Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional feel like we are looking for the Holy Grail

...we are really upset that our school we had found an hour away just isn't going to work out for a number of reasons - the teacher was very good and very willing to learn about Sensory Disorder and 2e children - she said that my little 5 year old was extremely bright and well above the older children but the commute was proving too much for him and would mean he would lose his Speech and OT services....so no go there.....so he asked to go back to look at one of the local Montessori Kindergartens in our area - we took him and he decided that he would like to try it....I had already visited a handful of times and the teacher seemed very open to working with a Sensory disorder/gifted child....so we enrolled him.....

My son was so excited about his first day and he started out great only to go down hill pretty quickly (they allowed me to stay and work in the back room as a volunteer so I could hear what was occuring in the classroom)- it was very loud and very chaotic (which for a sensory disorder child is like 24 hours of listening to fingernails on a chalkboard for a normal person)...the teacher took him to the side while the other children got to pick their work for the morning....my son questioned why he couldn't pick a choice for work (he has been in Montessori for 3 years now)...she said he needed to prove to her that he was able to do many of the lessons before he could do anything on his own (despite the fact that I had given her a very detailed list from his old teacher of the lessons he had from his old Montessori school)...so she plopped a math sheet in front of him on a skill he had already mastered in his old school (skip counting) and told him he needed to complete it - my son has a very hard time with writing and the OT we met last week did an assessment concerning dyspraxia on him (waiting for the results)...he had a minor meltdown because he said he already knew how to do skip counting and that he really wanted to complete where he had left off on his bead chain work but she would not allow him....so he completed the sheet despite the fact he kept telling her that his hand was tired and that he could just tell her the answers. Then she gave a math lesson and I could hear him giving all the answers -as the day progressed, he had more and more meltdowns and I could name a reason for every single one of them...his sensory needs not being met. She met with me at the end of the day and said that he very clearly was extremely bright and was well above the other students in the K group but that he had gotten all of his skip counting sheet incorrect and that she was concerned about his melt downs throughout the day (daddy and I looked at his skip counting sheet and every single answer was correct she just didn't know how to read his handwriting and we showed her and then asked her if she had asked him to read the answers to her - no of course not)....we are now a week into the school and nothing has changed - he comes home wanting to know why he keeps getting the easy work and not being allowed to pick work he would like to work on and the teacher's reply is that he has to prove to her that he has fully and completely mastered the beginning/early lessons before she will allow him to continue at the level he was at his old school...and as the more days go by, the more completely bonkers he is when he comes in the door - like he has been trying to hold his litle body together all day long due to no sensory needs being met and when he walks in the door, he just goes bananas letting it all out :-(

Why is it so hard to find an educational setting for 2e children??? People that have worked with our child and are meeting his sensory needs while working with him, are really surprised to hear how difficult he is being in a classroom setting because he works so well for them. He is such a totally opposite child when his Sensory Disorder is not dealt with and he is quickly being labeled a behavior problem because he keeps having crying episodes.

We have found amazing schools in other cities all over our state that deal exclusively with Sensory Disorder children that are not on the spectrum, but they are over $20,000 for a year or are too far to drive...why is it too difficult for our public schools to recognize this and offer a setting for children like this?? He does not qualify (and shouldn't be in a special ed class), they do not offer any gifted programs for early childhood and he clearly is having issues with being in a regular classroom....so all that is left for us is homeschooling which I am not thrilled about. Here I have this child who is dying to be in a classroom with other children, he is dying to learn everything and anything and we can't find a teacher who has any clue how to teach to a 2e child. Any one else with a 2e child feel like you are looking for a needle in a haystack concerning appropriate schools?

Same here. I'm sorry it's so hard. Especially when you can see what's wrong and you've told her, and she just doesn't follow through appropriately.

*sigh*

{{{Hugs}}}

I wish I could be of more help!

Thanks guys - just knowing that I am not alone is SO nice! I have a friend I made on a local mom's board and she has a SPD/gifted 4 year old son and we have become good friends and she is worried sick as well about where to place her son for K...sometimes it is just so nice to vent because I think my husband is just as stressed as I am and he needs a break from hearing it :-)

I wish that was a choice but this is a just a one building/room Montessori preschool with a collection of 3-5 year olds - the kids do their montessori work in the morning and then the K kids work together after lunch doing K activities...so there is no option for another teacher :-( We are looking at the homeschool option and have found some really great sites with Montessori daily lessons that we could do and then as an ex-Kindergarten teacher, it wouldn't be very difficult for me to find curriculum for him to do, the rough part is that he so wants to be in a classroom. I am scared to death to let him try public school K because all he knows is Montessori and he loves it - but I know the ropes in K in our county and he is well beyond the k curriculum and they offer no enrichment for the early childhood kids...when we brought him into the local elementary school for speech and OT therapy it was all he could do to be able to walk down the halls while classes were walking the halls - his little sensory system just lost it - between the noise, the flourescent lighting and the crowds...he all but panicked when his OT one day asked if he could stand right inside the cafeteria while she ran inside to get something....so I have a pretty good feeling he wouldnt survive the sensory issues of being in a public school building/classroom...arrghhhh!

Sorry to hear of the bad experience with Montessori. I'm really surprised to hear that it was loud and chaotic, as one of the things that drew my son to the Montessori he eventually attended for preschool was the calm, quiet environment. He'd been overwhelmed when we visited the "in" preschool that everyone raved about- it was extremely loud and busy. He spent the whole visit clinging to my leg. Not so at the Montessori, as he felt comfortable enough to grab a rug and start right in on a puzzle.

