Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional School services for Dysgraphia?

Ugh this is so scary

I think that there could be several things going on here that would contribute to the "blank stares". Dysgraphia (and dyslexia) are never mentioned specifically on IEPs etc in our school district - the terminology used is "Specific Learning Disability - Writing" or "SLD - Reading" etc. When children qualify for IEPs under SLD, the bar is pretty tough to get underneath in order to qualify, and it would be really tough at your ds' age to qualify here for OT for the reasons you mentioned.

Like Irena's ds, our ds' diagnosis from his neuropsych eval was not "dysgraphia" but "Disorder of Written Expression" and "Developmental Coordination Disorder" (rather than dyspraxia). These are diagnoses defined in the DSM-IV and terms recognized/acknowledged by school districts.

I suspect the reason Irena is meeting with less resistance to the EDS diagnosis is that it's a medical diagnosis rather than qualifying under a learning disorder. I don't understand *why* that is, but we were told early on that if we could get a medical diagnosis of ADHD for our ds it would make the whole IEP process soooo so much easier - he would have qualified without any question and recieved the same accommodations and services and instruction as he did under SLD. But - he doesn't have ADHD.

The other reason you might be receiving blank stares and no acknowledgement is something we ran into (head on, like 100 miles per hour into a brick wall). Our school staff knew very well what dysgraphia and DOWD is - I found out by networking that there were other students at the school with accommodations via 504 and the same diagnoses. However, our school district is extremely stressed to provide services for all the students who need them, and the specific school we were in was trying their best not to qualify students for services. It took me awhile to realize that the staff did indeed understand and was aware of exactly what I was talking about, but they were not going to agree to anything or suggest anything unless I brought it up first. That essentially meant I had to know what the policies were, had to know what was commonly already done for kids with handwriting etc challenges within the district and at the school, and I had to have a lot of proof to argue against any of their arguments they tried to put forward suggesting our ds was "just fine".

The things our ds worked on when he went through private OT for handwriting included things like putting pegs into pegboard, working with resistant clay, learning proper grip and posture etc. All of it helped at that point in time with eliminating wrist pain, and his handwriting legibility improved quite a bit. If you can't get the OT through school, you might try to get a referral for private OT from your ped if your insurance will cover part of it. I do think it was useful - yet at the same time it wasn't crucial. Within a few years, when writing load increased, my ds once again had wrist pain. And we're not talking about a lot of writing - he had completely switched to typing almost everything at that point in time, but was experiencing pain just from filling out worksheets that were short-reply type answers. The lessons in posture and grip stuck, and the OT helped quite a bit with reducing the excess pressure he was placing on his pencil which resulted in crumpled messy torn-up papers as he wrote.

What really helped us the most in advocating was having an outside private evaluation and diagnosis (from a neuropsychologist). I am not sure that if we'd started with a private (or school) OT we would have understood the need for OT to be honest - even though our ds' OT eval showed he "was an excellent candidate for handwriting remediation". The numbers on his OT tests were not low - but had that large discrepancy similar to the dip in processing speed on the WISC. The OT report phrased everything as anywhere from "average" to "superior" and didn't list a diagnosis, other than listing the codes ds had been given by the neuropsych. It listed ds as "an excellent candidate for handwriting OT" but didn't mention anything that sounded enough of an alarm bell for me as a parent (had I had no other info) to have thought "Yep, this kid has an issue and I need OT".

I can't remember if your ds has had a neuropsych or psych-ed eval (either privately, or a full eval through the school)? What was the speech issue that he qualified for an IEP with - articulation or something else?

polarbear

WOW!! Should I be glad that my child's report card shows him consistently "below grade level" in PE? Thanks so much for this useful post! As we are in the IEP process now as homeschoolers this is pretty relevant info.

Thanks for all the input. I find it so frustrating that these so called "professionals" may have never heard of the term dysgraphia but we ordinary parents have. He originally got an IEP when he was 4, just for speech. At the time, they said it was for articulation and his voice pitch. Now I know that the issues with his speech were because of DCD/dyspraxia. His main issue now with speech is fluency and prosody. For instance he'll either talk in a monotone or like mickey mouse. And very slow. Speech therapists with the school have no clue what to do about any of that, but that's another post I guess. They evaluated him back then for fine motor but it was just one test and it was a visual motor integration type test so he did just fine. The OT back then noted that he wrote very slow/awkwardly but insisted that he could not qualify for anything because he wasn't scoring low enough.

This last spring I took him to a neuropsych after a brain injury. He did a Grooved Pegboard test which is timed and DS scored horribly (like 0.1 percentile). But was something like the 65th percentile for Beery VMI. Neuropsych diagnosed him with DCD, indicated that any motor test with a mental component will yield average results, and recommended school OT in his report, because of the fine motor issues as seen with the Pegboard.

The school has the neuropsych report but they don't seem to know about the different special ed categories or how he would qualify. At first they were acting like only kids with autism or cognitive disabilities would qualify. Now they know there are more categories than that (sounds unbelievable they could be so clueless, right?). I will look at "Other Health Impairments" again. I really hope that they are just clueless and not trying to get out of things or being deliberately obtuse just because of funding.

