We are at the end of my son's first week in kindergarten and I've already been summoned to a meeting with the teachers. I would appreciate some advice in following up with them.

The teachers (there are two because he's at a private school) sent out a questionnaire before school started and we let them know that he was introverted and gifted with slower processing speed and that he preferred to observe initially and doesn't do well in noisy/chaotic situations. The teachers followed up two days ago asking if we had any insight/advice about encouraging our son to participate more in group activities. They suggested we talk in person so I met with them today. I felt the teachers were open and welcome additional ideas or feedback but I don't know what to tell them. I was hoping to get some feedback here, especially if your child was similar in kindergarten.

Here is what the teachers described to us. First, the kids were asked to draw their "hopes and dreams for kindergarten." All the other kids drew lovely, colorful pictures that had captions like "make friends" or "have fun" on them. My son's first attempt was two or three black lines on a piece of paper. The teachers pulled him aside during a rest period to work with him one on one and said they saw that he was "brilliant." He drew a machine and told them his detailed plans for a salt harvester that he intends to build this year. It included a description of the components and the various uses of the machine. He didn't write this out (he hates to draw and write) but the teachers wrote his words under his picture. They posted the pieces outside the classroom and said all the teachers and staff had come by to comment on my son's piece because it was so unusual. The teachers acknowledged that my son is bright and creative but weren't sure how to encourage him to produce work with the group.

I asked my son about this and he said he couldn't think anything up initially and then he started and messed up and got frustrated and gave up. I will note that he is a perfectionist and that he doesn't enjoy writing or drawing.

The teachers told us about another experience with a similar project. The kids walked around their new school, finding shapes. Then they came back and drew the shapes they saw. The other kids all covered their paper with lots of nice, neat little shapes. My son drew a green scribble. I asked him about this and he said he wanted to draw a shape nobody else was doing and he tried to create a "really complex, unusual four-sided shape and I messed it up so I scribbled it out." I explained that the object wasn't to draw something nobody else had thought of, but rather to show that he knows his shapes and can reproduce them. He didn't realize this. My husband finds this funny and said he was the same as a child.

Here is what I think is going on: my son has some anxiety and that he is still settling in. He is an introvert and takes a while to become comfortable in a new setting. He is going from four hours a day in preschool to an eight hour day at a new school. He hasn't been eating much and comes home tired and starving. (I told his teachers he hadn't been eating so they checked today and he ate more and was much more cooperative). I also think he doesn't understand exactly what the expectations are. He came from a Reggio preschool that is very play based and the children never did crafts where they were expected to produce a certain kind of art. They were allowed total freedom to express themselves (or not) with art materials. I think my son hasn't been in a situation where he is expected to produce a specific thing and that once he learns those expectations he will do better. I told my son that he doesn't have to draw well or make a perfect triangle, but we do expect him to participate and try and that scribbling isn't really acceptable.

Was this the right approach? Am I missing something? I'm writing to see if anything here sounds familiar or if you have any ideas about what might encourage my son to cooperate/participate better. Anecdotes and encouragement welcome, too! Thank you!

This is all sounds really familiar (as in eerily). I think you are on track about his not understanding the expectations. He is thinking of these assignments in terms of his own thought processes and preferences.

It might be helpful to ask teachers to "check for understanding," but in a little more complex way: they should ask him explicitly to state what the assignment is (in his mind), not just ask "do you understand?" or if he understands the concepts being taught.

He's making a lot of mental leaps between instruction and product. He needs help understanding the purpose of the assignment, and probably very direct instruction.

It's good this is happening now, and that teachers are recognizing it (and his giftedness), because it sounds like they are open to your ideas and suggestions.

The "hopes and dreams" type assignments are really difficult for kids who don't speak that language. I love that he hopes and dreams to build a salt harvester but that is most likely not the sort of thing the teacher has in mind... it sounds like "what the teacher has in mind" is not your DS' default mode.

Basically, the teacher probably needs to turn her paradigm upside down for your DS--the areas where more typical students need extra help (academic areas) will be easy for your DS, and the things that more typical students intuit (social expectations, doing "fun" introspective type assignments), will require more support.

