Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Started with thearpy yesterday..

It went better than expected. This therapist has a "therapy" dog that she brings into her office and it worked wonders breaking the ice and getting my son to talk. He actually talked and didn't seem to mind the meeting. But it was a first meeting so nothing much was really resolved. Intellectually I know these types of intervention aren't fix at the first meeting. But emotionally I want solutions now. What is important is she did connect with my son and seems to know enough about the issues. Looks like the main things she would work on is his motivation & attitudes to school as well as how to improve his social life. She did suggest more of what I & the teachers have suggested. Join more clubs, take advantage of the after school peer tutoring. I keep suggesting this but my son doesn't think he needs tutoring. But the therapist suggested to him that the students who do the peer tutoring are the AP kids who have been there and know the tricks for working with different teachers.

My son and I are just a bit bummed. Class selection was made for the kids for next year (the teachers decide), and at this time he is in zero honors classes. Down from all 4 at the beginning of this year. There is still some chance in two of them if he pulls his grades up by the end of the year. Those are hovering at B-/C+. He tends to test well, so as long as he takes finals seriously they can bring his grades up.

She did mention that if we could get a diagnosis we could ask the school to only grade on tests/essays/projects and not on all the boring homework/seatwork. One of my worries about being in the non-honor classes is they tend to give more weight on the homework/seatwork and less on the tests so it's not to his advantage grade-wise at all. But, this is a big but.. we can't get this to happen until at least 4-6 weeks into the school year and that is being optimistic. Even if we get a private eval this summer, the school will only take it on advisory. They won't even test him until at least 2 weeks into the school year. And that is if the will agree to test him and label him with LD or label him as ASD. In thinking it over and know what I know about LD's and his schools resource department my guess it might be easier to get school to accept an ASD diagnosis even though I really don't think it fits. This school was a really pain about my DD's LD, claiming that she was performing too well and didn't NEED an IEP all the way through H.S.

You could also look into social communication disorder (recently moved from ASD-ish category into communication disorders, in the DSM-5). The DSM specifically says that milder forms may not be diagnosed until early adolescence (i.e., middle/high school), and that there are often written expression impairments (sometimes that's the main thing that persists into adulthood, even after social skills remediation). The primary diagnostic difference between SCD and ASD is the absence of restricted, repetitive behavior (rigidity, routines, stereotypies). As this falls under communication (pragmatics), it is in an IEP-eligible category.

The kind of impact you might see in a high-cognitive adolescent, in addition to social difficulties, and difficulties with writing that involves inference, perspective taking, or analysis of the "what if," "what would you," "what do you think" type. Because there are deficits in identifying, selecting, and implementing the appropriate modes of communication for different social situations, these students may present as stubborn or defiant, shutting down or digging their heels in when called out for something, not so much because they are essentially noncompliant, but because they don't know what the rules are for this situation, or can't call up their knowledge of the rules when under stress. Or they are struggling to read the social situation, and consequently don't know which rules to select.

Generally speaking, the rules get a whole lot harder in high school, while simultaneously, the population of adults who self-select to be teachers becomes more slanted toward content specialists, whose balance of content versus student social-emotional needs and scaffolding is more heavily weighted toward content than it is in the lower grades. So social perception and communication demands go up, just as adult support goes down.

blluemagic, It's tough in the position you and your ds are in right now - but things will get better as you get more answers. Hopefully the counseling will help, but I'd be sure to proceed with private testing through a neuropsych if at all possible - don't get hung up on worrying that it will come to late for the start of school. Focus on the big picture - your ds' *life* forward, not the immediate issues with school. This next school year may not be the optimal honors-class school year you and your ds would hope for - but it's just one year. There will be another year after, and college after - a whole lot of wonderful things to hope for and aim for. Having a diagnosis will help, and more importantly, really understanding what is really going on will help. A neuropsych will also be useful in helping you and your ds map out the path to accommodations/remediation etc as needed.

How was your dd's LD diagnosed? I just can't help but wonder if the issues you are seeing in your ds aren't possibly a related type of LD.... it's not unusual to see similar or somewhat related LDs occur in relatives.