I have been taking him for private OT and PT for about a month. Not sure how long our med. insurance will cover it.

I'm also not clear on how many of DS's issues are due to the brain injury, because last summer he was doing fine and exited private OT and PT, but I believe some of his motor skills are actually worse now (despite having a year of coloring, gluing, cutting in kindergarten). His 1st grade teacher brought in examples of his cutting to the meeting and it looked like a 3 year old did it. He has never cut that poorly in the past (at least, not since he was 3 or 4). So it could be the TBI is causing some of the issue (for example it exacerbated the DCD), but I'm not sure how anyone would sort out what is TBI and what is DCD that was always there.

Hugs to you Blackcat. I hope you get it sorted out in a workable way soon - I know it is so frustrating

Wow, I hope so too but really someone there, like director of special ed at least, should really know such things.

I hope so as well. He didn't say much at the meeting but was writing things down. He said he would make sure DS has a decent eval to me on the phone about a month ago but we haven't talked since then.

I don't know if I'll be able to get services added to his IEP or not, but can probably get a 504. What kinds of modifications should I ask for? One thing I don't want DS to take is the timed, written CogAt next year to qualify for gifted programming. It was a ridiculous test for DD with her ADHD and I'm sure DS will do poorly on it as well. I'm not sure if they need to fill in a bubble sheet, or write things down on scratch paper or anything, but if there is any chance he will be at a disadvantage due to not being able to write (or slow), I don't want him given the test. His WISC IV GAI is above the cut off but they will probably consider that test too old by that time.

I agree with you here. So far, in my experience the WISC IV is the best test for our types of kids because the PSI can be taken out and the PSI is what is greatly affected by their disabilities. My DS scored absymally on his PSI - really really low (it was classified as "extremely low" and is in the 1st %ile All those years of OT (and months of VT) and his coding and symbol search are off the charts low. BUT they can be disregarded with the GAI and should not get in his way of getting gifted services. I think the same sections (PSI) are greatly affected by ADHD (not an expert though but that is my suspicion). I think for getting gifted for him you would need to get a private WISC IV and the get the school to take that. Do you know how long is "too old" for the school to use by any chance? I am just curious when WISC IV scores are no longer considered current.

I think the website said testing from the previous or current school year is accepted.

I wrote on a different thread somewhere on this site about how DD didn't even finish half of the CogAt (probably because of the ADHD and her immaturity and it was tightly timed--but she also has an extremely slow processing speed/working memory when not medicated properly). The district gifted coordinator (who is now gone) told me that she can take an IQ test but would leave it up to the school psych. The school psych wants to give her a Weschler non-verbal ability test. It has sections like coding and visual sequencing and I just don't know how she would do on something like that. I don't think there's a way to separate out those sub-tests if there are gaps like you can with a GAI. Debating whether to argue with the school psych or just let DD take the test and hope for the best. She needs to get a composite score of 132 (or 139 if her math/reading achievement test scores are not both in the 98th-99th percentile). But those scores are based on the CogAt which might have different percentiles than the WISC. It all gets very confusing, and the people with the school district don't seem all that bright.

Since DS has an IEP I'm hoping they don't fight me on giving him another IQ test later on, rather than the CogAt.

Coding was DS's lowest score on the WISC, but strangely he still got a 10. Nine points less than his highest score though. I assume this is a large discrepancy.

9 points actually isn't considered to be a large discrepancy, but if it's the only discrepancy and the other subtest scores are all within 2-4 points of each other, then combined with other indications of ADHD or dysgraphia etc, it's significant. Most psychs will only consider a discrepancy of either > 1 SD (15 pts on the WISC) or 1.5 SD to be statistically significant and meaningful.

Re the CogAT, my ds was given the CogAT at school *with* the accommodations of oral response, individual testing in a quiet place and extended time. The reason we were able to get those accommodations was that he already had an IEP in place with similar accommodations in the IEP, and he was given similar accommodations on testing in his regular classroom. I think that right now, I'd focus on being sure your ds has the testing accommodations he needs written into his IEP. Your district might be different than ours and use a 504 for accommodations, but I think it's typical for children who have disabilities and an IEP to have the accommodations written into the IEP and not carry a 504 while they have an IEP.

I wonder if the reason the school is offering up the Weschler non-verbal is that is a test the school psych is licensed to give or that the school district has licensed and possibly the WISC isn't? Or simply that it's a shorter test? Was your ds given the WISC as part of his IEP eligibility process?

I found having the WISC scores (ours was through a private professional, but having one through the school would have worked ok too) was really helpful in advocating. Our school gave only the verbal (or maybe non-verbal, I can't' remember which) version of the CogAT and ds' outside the box answers, while well thought out... didn't mesh with what the test wanted for answers and he scored significantly lower than he did on the WISC. When the school came back and told us they'd have to try another ability test because of ds' CogAT scores, it was so helpful to have those WISC scores in our backpocket so we could question *why* did the school insist on testing again when it was clear from a widely used, reliable standard IQ test that ds was qualified for the program. Something in my tone of voice when I mentioned that must have sounded either ominous or desperate... because it worked lol.

Good luck advocating!

polarbear