It sounds like he doesn't understand what's expected for some of the assignments so I would ask if they can have a short one-on-one before he gets started to make sure he understands, and see if he has a plan for what he's going to do. Then check back with him as he's working to encourage/assist as needed. They did that with the salt harvester, but if there is a plan put into place ahead of time, that will avoid a lot of frustration.

ITA. In fact, that's not an unusual approach in kindergarten for a lot of kids

FWIW, getting called in as a parent for what you describe above, during the first week of kindergarten... seems... well, surprising. OTOH, and please don't extrapolate that this means I think something's up that you need to worry about but... the things you describe do sound similar to things we've experienced with our ds who has challenges. In kindergarten, those challenges looked like other things - not joining in, not trying, not understanding the directions, moving slow, etc. I can't speak directly to what you've seen (other than to say my ds is in high school now and seems to have one of those "hopes and dreams" types of assignments in at least one class each year and he *still* doesn't complete it in the way teachers expect), however, I think (and I may be remembering this incorrectly so please forgive me and ignore me if I am :))... but I think I remember your ds having an uneven profile when tested on the WPPSI? If he did, there's an outside chance that what's going on in class may be related to whatever caused that uneven profile in testing, and it may be something you want to pay attention to. So if it was me, I'd keep a journal of what difficulties are occurring in classwork, details about when they happen etc, and just watch to see if a pattern emerges. As the parent of a child who *does* have a challenge that's one thing I wish I had done - my ds had uneven scores on his first IQ testing that was done at 5 for entry into a gifted program as well as behavioral clues in his K-2 classrooms, but teachers and even myself and my dh thought it was all related to personality/etc simply because he was so obviously intelligent when he talked to us. The result of that lack of realizing and paying attention to the clues was he wasn't diagnosed until late 2nd grade, and by the time he was diagnosed his anxiety over school was sky-high due to struggling with a disability that he didn't understand.

Hope that makes sense, I only mention it because I think you had mentioned an issue with discrepancy in test scores earlier - and that might be simply related to age at testing, but it might also be a red flag that somethings up. If you see red flags in the classroom too, the two pieces of evidence taken together might be meaningful.

Best wishes,

polarbear

These responses are very helpful. Thank you.

@Polarbear: You are right, my son may have an uneven profile and that's precisely why I posted here. My son is so different from any other child I know and I find it difficult to figure out if his various eccentricities are part of being gifted or a sign that he's struggling with something else. This board is so helpful for trying to figure out what looks like normal for kids like ours.

FWIW, my son's WPPSI scores were uneven. The psychologist who administered the exam (for entry into a gifted school) said that my son refused to cooperate with parts of the test, refused to guess and acted silly (blinking excessively and talking in a high pitched voice). She wasn't particularly concerned about the gap in scores but she was concerned about the behavior. She told me that if we didn't see that behavior at school or in everyday life, we should just assume he was anxious and that the scores may not be accurate. A psychologist who has been working with my son for over a year on social skills thinks the test wasn't accurate and that my son was anxious. My son confirmed that he was scared and that the tester seemed angry when he didn't know answers so he stopped cooperating and focused on "cheering her up." I am aware that this anxiety and lack of ability to read the tester and situation may be a sign of some challenge. Or it could be related to the fact that he was a few months shy of five and wasn't ready to sit down and take a test.

I will keep a journal and see if there is a pattern so we can be proactive if there does seem to be a problem. My son spends time with a psychologist every week for social skills. She knows him and doesn't see any cause for concern (she has ruled autism, for example) but she has cautioned that evidence of many learning disabilities only emerge once a child starts school. I imagine it's too early to tell but IF there is some other challenge we aren't aware of, does anything here provide a clue?

Curious--how did she reach the "rule-out" conclusion? Why is he specifically working on social skills?

