The OT administered a movement test battery for children -2, but said that he is functional, even though he appears not to have done well.
Do you know the name of the movement battery test? (Just curious).
She actually states this "demonstrates sensory seeking behaviors that may inhibit his ability to access the curriculum". It goes onto state that he does not need OT. This has me puzzled. Shouldn't the school be providing services, especially when the OT says something like this in the report ?
Your school district most likely has a set guideline re how "low" a student needs to score on a set of specific tests or diagnostic measures to determine if they qualify for OT services (same goes for other types of services and remediation). It's really helpful to know what that guideline is - you can try to find out the information by either looking online for your school district's SPED policy handbook, or you could try calling and asking for it through your school district's central SPED administrative office, or you could ask a SPED staff rep at your school. If you can find a local parent advocate or disability assistance group they might also be able to get the info to you easily.
Regardless of who is testing him, he displays very poor handwriting, that is simply not getting better with more & more practice. He writes fat letters/numbers -- again, everyone references this, but says that services are not needed. I will question why, but I was wondering if this is normal (for them to see a problem, but decide it is not severe enough ?)
This was "normal" in our ds' elementary school - because the school didn't want to provide services for students who needed them. It's really important to keep focused on what your ds needs for *life* skills and be aware of what is a reasonable argument from your school vs a roadblock being put up by the school - and it's not always easy to tell the roadblock from reason. Two things helped us tremendously when our ds was in early elementary and early in the journey of understanding his 2nd e:
1) Complete and thorough testing. We weren't able to get this through our school district - you've actually gotten much more testing through your school district already than we were able to. The thing that I think was missing from your testing earlier this year was testing to determine if the low processing speed scores were due to fine motor vs visual processing issues. Has your ds had further testing? Were you able to get more details on his Beery test? (In an earlier post you had the average score but not the specific breakdown of fine motor vs visual integration scores). If the Beery shows a deficit in fine motor, there are additional tests that can help quantify whether or not your ds has fine-motor dysgraphia. If the Beery shows a visual processing issue, an eval by a developmental optometrist might be helpful. The key is - you know your ds has unusually large awkward handwriting. You know he had a large discrepancy in processing speed scores on the WISC (unless I've confused your ds with someone else's ds - and if I have, please just ignore me lol!). Those are both red flags for dysgraphia, whether or not anyone from the school is insisting everything is "fine".
Second thing that was enormously helpful to us - having that local parent advocate that I mentioned above (I think I mentioned it - if I didn't, ask :)). Our parent advocate was the person who was able to let us know - it was the school stalling on us when we were seeking an IEP, and ds' specific school had a history of not wanting to provide services. I could have read advice on online forums all day and night for years and never really had it sink in that our school was stonewalling us (even though other online folks were quick to point it out without having any local knowledge). Having that local resource with that type of information was incredibly helpful. Our parent advocate also gave us a lot of the terminology and assists with how to approach advocacy based on what we were facing from our specific school (and personalities at the school) which helped us advocate successfully. If there's any chance you have a similar resource near you, I'd look into it and ask these same questions there.
Best wishes,
polarbear
