Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Intervention at your school?

I'm curious. How much intervention, that is directly helping your child improve his/her weaknesses, is offered for your child? What age and grade are they? Does your school modify and accomodate but never helps strenghen your child's weaknesses?

I am curious how much variety in school experiences there are for 2 E kids.

I think it depends on the teacher. DS is in first grade. His last teacher didn't do anything for him at all, but the new one is on top of things and said she needs to work on his writing and is trying to figure out what else to do for him. A couple days after he started his new school I sent her an email and said that I would be sending him in on his own, so if he doesn't show up in class it's because he is wandering the hallways or can't figure out how to get his stuff in his locker. I wasn't even expecting a response but she wrote back saying she would watch for him and follow him to see if he could do things on his own. Totally different from his last teacher. He has an IEP, and it didn't matter, the old teacher didn't even do things like use the slant board the school OT gave her. She seemed to view modifications/accommodations as something DS would have to do on his own, she wasn't going to bother with it.

Last year in kindergarten he had a pretty severe head injury involving skull fractures bad enough that he had brain damage and air in his brain. He went back to school with an eye patch on his good eye, and the eye that wasn't covered did not move or track at all. He also had a big neck brace and couldn't turn his head at all. I don't think the teacher did anything special for him. I kept asking if he should have an aide because I was worried about him falling or someone knocking him over when his skull was already fractured. My "favorite" memory was when I went to the school to drop off DD's backpack a couple weeks after the head injury, and pulled up in my car. The teacher had the kids lined up to go out to the bus for a field trip. The sidewalk was covered with ice and the kid in front of DS fell flat on his back. The teacher was already on the bus and no one was helping DS or holding his hand. He was clumsy with motor impairments even before the head injury. No idea what she was thinking, having a kid with a skull fracture and severely impaired vision walk on glaze ice! I worried every day about him but the doctor wrote a note saying he should be in school (probably thinking they would actually take care of him). That is the how horrible the school was. He already had an IEP, it wouldn't have been hard for someone to call a meeting and figure out what temporary things to do for him. His vision was severely impaired for at least 4-5 months and no one knew if it would ever be normal again. In defense of the teacher, she did seem to actually care about the "gifted" part of him and tried to give him work at the correct level.

DD's teacher this year wasn't doing anything for her ADHD/slow processing speed, except some very minor things (like letting her use headphones). Now we are talking about it more and what might help her in the classroom. Teacher knows she is eligible for a 504 but it hasn't been written yet. She is 8 in third grade.

Our school has always been excellent for DS (2E--Asperger's) -- they did social skills training, groups and individual, behavior stuff, you name it, and they were always on top of the IEP / ALP meetings with the whole team. The principal and counselor found seminars and classes on their own and went to them, to learn about GT and 2E issues and solutions. The next kid like DS will be all set.

They were at least as much on top of the weaknesses as they were the strengths. However, I know we've been extremely lucky.

There are many discussion threads about 2e accommodations. What they seem to have in common is that the most progress may be experienced by children whose parents work with the school to help set goals and establish IEPs/504s with specific accommodations and measurable progress toward those goals.

http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....Ctr_for_Learning_Disabil.html#Post179301

Wishing you all the best with helping your 2e child reach meaningful goals through specific accommodations.

Nautigal--
I have a friend with a first grader in the school mentioned above. He has Aspergers and pretty severe ADHD. He is pulled out for speech a few times per month for 20 min. and also sees the school psych a few times a month. And the special ed teacher was pulling him (not sure how often--once per week?) but all he did was social stories on the ipad with him. No social skills group or anything of the like. Does that sound completely inappropriate considering he has Aspergers? His behavior is so difficult he needs an aide for part of the school day, but that is just to control him.

This mom is so fed up but like most people, she doesn't know what the school should be doing. She's not on message boards or researching things. Every day the teacher gives her a bad behavior report after school. I think they have even paid out of pocket for things he has broken in the classroom.

As blackcat says a lot of this depends on the teacher. But it can also depend on the principal's attitude and school district philosophy. In K we brought in our eval showing a documented fine motor deficit and told them we were doing private OT. We said that we also suspected dyslexia and requested that DD be evaluated for in school services. We were told "no" over and over. Their position was "She would never qualify for services. She's too smart." We were in an interdistrict magnet school in the neighboring city. They had too few resources and way too many kids who needed them. Suburban kids were there to raise their scores not to use their resources. She was receiving private OT so they were not going to do anything more for her. This situation had *disastrous* consequences for DD. If we had been residents of that district we would have been out of luck. She would have been placed in a private and we would never have known enough to get her privately tested.

Fortunately our home district intervened and tested her discovering a profile they had never seen before. At first they were bending over backwards to meet her needs. We had a fabulous first grade teacher and a very, very experienced spec ed teacher doing pull out for reading. As the year went by they added more pull out for speech, OT and math. Unfortunately we had an absolutely terrible principal who was very into ensuring that there was a box for everyone and that everyone stayed securely in their box. Not a good situation for my very out of the box kid. The principal made clear that she felt the whole 2E thing was nonsense and went out of her way to make things very difficult for DD. Things got nasty. Very nasty.