There are a lot of different kinds of learning challenges that can kind of overlap and be hard to identify just through informal observation--I've learned that here. Giftedness can really mask some underlying deficits. The remark where your DS thought the tester was angry and decided to cheer her up caught my attention. My verbally gifted 2E DS would do the same thing, exactly.

I would want formal diagnostic testing. The NP who worked with my DS also tested my friends' two 2E boys. Her testing really teased out some important diagnostic information for all three of our kids--all gifted, all with challenges that are different in nature and require different interventions. It's really important information to know about your child. I sure wish I'd "known then what I know now" in regard to my DS.

Agree with Eco here. Many psychologists have never seen a child who is gifted+autistic, and they may wrongly assess a child's verbal strength as meaning the child cannot have autism.

I'd want a full evaluation by a neuropsychologist.

Ideally one with experience in autism. A highly-recommended neuropsych around here missed the autism in both of my children when she tested them, and an autism specialist saw it almost immediately. I don't think that was because the autism specialist sees it in everyone; he just had a lot more experience in the weird and wonderful ways it can present.

The psychologist my son works with specializes in autism and giftedness (along with anxiety disorders and adhd). She did her dissertation on the topic and spent years working in an autism assessment clinic. Her practice focuses on working on social skills with kids who have ASD and/or who are gifted. So I trust that she has the right experience. She has also spent a lot of time with my son in various settings. She is confident it's not autism and has said that doing a full evaluation would be a waste of our time and money.

My son is getting help with social skills because his preschool said he could use some support. When he turned four his preschool teachers said that while he does fine one-on-one, he didn't play with the whole group at school. He is also sensitive to noise. They said he could use some extra help with social skills before starting kindergarten. We went to the psychologist and after evaluating my son and observing him at school, she concluded that he was just just "exceptionally bright" and that he wasn't connecting with the kids at school because he didn't have any peers and was talking about physics and engineering concepts that were over the kids' (and teachers') heads. He was also acting out in the classroom because he was bored. The psychologist recommended sending him to a gifted school and predicted that he would do fine socially if he was with other gifted kids. Since then he has met a couple of other gifted kids (through the group) and he has developed a strong connection with them. The psychologist feels that my son doesn't need the social skills support any longer but that we should continue through the first quarter of school to provide him with any needed support during the transition.

That said, my son is quirky and I often think we are missing something. He's such a unique kid and most people he meets are instantly aware of that and they often comment on it. After particularly difficult weeks, I have often met with the psychologist and asked if she's SURE he doesn't have ASD and she's pretty confident. She has said that he may have some other kind of learning disability that will become apparent once he starts school but she doesn't see signs of anything yet.

I'm not sure why, exactly she has ruled out ASD. From our last conversation about it (I bring it up every six months or so, after having a hard week), I seem to recall that she was considering the fact that my son is flexible and tends to like new experiences; that he doesn't have narrow interests; that he is interested in social relationships, is empathic (perhaps excessively so), is good at understanding others' perspectives and shows pro-social behavior, even if he is socially awkward.

If you were me, would you still seek a second opinion? Or would you just wait and see how school goes?

FWIW, the psychologist who did the IQ testing was annoyed with my son because he kept kicking her pant leg during the test (he often swings his leg and kicks the table so I've experienced this before). He picked up on this and thought she was angry because he didn't know an answer to the test. I know this because when we talked, months after the test, she made it clear that she was still annoyed by the memory of that test.

Can I just say your son is so lucky to have you. He seems like a delightfully quirky kid and you are doing your best to understand his needs and help his teachers understand them as well. I love your approach.

For another perspective: the neuropsychologist who evaluated my son has a very similar background. She did not interact with him outside of the testing situation, so didn't have the sorts of observations, over time, you describe here.

After testing, she told me that an ASD diagnosis for him was not obvious in his case and she needed to look at all of the data she'd collected to determine exactly what was going on with him.

Her testing included:
Developmental interview with me
Open ended questions to DS' teachers, where they described strengths and areas of concern.
WISC-V
BRIEF (executive function)
ABAS-2 (behavioral)
BASC-2 (behavioral)
MASC (anxiety)
CDI (depression)
ADOS (autism spectrum)

In reading her report, I'd say the most important piece of this diagnostic puzzle was the ADOS, and the other data supported the conclusion.