Hang in there!

polarbear

aeh - I will look into social communication disorder. That is a good suggestion, and from your description it sounds like it could fit. I've read a lot about ASD and it's never really seemed to fit right. I am also looking at a expressive language LD.

polerbear - Intellectually I know all these things, but emotionally it's still a roller coaster. The plan was to wait for a summer to do an evaluation. End of the school year is just too busy. This psychologist doesn't do testing herself, she refers out and already has someone in mind. We just haven't gotten there yet.

My DD's diagnosis was more an evolution. My DD had a whole host of health problems when she was 0-2 years. One was that she was born with a cleft palate. But she also had gross motor delay, and atypical febrile seizure that took a while a a few different doctors and treatments to diagnose. Because of the cleft, she started private speech at 2yrs that medial issuance was helping to cover. But I wisely had her evaluated by the school district for speech the year before K. So she started K with a speech & language IEP. She did fine in K, all the speech therapy probably helped. But in 1st grade started to fall behind in reading quite drastically. Her 3 year evaluation for the speech IEP was due in 2nd grade coincidentally around the earliest they would test her for LD's. So without a lot of effort on my part they did a full evaluation and picked up the language processing issues. In 3rd grade we had her privately evaluated for ADHD and it was one of the tests that doctor did that made the LD really "pop" for me. He concluded that the LD was obvious and kids with language processing LD's often have some of the same inattention issues as ADD kids. He recommended treatment for the language processing and not putting her on ADD meds. And it was about that time I was refereed to educational therapy for her. This seems to be mostly successful. She not only graduated H.S. but she has just completed her 2nd year of college where she is studying photography.

I see why we need the psychologist now. My son really has developed a mental block once he told he has to write. Yesterday my son asked for my help with his Romeo & Juliet homework. This mostly involved my playing solitaire in the same room as him, while he ranted to me about Romeo being stupid and a stalker, and how he thought Romeo's purple prose was silly and over the top. That the friar shouldn't have helped him, the nurse was being silly. It was funny and it was clear, that he understood what he was reading, was enjoying it and had good insights.

But when he got to the last question on his homework. It asked him to write a paragraph supporting his position of if the nurse & friar should help Romeo & Juliet. And in a minute he went from being chatty, and mostly productive to shutting totally down. He had already answered this question but something about writing down his opinion had him frozen. I finally had to direct him to other homework, because he had other things to accomplish.

I realize that districts vary and you are most familiar with yours. However, I have navigated my oldest through high school and he has multiple medical issues and learning disabilities. I have found that sometimes it pays to simply ignore their rules/procedures and proceed on the assumption that it is necessary for them to do what you are requesting. Meet with the counselor and administrator over the summer well before school starts and strongly request. You may be surprised by all the decisions that get made or reverse during the summer.

Based on your prior postings, I really think that it is important for your DS to stay in honor courses for math and science.

I agree he really needs to be in those honors classes as well but I've decided not to push till the final grades are in and we have finished our private testing, I'm expecting that final grades will help because he tests very well in general and if he does well in his finals it should help. The district can be VERY strict about their honors rues for H.S. Because he only had a C+ in math at the end of first semester we might have a slightly harder time. The psyc. was saying something about we have the right to insist & put him "against" advice but I need to get more details out of her.

At least in both these classes he is accelerated, so he would be in pre-calc, and Chemestry with juniors & seniors. Although this is the other reason it's a problem. One issue we are working on with him is social. With this class schedule he likely won't be in any classes with kids he considers his peers.

What you are describing is where we were last year. My son's 8th grade H. Humanities teacher couldn't see him comfortable in anything but all honors. He was recommended for all honors except science. We pushed for the science and I am so glad because it's been his best class all year. He was dropped in English mid semester because of his writing, and I am now really regretting this. It didn't do any good, the "regular" class hasn't helped his writing at all and it's just made him frustrated.

I do NOT want him in honors Social Studies next year. Honors is AP US History and while my son would love the class discussion, I completely agree he is not up for the quantity of work and the level of writing. Not sure I'm going to have much luck getting him back into honors English either. But math & science it's mostly because his grades (in all subjects) have dropped mid semester when he started getting discourage about school.

We have already had a meeting with the school & they can't even test him until two weeks into next year. The meeting did not discuss class levels.