Wow. and Wow again. I’m wildly excited and thoroughly terrified, but with you guys at my back, I feel like I can handle this. You are all amazing.
The suggested probing questions are right on target. I will also make a point of writing up a concise list beforehand of all the various flags and signals we’ve seen, so I can go back to them throughout the meeting - an excellent idea. I actually provided the psych with some notes pre-assessment - but they’re 6 pages long and need key points extracted to be useful for this.
A very helpful exercise, by the way, for anyone who is reading this thread because they’re considering assessment. I spent about two weeks adding bits and pieces to that note as new thoughts occurred to me, and DH provided his own independent written observations of what he saw when reading with DD (while I agreed with everything he said, it turned out that I had mentioned virtually none of his points). Before writing these notes, we thought we knew what we wanted to say, and what the problems were - but the patterns and whole picture that came together from this exercise was a revelation. It made us realize there were much broader issues than we had been recognizing.
The other important advice I have taken from reading many a thread here is PolarBear’s oft-repeated explanation of why it’s really important to understand the nature of the task required for each subtest, and to cluster and look for patterns there. I have seen from all of you that answers are rarely instant or easy, but that with perseverance we *can* make things better for our kids. And the path forward is often not what we think it will be.
I think I’m getting maudlin. I will now go back to my post-Thanksgiving dinner glass of wine up here in the Great White North, and stop thinking about any of this until Wednesday, except for remembering that I am so not alone. Thank you.