I'm no expert by any means, and am sharing in hopes it's helpful to you in figuring out what to do to help your DS. I think the neurological angle is really important and the formal testing helps to tease out patterns to aid in understanding.

When my DS was younger, he had a psychological evaluation that in retrospect describes a lot of ASD behaviors, but through a different lens. In that evaluation, the diagnosis was generalized anxiety. Later, a neurologist diagnosed ADHD (but with limited data--rating scales only). It would have been very helpful to have the neuropsychological testing much earlier. I feel like all these years, I've been like the blind men and the elephant: having parts of understanding but without a complete, holistic understanding.

I think there are myriad reasons your DS could be having difficulties in the areas you describe and solid data could help you understand and support him better. So, in answer to your question about a second opinion: yes, I would seek one. It may be a long time before you have everything you need to understand, but since the kindergarten teacher is concerned already--I'd want to pursue more information.

I too would seek a second opinion. It sounds to me that you have lingering questions and I think it's better to have answers than not.

Maybe the teachers could try being more direct with your son? Like in the case of the shape hunting and drawing. If they had just let him know that they wanted to see if he could draw shapes that he had seen, he probably would have done it.

When my dd was that age I remember that the first thing I had to do when picking her up from school was to hand her some protein. Then I could ask her about her day in 5 or 10 minutes.

I don't have much advice but I can definitely relate. We have JK and SK here and in both years DS drove the teachers nuts. DS is now 9 and we've been through two rounds of testing. Both times he has had very low PSI & WMI and very high high VCI & PRI. The PSI and WMI is mostly what drove the teachers crazy - he was soooooooo slow and giving him a 5 step set of instructions usually resulted in him doing nothing because he didn't know where to start. He's eventually been diagnosed with an LD in written expression (not saying that is what you're dealing with but just mentioning it as a possibility). Almost every teacher he's had has completely zoned in on his LD and hardly noticed the gifted side - it's been fun. Early elementary teachers (IME) are all about making round pegs for the round holes of the system.

One of my favorite memories of SK resulted from a similar "hopes and dreams for kindergarten" exercise. The hall was filled with nice pictures of kids holding hands and cute captions like "make friends".
DS's was this -

1000000
00000000
000000
000000000
weekends
0 weekdays

and then in writing the teacher had filled in "infinity weekends, no weekdays". DS was really ticked that the teacher didn't understand the symbol for infinity so he had to write all of the 0's instead. Fun times!

I just came in to grab a piece of advice, but I will stay for this one!

Obviously all our kids are different even though they may show some of the same traits. You know your child best.

We have struggled for 4 years (ours turned 8 last week), trying to figure out what is up and we are just now getting to the diagnosis she needs in school, which is "disorder of written expression." It took us 4 years to get here, and that is despite the fact that my husband has dysgraphia himself! Nobody ever pointed to that before because she can sometimes write neatly. But, honestly, first graders don't have much to write--and they don't have to think and write much at the same time. Her writing looks like a lower than average boy's writing. What it looks like is not the problem.

She sounds a lot like yours too--and absolutely in no way, shape or form has autism, although she does have share some characteristics with autistic children. They are also characteristics of anxiety, embarrassment, loneliness and shame.

Our first neuropsych (at 4) did not catch the problems of DCD and dysgraphia. In fact, he told us her IQ would probably go down. We believed him. He did some fine motor tests (pegboard) that she did terribly on and others (Beery) that she did okay on. Whenever her writing is tested by OTs, she does fine on everything but copying a block pattern. We continued taking her to specialists that weren't that helpful. Finally DCD was diagnosed by an OT (which was a no brainer for us). Dysgrapha or diagnosis of written expression was never a concern of anyone's (except ours).

A couple of months ago (at almost age 8) we took her to a psychologist who specializes in gifted kids, who showed me the serious difference between her processing speed/coding score and other elements of her IQ. Now that the numbers are there, people can see the problem--even though her writing still just looks like bottom of the class (but acceptable) writing.

