Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Need some more advice/suggestions..

Momtoone, I'd second the suggestion to ask about RTI - in our district this is required before an IEP eligibility evaluation process can be initiated.

It also will help to remember that this is going to be a journey, not a quick trip to Target where you purchase what you need to cure everything off the shelf and then it's all put in place and done You can start now by brainstorming a few things to suggest that the school try as RTI, see how they work, and in the meantime you're waiting for your private eval. When you get that eval completed, you'll have more data so you then tweak what is being done as appropriate, start the IEP process if appropriate, etc. It is frustrating not to have all the answers up front, but truthfully you'll never have really *all* the answers - because life and classroom expectations and everything changes as our kids grow, and we're also constantly learning more about them, collecting more data etc.


This happened with our public school experience - the parents had to know what to ask for. It's frustrating, but you can work past it - gather all the ideas you can from all the resources you have. We can brainstorm here; you can google specific items + accommodations, and you can network with fellow local parents. If you haven't tried to locate one, I'd try to see if there is a parent's advocates group in your area - look under the yellow pages listings at www.wrightslaw.org. You can ask an advocate for help in both what types of accommodations might work plus what accommodations are typical in your area. Another source of info is your state's SPED policy handbook (or your school districts if you can find it) - in many states/districts you can find the policy handbooks online, and they will contain lists of appropriate and/or typically-used accommodations for different types of student needs.


The thing is, school is a completely different type of place than the rest of life for most children. If your ds had a challenge with holding a crayon, for instance, you might not ever notice that at home because he might spend all of his time building legos and ignoring crayons so it's easy to think, he's a legos kid and not think anything twice about it. At school, he all of a sudden has to use a crayon and he doesn't know how or can't and that's frustrating - so he acts out or acts differently.

Another thing that can be different about school is the teacher. It is possible that part of what is an issue is due to how the teacher is handling it - especially if things seem to be fine one year and then suddenly different the next. I don't think that's the situation you're in, because you've had concerns with more than one teacher and over more than one year (I think? I might be remembering wrong)… and you've got a gut feeling that the teacher is trying to help - so in your case I'd suspect something more than simply difficult teacher-student fit.


I think that teachers and school staff many times suggest ADHD because it's something they *are* familiar with - it may be different in other areas, but in our schools my kids have always had at least 1 or more kids with ADHD diagnoses in each of their classes - and those are the kids I *know* about because I know their parents or because the kids told my kids - I suspect there are others). The other thing about ADHD and LDs and quite a few other challenges is that there can be overlapping symptoms - particularly in elementary when behavior is a form of communication for children. So a teacher who's had students with ADHD, is familiar with some of the symptoms, then sees the same symptoms in another student may extrapolate that the other student also has ADHD. We definitely had that happen to our ds - and we even had it happen with our dd and her pediatrician.

One thing to consider is - even though the diagnosis and root cause of symptoms such as organizational challenges may be different from ADHD, you might still be able to use some of the same accommodations/remediation techniques that teachers use for students with ADHD effectively. So one way to approach this with the school is to request RTI, if the school is trying to push for an eval for an IEP/OHI (adhd), request that they hold off, let them know you're seeking a private eval and request that the school put RTI in place now - then set a time in the future (preferably after you'll have the private eval info) to meet again, assess the effectiveness of RTI and re-look at whether or not you need to move forward with an IEP eligibility process.

I'm also on the fence re whether or not I'd let the school do an FBA at this point - I'd probably rather put RTI in place first, then consider the FBA as part of an IEP eligibility process *later*. The reason for this (just my perspective) is - you'll probably have some type of behavior survey included with your neuropsych eval, which will include both teachers and parents completing a behavior survey. If you have a teacher who is either really frustrated with your child or who has a mindset that your child may have ADHD it's *possible* the survey they fill out will come with a built-in bias. Please know, I'm not knocking teachers at all - most will do their best to be very fair, but it's also a chance that this will happen (it absolutely happened to us when we had our ds' initial neuropsych eval). It's jmo, but I would be more comfortable having a non-invested third party (the neuropsych) be the person who is attempting to interpret the survey than the school staff *if* that situation arose.

polarbear