Remediation sucks. It really does. By definition, it's explicit, linear, and repetitive - all things gifted kids tend to hate. And you're focusing in with laser-like intensity on their point of greatest anxiety, fear and pain (and with the anxiety, that pain is often literal). You're leaving them nowhere to hide, and no choice but to show how stupid and incapable they are. Who the heck would cooperate with
that?
I've written extensively here about our fun with reading remediation (using All About Reading/ Spelling, at home), so apologies to all those who've heard this many times before
My biggest lesson was understanding just how much anxiety my child had been living with, and what that was doing to her. The biggest impact of remediation was not on her reading (though don't get me wrong, it was profoundly effective); it was on her anxiety. She stopped being angry. She stopped being shut down at school. She started being engaged, happy, volunteering ideas, skipping about with a light step..... She became the child she used to be, that we hadn't really even realized we'd slowly but inexorably lost. All that came when we stopped asking her to do things she couldn't do,
had never been properly taught how to do, and instead started asking her to do only things she has been explicitly taught through ARR. And when she was fully able to do the things we asked, when teaching led to her feeling competence and accomplishment - well, it was like a miracle on her anxiety and self-image.
Now all that isn't to say that doing the remediation wasn't ghastly. We ended up with a DIY approach for a variety of reasons, but a key one was she responded really badly to the only qualified tutor we found, and was deeply resistant to working with her. We'd started AAR at home as an interim measure, but ended up sticking with it all the way through. Remediation as daily after-schooling for an exhausted, anxious, burnt-out introvert who just wanted to be left alone to recover from her day was not.... fun. But doing it at home allowed for lots of flexibility. We'd pick the time of day that seemed least awful, and go as long or short as she seemed to be able to handle that day. I'd let her do anything she needed to get through, no matter how much it slowed things down and I was gritting my teeth trying not to scream "can we just get on with it?!!!" Think having a three-column page of words to read, and DD insisting on drawing every one as a punny cartoon on her whiteboard before reading it. Some days she'd sing the whole thing. Read hanging upside down, behind the sofa, in a blanket tent with flashlight, on unicycle - whatever it took.
Oh, and lots and lots of jelly beans. I bribed copiously, ahem, I mean we "celebrated each page we accomplished".
The actual remediation never got better (it always hurts) - but the reading did. The first time she asked me if, before I read to her that night, could she please read me an extra story from her AAR reader, I cried. She had a lot of fear to conquer, and a lot of destroyed trust to re-build. She had to learn to trust that if we taught her the right way, she could learn, and learn well. She also needed to trust that I wouldn't ask her to do anything she hadn't been properly taught: yes, I would be constantly asking her to do things that were
hard, but they would never again be
impossible.
Apologies for long and gory details. Getting to the point, here's what I learned. First, recognize you may be dealing with huge fear, anxiety and mistrust, and your first priority is reducing those. And that will take some time, and may generate a lot of backlash in the short term. What made the most difference for us was when I stopped asking her to do things she couldn't - so second key was removing all possible excess reading and writing from outside her remediation program (I couldn't control everything going on in school, but I read homework assignments to her and scribed a lot for a while). Third was ensuring we had a high-quality, evidence-based program (if you use a tutor, make sure they are using (properly and systematically!) Barton, Wilson, or some other reliable O-G program, and not just generic "phonics support" or "bits of a bunch of different approaches". The only thing more anxiety-inducing than being incapable, is spending huge time forced to do your most painful thing - and
still being incapable, learning you are even more stupid than you thought, and getting daily torture as a bonus. And finally, fourth was HUGE flexibility and responsiveness to where DD was at at any given moment. Anything went, no matter how long it took or how crazy it went. I can't even imagine what would have happened if I'd tried to stick with that my-way-or-the-highway, no bedside-manner tutor (shudders).
As a final thought, with tutors, psychs and other specialists, 2E experience is essential. These kids test differently, they compensate and hide their deficits differently, and they remediate differently. Every specialist I've ever talked to swore "I've worked with tons of gifted kids!" and it was almost always not true. They'd worked with lots of bright, independent kids, sure - but that's not the same thing. At all. The other absolute in circumstances like yours is that yours child's rapport with the specialist is likely to really, really matter. If the person, for whatever reason real or perceived, makes your DS feel more anxious or more stupid, if your DS isn't comfortable and trusting with the person, their anxiety will shut down their brain's capacity to learn or respond (that's why high anxiety in the classroom can look like inattentive ADHD - the brain is in defence mode and no longer able to take in what's coming at it).
With respect to assessment, if you are doing a full psycho-ed, confirm that the psych will start with the WISC (I think that's standard practice), and then go on to achievement and processing tests second. Most kids enjoy the WISC, and it's a good place to build some rapport. The other tests, those that directly challenge their LDs, are not so much fun (my DD came out of day 1 skipping and smiling; day 2, snarling and growling and refusing to speak to me). On latter testing days, lots of comfort, ice cream, and whatever gets you through. And if your son is not entirely compliant with the testing, well, there is actually an upside to that. It might not tell you everything he is capable of doing - but it will tell you a lot about how he is currently functioning in stressful situations - which right now is probably all of them. Best of luck to you and your DS!
