FWIW, I'm replying to the OP and not replying to any of the post-OP discussion re ADHD and whether or not it's a valid diagnosis - I believe it's a valid diagnosis
I know that my daughter has a very short attention span and many other symptoms of ADD/ADHD, but it is still shocking for me to hear that directly from the teacher.[/Eyl]
I'd just like to add a bit of empathetic understanding here - as the mom of two children who are 2e, I remember all too well what it felt like when a teacher first noted that things were difficult for my children. It's easy when our children are little, before they go to Kindergarten, to work around and past challenges at home, particularly when our kids are obviously intellectually bright, we tend to focus on that, focus on how cute they are etc, and don't see the challenges that may become front and center once they are having to function in a classroom.
[quote=Eyl]The teacher also says in the report that my daughter “also needs a great deal of teacher support when it comes to her handwriting.”
I mentioned above that I believe in ADHD as a diagnosis. I also believe, and have experienced, that the symptoms typical of ADHD can occur due to other diagnoses. When we see something that doesn't make sense, we may naturally categorize it in with what we have personal experience with, and teachers have most likely seen children in their classroom dealing with ADHD. It's possible that the behaviors the teachers are seeing in class aren't due to ADHD at all, but to some other issue that results in similar behaviors and symptoms. I'm not mentioning this to discount the possibility that it might be ADHD, but because this has happened to two of my children.
On the other hand, my daughter does have many symptoms of ADD/ADHD and Tourette Syndrome. If I were the one filling in the Vanderbilt or SNAP-IV Assessment Scales forms, she certainly will be diagnosed with ADD/ADHD.
I am not a professional psychiatrist, so take my advice here with a grain of salt - but fwiw, I thought that to diagnosis ADHD behavior scale forms are given to teachers and parents for a reason - to see if the behaviors are similar between home and school. That's what helps tease out if ADHD is a possibility or if the environment is somehow resulting in what looks like ADHD - ADHD wouldn't be diagnosed based one only a parents' input.
This also points out that we, as parents, are subject to the same limitations as teachers - we can only compare what we see to what we know. A comprehensive eval, otoh, doesn't start with a diagnosis and move to prove it, instead it starts by looking globally at how the child is functioning, and narrows down toward a diagnosis.
And she also couldn’t pass some causal ADD/ADHD tests like finger tapping.
Finger-tapping isn't *only* an ADHD test, it's a test that is routinely used in diagnosing fine motor dysgraphia. You've mentioned challenges with writing - you might want to google dysgraphia symptoms and see if anything sounds familiar re your dd. I mention this because one of my 2e kids is dysgraphic, and the way we discovered his dysgraphia diagnosis was by landing in a neuropsych evaluation after 6 months of total frustration in a classroom where his behaviors had his teacher (2nd grade) convinced he had ADHD.
The private school my daughter is attending is a competitive one and is hard to get in. If it is a public school it probably would be better for me to get my daughter diagnosed and to advocate for her to get IEP or 504.
You can still access public school sources for evaluation and some services when a child is enrolled in private school - you can ask your school district for an evaluation, and if you can't find the info you need to do this, it would be worth looking for a local parent advocate group to help you determine what you can/can't do in your area and who you need to be in touch with. If you're looking for a parent advocate group, try the yellow pages listing at wrightslaw.org
But I’m afraid that the private school may not be willing to divert resources for her and may simply ask us to transfer to public school.
They might, or they might not. It's more likely that the school will either be willing to accommodate her challenges or not accommodate them - regardless of diagnosis. Avoiding a diagnosis because you're worried about how the school you love will react is not going to help your dd in the long run. There are clear benefits to seeking a correct diagnosis if there is a challenge: you'll be able to understand what your dd's needs now and in the future will be, you can seek therapy or accommodations or whatever your dd does need to be able to show her knowledge without bumping head-on into a wall due to her challenge, and her teachers will be able to better understand how to work with her.
Our 2e ds started out in public school - for all the options available to us in terms of testing / id'ing his needs / getting him help that worked etc - public school just didn't work. Some school districts are pro-acvtive and wonderful re working to identify and then help students who have a challenge. Our school district was *not* helpful or willing to work with our ds. We switched to private school and were very happy there - because the school culture included teachers communicating frequently and working closely with parents. Whether it happened because we were paying tuition or out of the true kindness of their hearts, the teachers were willing to listen to our ds' challenges, respect that they truly were significant challenges for him, and allowed him to have the accommodations he needed to be successful - all without a fight. When he was in public school I spent soooo many precious hours just fighting to get him less than 25% of what he needed.
Not every private or HG school etc will be like that - but your dd will most likely be happy and successful if you can find a school (private or public) that is willing to accommodate/remediate as needed, but that also allows your dd to participate in a classroom that matches her intellectual abilities.
Initially I was hoping that my daughter’s cognitive ability could carry her over until high school when she may be able to grow out of it.
Until you know what's really behind the behaviors, this line of reasoning just doesn't work. Many 2e challenges aren't things that children "grow out of". Even if a challenge becomes less so with maturity, the years spent compensating and missing opportunities because of having to compensate aren't worth the faint hope that someday in the future a child will "grow out" of a challenge. If they do - great! But even so, is it worth the risk of your child having to compensate, possibly be very frustrated with having to compensate, and the cumulative impact of knowing internally that something about you is "different" than your nt peers, yet not knowing what that "something" is?
Even though my daughter is placed in an advanced language art group and did well in all the reading comprehension and spelling tests, she probably gets more warnings for absent-mindedness and bad handwriting than praises.
This again sounds like it *might* be dysgraphia.
It may very well lower her grades and is gradually starting to affect her self-esteem now.
And that's the thing - left undiagnosed, improperly diagnosed, or simply not understood - challenges can have a huge impact on a child's self-esteem. Back to ADHD, somewhere up above in the replies someone mentioned that people have been living with ADHD for years (maybe centuries) without being diagnosed. That doesn't mean that everyone who had undiagnosed ADHD led happy lives unfettered by challenges, chances are good there were people with undiagnosed ADHD who never realized their potential and may, in fact, have been very frustrated. This holds true for other diagnoses too, such as LDs, dysgraphia etc.
Should I get my daughter diagnosed and advocate for her at the private school
My suggestion is that you need to step away from worrying about the specific diagnosis and worrying about school choice for the future. The first priority is understanding what is actually going on. For that, you don't want to look for ruling in/out a specific diagnosis, you instead want an evaluation which looks at a wide range of possibilities. You might find that your hunch of a diagnosis was correct, or you might be completely surprised - but whichever the outcome, you don't want to risk missing something now that your dd will still have to deal with in the future - it's better to diagnose an LD or whatever early so that accommodation and remediation are taking place as early as possible.
Re the school situation, get your diagnosis, then try to work with the school. If that works, then you never have to worry about finding another school. OTOH, if you're not satisfied this school can meet your dd's needs (both sides - intellectual and disability)... then try not to over-worry about leaving friends behind. You can arrange playdates to stay in touch with friends from the first school, and at the same time your dd will be meeting new friends at her new school.
Best wishes,
polarbear