I'm not saying that your child has DCD or dysgraphia. But I do wonder if a second opinion so quickly will give you the information you need. Sometimes I do think you need a wait--and if your gut tells you it is something other than autism, maybe it is. We discussed the possibility of autism (dr. said no) and the even more possible NVLD (dr. said possibility), but neither ever rang true to me, mainly because she is such an incredibly flexible thinker. What rang true to me was "motor planning or executive function, but she's got something." Dysgraphia also rang true to me, even though she doesn't have a lot of the symptoms.

The only other thing I would say, is that I would be wary of saying what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. My daughter is now in 2nd, and she still draws those squares while everyone else makes beautiful, labeled pictures. Drawing is not something she does well, and we are figuring out how to help her cope with it. But she has been told for many years by many people that it is not acceptable not to try--and because the whole time she feels like she has been trying, she doesn't really understand what trying means. To her it means "I will succeed." So she will tell us she will TRY to try. She's become very ashamed of writing and drawing over the years because the adults don't think she's trying and she's learned that her trying isn't really trying because it's not good enough for them. Does that make sense?

Anyway, this is not to make any predictions about your child. This has just been our journey.

It sounds like your teachers care a lot. That's great! I am finding that most teachers do not understand the dysgraphia/really verbally bright kid combination--even the ones who care. But honestly, I don't think WE even truly understand what it is like to be her, and we've been living with it ourselves for decades!

Thanks for all of the collective wisdom! I can't tell you how much this support means to me- and helps.

I have to say that while I think SOMETHING is going on, my gut says that it isn't ASD. First, the descriptions don't ring true to me. It's also hard for me to believe that after spending approximately 90+ hours with my child in a variety of settings (doing evaluations, developmental interviews, observing at school, interviewing teachers, observing with peers and even going to cafes and doing social activities) that my son's psychologist would miss clues if it were ASD. During our first evaluation, she did say that she thought that, if anything, Dyspraxia might be something to explore further but she said it would be best to see how things go at school and to gather more information. She specifically mentioned his pronunciation (he still doesn't say the "r") and that he often pauses for a while before responding, like he's struggling to gather his words. He doesn't have this issue when he initiates communication. Reading about Dyspraxia and dysgraphia, it sounds much more like my son and I think that's heading in the right direction.

I also suspect that my son could have some visual processing issues. After the psych who did the IQ testing recommended it, we had his eyes checked by an opthamologist and his eyesight was fine BUT I've noticed several weird things about my son. First, he is TERRIBLE at jigsaw puzzles even though his visual spatial skills are very strong. For example, even at three he could do the advanced Lego Technic sets on his own. He has an unusual way of doing them- he skips ahead three pages at a time, memorizes the image and then builds what he saw. He is also great at taking machines apart and figuring out how to reassemble them. But he struggles with jigsaw puzzles that are rated for five year olds (he is 5.5). He randomly tries to put pieces together and doesn't seem to intuitively understand that the picture must make sense (for example, he'll try to stick the arm to the head of a person).

His reading ability also isn't as good as I would expect for somebody with such a high VCI: he has been spelling words for over a year but still cannot read much beyond short three and four letter words; he knows words if I spell them out loud but has a hard time if they are written; has an amazing memory but doesn't recognize a sight word even if he saw it (and sounded it out laboriously) in the sentence before; he can read a large word on a computer screen but has a hard time if the same word is in a line of text in a book.

Finally, he is very cautious (but not clumsy), especially when climbing or walking over uneven surfaces. He was a late crawler and walker. He avoids games where lots of kids are running around; it seems to make him nervous. He was ambidextrous until four and didn't develop a proper pencil grasp until we encouraged him to start using one had for writing/eating/playing guitar. His drawing is poor and mostly consists of scribbles. His handwriting is neat but slow and laborious and he mostly resists doing it. He also has poor eye contact.

