My 6-year-olds school either seems to be utterly confused/clueless or just apathetic about getting the services he needs added to his IEP. Around his 4th birthday, he got an IEP but only for speech. Back then, when they evaluated him, the OT predicted that he would have big troubles with handwriting in school (because of the effort required to write neatly) but he would never qualify for OT because he doesn't have an educational disability. I thought this was ridiculous at the time but didn't really fight it. Fast forward a couple years and now he is in first grade. Last year in K, I took him to a neuropsych hoping to actually get a written diagnosis of DCD so that the school would stop fighting me about OT (and possibly PT) and actually do something. The neuropsych gave him a Grooved Pegboard Test and the result was abysmal. I believe well under the 1st percentile. Then he gave him the visual motor integration test (Beery?) and his score was about the 65th percentile. I asked how he could have such hugely discrepant scores on two different fine motor tests. The neuropsych got out his WISC IV scores and explained that his nonverbal IQ score is very high and therefore he will appear average on any motor test that has a mental component. His perceptual reasoning score was 99.7th percentile but he said that's an underestimate because it included block design which involves fine motor. DS uses his strong visual-spatial ability to compensate for his poor motor skills--so any physical test that has a mental component he will score average on. Any test that is purely physical, he will get poor results (like the pegboard). That made sense to me and explains DS's hugely discrepant scores on motor skills tests throughout history, depending on what test he is given. It is true, anything that involves mental or visual spatial ability, like copying shapes, he does fine on. But transferring coins from one hand to a tray or screwing pegs into a board quickly--forget it.
While I'm happy DS is using his high mental ability to compensate for his low physical ability, the school is using this against him. His handwriting is appropriate for his age (albeit on the messy end of things). DS seems to be able to write very well for about 5 min. and then he gets tired, it's too much work, and he gives up. Five min. is about the time it takes to do an observation or assessment. I'm wondering if anyone has dealt with this type of thing, or an ignorant school system that doesn't seem to know how to qualify kids for services. What disability category should we try to qualify him under? Physically Impaired? Other Health Impairments? DS was in an accident and had a traumatic brain injury last winter and his vision was severely affected. While he has 20/20 vision, his eyes do not track moving objects, really at all. For a while one eye was "stuck" and had no tracking ability at all (sixth nerve palsy) but this seems to have resolved. But tracking moving objects is still impaired. I believe his vision tracking was at least somewhat impaired before, due to the DCD. I'm not sure how much worse it is now. I am wondering how much this visual issue is affecting his ability to read (seeing all the print), and his motor skills. While they were poor before, they are worse now (and we have documentation of that--he was in private OT and PT last summer and they exited him because he was doing so well. Now he is back in).
Also, I'm not sure what to ask for in terms of the giftedness. The neuropsych wrote in the report that it should be addressed by the school. What would they do with a kid who can understand long division, but has motor skills like a preschooler. A kid who can read 4th grade level chapter books, but can't write a report about the book or draw a picture? I think grade or subject acceleration would be completely inappropriate, but that's all the district offers for K-2nd.
Also, if anyone has any ideas about his speech, that would help too. It is slow and dysfluent and he has an odd prosody and pitch. He sounds kind of like Mickey Mouse and has ever since he was a toddler, but the high pitch is gradually improving. The speech therapist doesn't seem to know how to deal with this. She knows how to deal with articulation and language issues, but not speech output issues like dysfluency, prosody and pitch. He was under the first percentile for articulation at age 3, but now it is average. So she wants to drop speech from his IEP and thinks pulling him out is a waste of time. The neuropsych recommended that he keep getting speech because he will be bullied if he keeps talking the way he does.
Anyone have input about any of these issues? Sorry this is so long.
