and an ability to make leaps without needing the intermediary steps. The other kids in the class, undoubtably, have facts, etc. down better in that for most of them this is their third year subject accelerating and it is dd's first. I don't see memorization of facts and formulas as a real talent, though.

In re to schools with no GT groupings, I don't know of any around here. GT is a big thing with a lot of kids in GT at most, if not all, of the schools. I think that the only way to avoid that would be to go to one of the lower income parts of town which would be quite a haul and they would still have GT and ability grouping, but it wouldn't be as big in that there aren't as many well off, pushy parents tutoring their kids to get them ided as gifted. I do think that dd would likely be at the head of the class at the few schools I can think of like this, but I also think that the quality of education would be lesser.

We went in for another meeting w/ the counselor today. We're running into what we always do -- dd is nearly silent while there, snows the person by saying what she perceives to be the right response, and then comes out of there and says something totally different to me. Dd doesn't think that this is helpful at all which leaves me wondering if it is worth pulling her out of school to do.

There are very few afterschool apts available, so it usually involves sending her in 1.5 hrs late or pulling her out in the middle of the day. Dd also doesn't want her school to know why she is leaving or coming in late, so we're left making up excuses like a lot of dr or dentist apts.

I really don't know what to do at this point. They psych doesn't feel that dd has executive funtion problems. She thinks that dd is very abstract and perhaps is developing in such a way to to have skipped over the concrete stage that usually precedes abstract thinking so we're having to go backward trying to teach her how to think concretely. I'm gathering that she doesn't think there is much, if anything wrong w/ dd that needs treatment beyond anxiety and lack of confidence related to school and life not being a good fit for who she is.

So, our options are:

* continue to see the counselor and have her give dd ideas like positive affirmations/self talk which dd blows off and feels condescended to about.
* re-test IQ and see if she qualifies for something like DYS since her first set of IQ scores would have, but she's going to have to step up to the plate on achievement if so.
* drop this all and just let the chips fall where they may assuming that GT classes, etc. probably aren't going to be in dd's long-term school picture due to her erratic performance.

I missed the post about the math test idea - I really love the sensitivity the teacher is showing. I hate that Math is 'a race' when it's such a great time to teach kids to work 'slowly and steadily' - good for the teacher.

It sounds like it's time to start shopping for a different counselor, maybe one that will play chess with DD and watch how DD handles tiny bits of real life. Asking a child to be reflective is asking an awful lot.

Best Wishes,
Grinity

What would be a reasonable thing for a counselor to do with a 10 yr old then that would help with anxiety and not fitting in at school?

We tried CBT with dd12 when she was 8 b/c she was being bullied and had a lot of anxiety. She felt the same way about it that dd10 does about her current therapy -- like she was being talked down to and asked to "visualize" things that she felt were foolish.

So, here's the latest update:

We had another counselor mtg today & then dd stayed home from school for the rest of the day b/c she has a bad cold.

The psych thinks that dd does seem to show some signs of inattentive type ADHD given my behavior forms and the fact that dd stares off into space when she isn't interested in the conversations they are having and just kind of checks out mentally. She is concerned that stimulant meds might increase anxiety, though, and that they might be less effective for inattentive ADD than they would for hyperactivity. Her thoughts are:

* we can just wait for her frontal lobes to mature and her to grow out of the attention wandering and in the mean time work with dd on working really hard to focus when she finds herself mentally disengaging;
* we can try non-stimulant meds (dd didn't seem too sold on the idea of meds after this conversation);
* we can see how the extra time on math tests works and, if it seems to be a real benefit, she can write a dx of ADD that we can use to get a 504 plan so she can officially have that accommodation written into a legal document that a school will have to follow;
* we can re-test IQ and hope that dd repeats the performance of 2.5 yrs ago where she was in the 99.9th+ and apply for DYS (although I don't know what they could do for her to make school work better).

She is going to take the EXPLORE so, if those scores actually come back at the DYS level, the idea of re-doing IQ would make more sense. I'm also inclined to go the route of the 504 if the extra time really seems to make a significant difference.

In regard to meds, I don't know at this point. Since dd isn't sold on it, I'm not sure if I am going to push her, though.

I'm reviving my old thread to ask for input regarding some upcoming school meetings I have. The counselor wrote a ltr stating that dd has ADD and Anxiety Disorder NOS. I will be meeting with the school counselor re a 504 and the GT teacher re testing in math.

Dd continues to overlook pieces of directions and has lowered her grade one full letter grade on every test I've seen due to this (loses enough points for not doing part of the directions to bring it down from a B to a C, for instance). The last one entailed a whole page of ?s that asked her to list the factors for a set of numbers and then state the GCF. She wrote down the correct GCF for all but one of the numbers but didn't list any of the other factors, losing a significant # of points.

She also hasn't tried any of the extra credit questions b/c she isn't sure she knows how to do them. She does the same with other questions where she isn't sure -- she's just left some of them blank or skips over them to come back to them and then forgets to go back and do them.

The study guides that come home for the tests also don't generally correlate very well with what is on the test, so it is hard to know what she should be studying for. There was one question on the last test where dd's written explanation was apparently wrong & the teacher made a note that she told them it would be on the test and told them what to write, but dd wrote something totally different. (Maybe not paying attn in class??)

What would you ask for in terms of testing accommodations or other? I really do believe that dd knows this material a lot better than her test scores indicate but I don't know if the teacher will agree with that or not.

From what I've seen, she isn't asking for help much on homework and she has an A+ on homework & classwork, but that only counts for 10% of her grade. The quizes are worth another 10% (her grades on those fluctuate wildly, but avg out to about a B) and tests (her worst score) count for 80%.

She ran around 98% correct consistently on EPGY when she was doing it w/out my help but, again, the EPGY guy reads all of the directions out loud to you and it often says "give it another try" when you make stupid simple errors so it isn't one wrong answer and your score goes down.