Of course any school can say that they are Montessori...

Belle,

My 6 year old visited the psychologist that identified her as gifted every other week last year to help her get through kindergarten. She has overexcitabilities, probably some undiagnosed mild sensory issues and now, we've found a vision processing disorder that we think can be corrected by therapy. She was very frustrated like your son throughout both years of pre-school and kindergarten. Now, that I have the information it's clear why she was so frustrated and I wish I had more info three years ago!

If I had it to all over again, I would not have sent her to pre-school or kindergarten. I would have kept her home, let her play with friends, joined park district programs for fun and worked on her sensory issues, frustration level(how to self calm) and focused on her vision issues and fine motor issues.

She is such a good kid and so very, very, bright; she could have easily walked in to first grade and fit right in with very little, or no problems.

In terms of handling frustration and successfully dealing with her sensory issues, or sensitivities, just one year made a HUGE difference. I gets easier when they have the right help and just age.

Shoulda woulda coulda..... ((shrug))

I wish you all the best in helping your son!

I'm so sorry, Belle. All I have is sympathy too. I don't have a 2E child, and yet we're homeschooling. My only regret is sending my son to school at all. Kindergarten was ok for him. 1st grade was awful.

Yep. I saw your other post on the other thread, too, and it sounds all too familiar. We tried three different schools (including the first one twice) before we settled on homeschooling this year. DS didn't act out, but became miserably unhappy (I suppose he acted in). He's out of school, had a wonderful summer and is back to being the happy kid he used to be before he started school. He needs the right environment - quiet, controlled classroom and patient, encouraging teacher. (He had a few yellers in his early school career, and even though they were not yelling at him, it was equally uncomfortable for him).

As for sensory issues, I can't say enough about our OT - and the OT he had at PS last year. OT in general. Thank you, OT's, you've made a world of difference for us. Do you have an OT? Can he or she talk to the school and get him what he needs?

I could not find an appropriate educational setting for my son with sensory issues and motor dyspraxia because there is no law in our state requiring it and our school will only do the bare minimum of what it is required to do. This, I was told by a homeschool mom who had pulled her son from public school, was the cold, hard facts of public school education--at least where we live. Because my son was not below grade level in anything in kindergarten, the school was not required to provide OT or any kind of accommodations, so if I couldn't afford private school, and I couldn't, I had no choice but to homeschool. Someone in the state gifted coordinator's office told me it wasn't fair but I was doing the right thing by homeschooling and to remember that my son is worth it. She suggested writing to legislators, but my letters to legislators and the superintendent of public schools in our state were not answered. It was a waste of time. I finally realized that most of the kids in our state are probably not getting an appropriate education, judging by recent ACT scores that showed only one-fifth of them are scoring high enough to get into our state colleges. So we were probably lucky that things worked out the way they did. I would have kept him in a bad school if he hadn't had the handwriting and sensory issues.

But still, even now, I occasionally feel sad that school didn't work out for him. I have a picture of him, happy and smiling on his first day of kindergarten. He didn't go to preschool and he was looking forward to going to school with other kids and learning. He did have fun with some of it, like the puppet theatre where he could act out scenes with the puppets and use different voices and make the other kids laugh. The other kids seemed to like him, except for a couple of older and bigger bullies that he had to watch out for on the playground. I volunteered at the school and I would sometimes peek in the room and he looked happy whenever he wasn't sitting at a desk coloring in the lines. He told me it wasn't very educational but it was fun and it was only a half day.

With his sensory issues, more than a half day would have been too much, even in first grade, second grade,...even now. He learns very well when he can work for a while and then get up and move around.

As his developmental pediatrician once said "he isn't really special needs, but then he is." I didn't know what to do when her advice didn't seem to work with my child, especially her advice to make him watch cartoons instead of letting him watch all the educational shows he likes. But the OT did seem to get him and he liked her. Her sons were only a few years older. She got his jokes and he felt like he could be himself around her and it was great, but our insurance only paid for 6 OT sessions, one hour every other week. She said she was doing sensory integration therapy but they couldn't call it that because our insurance didn't pay for sensory integration therapy. She showed me how to help him with him with visual motor integration, vestibular and proprioceptive issues and then I was left to make him do things he didn't want to do. Academics was never the problem. Anything motor related was. We have always had to work around it and it is still hard for me to explain to other people how such a smart kid can have trouble doing things that most other kids find easy. He was self conscious about his handwriting and drawing abilities around other cub scouts, so he has been working on this and he sometimes jokes about it saying he is great at abstract art and stick figures. My son just laughed it off when a local artist visited his cub scout group last year and showed samples of his work (rural scenes--lots of cows, barns, etc.) and then said he didn't like abstract art. My son thought this guy fit in well with all the "must color in the lines" people in our town.

Belle,
My sympathy to you and your entire family.

Your montessori sounds very like the one my son was in for 1st and 2nd grade that turned into a nightmare. My only suggestion is if it works for your family please try to get him out of that environment as soon as possible. Although he wants to be in a class, maybe homeschooling would work better with a couple of class style activities thrown into your schedule?

If it is any help, alot of DS's (age 9)SPD issues have inproved greatly now and he is reasonable happy in the public schools for now

Hugs to you all