Hi all. Just an update. I'll try to make it brief! So, I met with the school psych. really liked her! Basically, in a nutshell, she agrees with me... Something is there in the testing and in his executive functioning it presents like attention BUT he really doesn't seem to have attention issues per se - it seems more of a problem with memory and mental manipulation - the way he attempts to remember is inefficient, his working memory seems stressed, faulty, etc. His long term memory his great... visual clues help his working memory immensely. It's not with the encoding; it's with the retrieval, etc... Her gut feeling *at this point* is also that it is not necessarily adhd/adhd inattentive. BUT something is getting in the way... She said she sees his giftedness, too. She was really impressed with some of his testing, the connections he makes, etc. There was one question that involved inference that she said no other first grader she has tested has gotten. But again, something is in the way in terms of working memory and processing/fluency. She really seemed to see what I see! She also sees that big gaps so that even though in handwriting spelling ect - he is scoring "average" she realizes that there is dysgraphia there and she is going to get him as much help for both his working memory and dysgraphia at the school as possible through his iep (she mentioned something to the effect of this "may make her unpopular but she's not at the school to win popularity contests with the teachers, she's there to help students" I am not sure what that statement meant really ???). She said teacher placement is extremely important and they will be very careful about that because DS needs a teacher who can understand both his high intellect and his struggles/disabilities. We talked about LearningRx/Cogmed type programs and what I could do to help privately in terms of that stuff and she recommended that I stop taking him to where I am getting private OT and take him to this place
http://www.atotalapproach.com/ for therapy... She said she has seen students make much better strides at this place, etc. Well, it just so happened I had looked into that place and had already made an appointment with the director there to talk about DS later the same afternoon! After the interview there, the owner/director told me that based on my description and a cursory glance at his testing and evals she says my DS is a classic case of "sensory processing disorder" in the mild-moderate range. She was very optimistic that they could help with their therapies. He needs to go in for a eval there just to do the testing that they do and hasn't yet been done on him and then they will look at all of the testing etc. and recommend therapy for it ... maybe balametrics. The school psych spoke highly for their reading program there also - she said that is the only place so far that she can say she has seen students really make very good progress and that she holds the owner of the place is high-esteem professionally. So, I am very optimistic. Hopefully, this is the thing that will really help DS.
I still plan on seeing a neuropsych for thoughts too.
Does anyone know anything about this "sensory processing disorder" condition? Thanks! I have heard about it here and there but never really gave it much thought. The "A Total Approach" lady said there is no need for him to live like he is and continue like this till he grows out of some it - she said that we can do so much for these type of kids these days. I'd like to hear anyone's experience with this stuff!
