Hi
I'm looking for any input about possible writing issue with my DD5. I don't have a ND kid in the house and have no clue what it looks like. Here is a little background about her.
I had chance to talk more with her teacher yesterday and kind of confirmed what I am seeing at home. For starters, she is hiding most of her abilities at home, but does better at school with showing her abilities. She will tell me she can't read, but then comes down from her room talking about what Pluto Being a dwarf planet or some other space stuff. I'll ask her how she knows that and she responds, I was "looking" at a book. If I push and ask if she read it, than the answer is I can't read. She does the same thing with math. If you put a work sheet in front of her, the answer is this is to hard or I need a number line to do this. If you ask her how many 2s are in 14 she answers immediately 7. She can do a lot of math and reading but doesn't acknowledge her ability to do so. She is better at school. I think she is more concern at school about how she looks to her teacher and peers. She does some hiding at school but when they do reading and math assessments she is in the 90s for percentile. I think she really likes pleasing her teacher.
Social skills are over the top. She is a peer mentor to the most disabled kids in the school. She can socially deal with anything with compassion and patiences.
The writing goes like this. She uses grotto pencil grips because she can't hold the pencil correctly to save her life. She still arches her wrist even with the grips. She can't seem to get her hand down. The letters are inconsistent in size and go back and forth between upper and lower case within words. She knows the difference between upper and lower but mixes them anyway. She reverses her p,q,b,d,g with a random occurrence. Her coloring and drawing is fairly bad. She complains to hurt to do it. She has a vision of what her stuff will look like but can't put it on paper. At home, she doesn't write one line before she complains of pain in her hand. On the other hand, She has written 1 page to 2 page long journey entries that have all the structure of sentences, paragraphs, correct usage of words. They will be well written and descriptive and the spelling is phonetically correct, eg skool for school. She will occasionally write the well developed entries but most of the time she complains her hand hurts. The teacher thought earlier in the year it maybe fine motor skills. She doesn't feel that way anymore and I don't either. She doesn't really display other weakness with fine motor. She plays with Legos and builds a lot. She can zip her own coat. She can't tied her shoes but I can't say we've really tried yet. She rides her bike with training wheels but she just got it late fall and hasn't gotten enough time on it to pull the wheels yet. She plays soccer and seems to be able to run and follow the ball easily yet gets tired very fast. She plays baseball and can catch the ball fairly well. She does seem to tire out quickly in all sports activities but seems to have good motor skills when she can keep up. The teacher said she believes possibly visual or processing issues. She is going to have the OT look ( off the record) in class. We will consider having the school evaluation in the fall but with school wrapping up soon it's unlikely to get done before it ends. The teacher wants her placement next year to be based on her academic abilities. The principal at this school tends to place the IEP kids out of the advance classes because of the IEP. Thankfully, she is only there until 2nd grade. We don't want to have her placement lower for next year. My older son was place with the more advanced teacher for 1st grade and she was a saint with his difficulties. I'm confident she would be with DD as well. I do want to start outside evaluations and possible OT if she needs it. Any suggestions on where to start? I have no experience with this. I have a dyslexic DS but this looks different. She has the structure in her writing that seems very advanced for her age. For vision evaluations, what kind of ophthalmologist would I look for? Do I start there or do I do a neuro evaluation first? I don't have cognitive test yet. I was going to wait until she was 6 and change but now I'm think of slipping a WPPSI in there sooner rather than later.
Thanks in advance for any input.
Jtooit