I am thinking we should go ahead and see a developmental opthamologist and maybe wait a few weeks until my son settles in and gather more information to see if we should do further testing for dysgraphia and/or dyspraxia. Is it too early to test for this? Does this fuller picture sound like any of your children?

I would want to find out what that "something" is. It could be developmental but meanwhile, if his "differences" are negatively affecting him at school, I think it's better to go for an evaluation.

Lepa,

There are a lot of overlapping symptoms between dyspraxia and ASD (my ds is dyspraxic and dysgraphic). Our neuropsych has a chart that shows symptoms for ASD, Dyspraxia, and ADHD and outlines which symptoms are unique to each as well as which overlap - and there is a large overlap among all three. FWIW, there are two types of dysgraphia too - one is related to fine motor, one is related to challenges with visual processing. I don't know about visual issues and dyspraxia, but speech issues can occur with dyspraxia.


This sounds very much like my dyspraxic ds. Even though he did eventually choose a hand preference, according to his neuropsychologist he's still ambidextrous. I used to think of ambidextrous as something that was really awesome meaning a person could write neatly with both hands - for ds it's the opposite - he is considered ambidextrous because he has a difficult time with motor planning no matter which hand he uses.

polarbear

Your son doesn't sound that different from my DS16 at that age. But things were rocky at times and when problems occurred I would wonder is he Aspi? Is is ASD? But he never seems to meet enough criteria. Over the years he has seen several psychologist and none of them has diagnosed him with ASD nor ADHD, although both were always discussed. When he was a preschooler/early elementary is was obvious he was gifted and his idiosyncrasies were often passed off as those of a gifted kid. The necropsy who evaluated him last summer (when he was 15) did say in his report that he "shares characteristics with ASD" and that some techniques to work with high functioning ASD teens would be appropriate for him. On the other hand the gifted psychologist that works with him tells me he is just introverted gifted teen and the psychologists who do the testing are LOOKING for labels and not that experienced with gifted kids. My son has anxiety and is introverted and many of his social problem have more to do with these issues.

That said my DS has had social problems at times and other ages did fine. He had a 'best friend' in 3rd & 4th that unfortunately had to move away.. He has been in therapy the last year and I did put him in a social skills class in junior high when he was having the most problems. Early puberty/junior high which is bad for most kids was terrible for him. But when the High School pushed a social skills group, DS would have nothing to do with it. He has really blossomed the past year without it and I attribute some of that to maturity and effort on his part. (But that doesn't mean he will be winning any popularity contests at school.) Through trial and error I have figured out social situations that do work for him. Organized and fairly rigid social structures like the high school band where his role is obvious, or much small 6-8 person groups where most of the kids are like him and share his interests.

Overall I would say even if he isn't ASD there is no reason not to take the social skills help as long as it seems to be working and he is not adverse to it. But also that I see nothing wrong with a kid who has only a few close friends. The question is more how happy your child is about it. How do you feel about the diagnosis? How would a diagnosis help at this time? (testing costs money) If you are uncomfortable with the diagnosis & treatment then get a second opinion. Otherwise it can probably wait. I missed the details of the fist week K challenges are but be reassured that most 5 year olds find this a rough transition for one reason or another.

P.S. I missed your first post. Reading that DS is even MORE like you son that I first though. Any assignment to THIS day where DS has to talk about his favorite, or take about his feeling he will completely shut down. I'll post a more about this later when I have more time.

Response to your original post.

As I said about this sound exactly like my DS16. High anxiety upon changing schools when he was young. Introvert, gifted, perfectionist (in the way that he'd rather do nothing than turn in work that isn't perfect), and can't/won't answer questions like "what is your favorite", what are your "hopes and dreams". We had a terrible time when DS was in 7th grade health and his teacher wanted to play unprofessional psychologist. He absolutely refused to write a journal about personal questions and turn it in to the teacher everyday. (I managed to get him moved out of a class with that teacher.) And his first day of gifted class in 4th grade when he wrote two sentences when asked to "tell the teacher about himself" while the other students wrote pages.