By second grade the district intervened and started throwing services at her right and left. She had a classroom teacher who just didn't get it. She could not, would not and did not follow the IEP. The district provided first a part time and then a full time para. We waited almost the whole year for an Assistive Technology evaluation that was supposed to be done the first week of school. DD made little if any progress in any area. It was a total waste of a year.

Now for third grade we have her in an out of district placement and she is doing amazingly well. She broke through her blocks and is now reading and doing math at grade level. They have her using assistive technology throughout her school day and she is becoming independent in doing research, creating PowerPoints and brochures and training on Dragon Dictation. She is also accelerated 5 grades to participate in an 8th grade reading comprehension group every day. The district is also paying for an outside education consultant to oversee her program and make sure her needs are being met.

So as you can see there is a wide range of responses. In many ways it depends on luck of the draw and/or tenacity of the parents to get the child what he or she needs.

The diagnosis doesn't drive the services-- the child's needs are supposed to drive the services. You can't say there's a standard "Asperger's package" of services-- the IEP is individual and has to be based on data about the individual child's capabilities and deficits.

That mom can request a Functional Behavior Analysis from the district-- it does sound like the child needs more direct instruction than he's getting. One can also write a behavior plan (addendum to the IEP) that specifies how the entire staff is to respond to behavior issues: that's a really important piece for a child who doesn't obey behavior norms.

The school has an obligation to provide an appropriate education, but unfortunately it is often on the parents to drive the process of helping school see what is needed.

In response to the OP, my kids have received quite a bit of direct and useful help through school; sometimes I have had to remediate major issues on my own when school refused to help. It's been a mix.

DD has been in a GT program since 1st grade. The school never has provided any instruction related to remediating her dyslexia or dysgrphia. Until we got a new prinicpal last year, the school did not offered much help in terms of accomodation either, beyond extra time - and getting that was a huge fight at first.

In second grade, I tried to get her Wilson instruction that the school offered to other dyslexic kids. Because I worked with her everyday at home, she was reading at grade level. They said that she was too far ahead of the kids in her grade that were getting Wilson instruction and that it was not appropriate. I actually had the special ed teacher say that if I hadn't worked with her, then they might have had a better idea of where she was at and could have provided more support (argh!). They also did an OT eval and found she had no automaticity in her letter formation, a non-conforming pencil grip and a myriad of other issues. They said that they did not provide OT through school unless she was more than 2 years behind and she still was within normal limts for a second grader. They recommended that I work with her at home. I already was focused on her reading at home and doing VT exercises, I couldn't fathom how I was supposed to do anything else at home at that point. I probably could have fought it but at the time I just didn't know enough.

Moving on to the mid-elementary years, prior principal prohibited us from supplying her with a computer even though we had testing and assessments indicating that she needed to start keyboarding ASAP. When we got a new principal last year, things improved somewhat. They had a computer "available for her use" meaning it was at the back of the classroom and she had to ask to use it. DD only used it for her math-related writing assignments. My theory at the time was that she didn't need to think about the math part (her strength area) so she could focus on the typing which was hard for her. Overall, it wasn't great. She didn't like calling attention to herself and her keyboarding skills were insufficient so it ended up taking more time and causing more frustration. We did try private keyboard instruction but, as we discussed in our PM, DD fought it for a variety of reasons.

This year (6th), her teacher is great and has worked to get DD around some of the roadblocks put up by the school and DD, herself. The teacher insisted that DD have a computer on her desk and powered up every morning at the start of school. The teacher has encouraged DD to type anything that will go through multiple revisions - less physical writing and DD gets help with her spelling from the "angry red lines." DD usually can pick out the correct word from the computer's list of suggestions. The teacher and I think that the consistent shape of the typewritten words help DD recognize the shape of familiar words when they are spelled correctly. Finally, the teacher arranged for DD to come in before school to work with the typing program that they use with special ed kids. (This hasn't been a huge success but that's not the teacher's fault.)

I agree with Pemberley, that in many ways, it has been the luck of the draw.

Ok, thanks. The school is inept and doesn't know the basics of how to write an IEP. I would be surprised if anyone there knows what a "functional behavior analysis" is. We just transferred schools for DS and I was at an IEP meeting for him this morning. The new school had to re-write half of his IEP 2 months after it was written the first time. I told her to try the Special Ed Director and try to get him to help but he has not replied to her. The reason he is replying to me is because he knows I am on to them and that they are not following basic laws. I bring it up (in a pleasant way) every chance I get. She is an immigrant and isn't strong in English so that makes it even more difficult. Once things get settled for DS I should sit down with her and help her craft an email to the spec. ed director, and put in the requests you mentioned. At this point things are so bad she's talking about just getting through the rest of the year and homeschooling next year.

Oh, Knute. I guess this really hits me b/c I know how hard it is with a gifted kid with dysgraphia (and for quite awhile I also suspected dyslexia) . I guess that is why find your situation especially heartbreaking. Your poor DD. I had no idea your school experiences have been that challenging. I am so sorry for everything you and your DD have had to go through.