What we put in DS's 504 last year that seemed to help for the "what is your favorite type question" was getting requiring the teachers to re-frame prompts/questions like this for him. Changing prompts like "hopes and dreams for kindergarten" to something a bit more pragmatic like "draw me 3 things you want to learn in kindergarten this year". I have been working for years on getting DS to be able to re-fame these types of questions himself. That when a teacher asks for his favorite he doesn't need to take this word literally. His teacher doesn't really care if his favorite animal is a dog, cat, pig or bat they just want him to draw an animal of his choosing. The words "favorite" or similar in a prompt has been quite an issue for us over the years. Some teachers seem to LOVE the word and don't seem to understand how much this word gets in the way for DS.

I also sounds like some of your DS problems probably do have to do with all the changes. My son has always gotten high anxiety around big changes like this and it's manifested in different ways at different ages. If this is a case you need to give him a few weeks for things to settle down. I hope things are getting better. I don't mean to scare you by saying that we are still working on these things with my son, but I didn't really realize how much of an issue they were with him till he was older and would write nothing to a writing prompt.

Good Luck

This is the part that sounds like my child (DCD/Dyspraxia), except she is clumsy. Does he have a proper pencil grasp now? Both my husband and my daughter hold their pencil tightly in their fist, and it is the fist that is doing the writing--the hand isn't loose. My husband calls himself ambimaldexterous and we thought my daughter was left handed until she started writing. Poor eye contact has been a big problem because teachers think she isn't paying attention. Like someone else said, a lot of these issues have overlapping characteristics. I think the reason the child does the behavior is more important than the behavior itself. For mine, eye contact is difficult because the sensory experience is too intense. She now looks at people in the chin, and that helps. But not looking people in the eyes has caused her a lot of stress.

When I look back over the last four years, I really don't think we could have figured things out any faster than we did and I don't know how much it would have helped. Maybe a little, but I still think she would have struggled. The writing is only now getting challenging enough for her to have real problems

the things I wish I did differently would be: 1) not pay any attention to the behavior charts at all. In fact, I probably would have tried to get her off them. All her bad "choices" are related to physical issues she can't control, 2) not get as frustrated when she drops and spills and falls and gets everything messy, 3) try to get writing and drawing assignments ahead of time so she could plan them out at home in advance.

I'm going to sound like the cheerleader for visual processing today, but a lot of this list could have a vision component as well. In your description, he sounds like he functions much better any time he can find a way to by-pass visual input and hold the picture in his head instead. And being cautious in movement, and nervous around running kids might possibly suggest he can't keep track of uneven ground/ moving kids well enough to feel safe. It's great that you are heading for the ophthalmologist - just make sure you have one that actually looks at visual processing issues like convergence and accommodation - most don't - and not just physical vision issues.

I don't have anything really useful to add--just wanted to say that I have a child who is kind of ASD-ish, but also not, who confuses us, too. She is now seeing yet another professional who does not think she is ASD (we also filled out some screeners which apparently did not indicate it, but we did not do a full neuropsych exam). However, she is certainly wired funny in odd ways that confuse us, teachers, and professionals. At this point, I am unsure if we will ever get an accurate dx (other than anxiety, which is quite clear) so we are working more on finding tools. We find these may come from tools used by professionals working with children with ASD, ADHD, ODD, anxiety, or actually OCD. I would note, however, that academic problems are not a feature for DD. She is just unusual and emotionally/behaviorally complex.

I wanted to check in with a mini update because you have all been so supportive. My son's teachers wrote to me this morning and said that he seems to have settled in and is doing well. He's eating at school, which apparently made a huge difference. He is engaged and participating and seems happy. He was thrilled when the teachers let him give a mini lecture on geology to the class as part of his summer show and share (he brought pyrite). He was especially proud to learn his first few words in Spanish. My husband noted that was the first academic thing he's ever learned in an educational setting, which is more than we had expected for kindergarten.

This isn't to say that we won't have our challenges in the coming weeks. But I'm pleased that he seems to have settled in for now.

We will follow up on the potential vision issues but for other issues I'm going to sit tight and continue to gather information.