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The school has scheduled my son's IEP for Wednesday. Two things will be discussed.

The first is that they are not qualifying him for gifted. The second was to exit him from special ed for his learning disability.

After an hour on the phone with the diagnostician, we came to the agreement that my son will not be exited from special ed but will be given a new IEP with a specific learning disability (dysgraphia) that will be in place for 3 years before he will need re-evaluation again. We will specify that he will no longer be pulled out of regular ed class but will be provided support on an as-needed basis by the special ed teacher who will collaborate with his regular ed teacher to see what areas my son is struggling with in the classroom.

He is being exited from O.T., because the skills he needs for academics have met acceptable grade level standards (handwriting). We will continue to work privately on the shoe tying, bike riding, pants buttoning skills.

Most of the hour was spent arguing about the gifted placement. She said that he increased 20 points on some portions of the IQ battery she gave him compared to his initial private testing 3 years ago. And she said that after testing him, she is very aware that he is a brilliant kid who is most likely gifted but because he IQ test came in at 119 and that it needs to be 130 for gifted, she can't qualify him.

She recommended that I give it three years and request that he be re-evaluated at the end of mid-school. She also said that with the IEP in place, he will be given the accommodations he needs to handle mid-school such as being given more creative projects rather than worksheets, etc.

I am still very torn about accepting this plan, because I worry about misbehaviors starting to crop up when he becomes bored in mid-school. Up until now, just making it through the workload has been enough to wear him out, because he's been compensating for the dysgraphia. But as he's mastered some of those compensations and made remedial gains in areas where he was struggling, I've seen his performance really take off this year. (And if I hear one more mom tell me, "Oh, we all want our kids to be gifted, but sometimes we just have to accept them as they are..." I'm going to scream. I've had a gifted kid, and I've had a normal-IQ kid. I know that it's no dreamy bowl of cherries, but I also know the character traits and learning styles, and I understand if I don't advocate to get my kid what he needs to succeed, nobody else will.

And so, while I know none of you know me from Adam, I'd love your insight.

If you didn't read the initial thread, you can see his test scores Gifted Issues Discussion Forum

Hi ABQmom,

A few thoughts, don't know if they're helpful or not:

I am struck by their exiting him from OT when he can't button his pants-- he's 10, right? By my lights that's a 5-year-old milestone. If you go to wrightslaw.com and look up "functional" in their search box you will see that the law requires schools to address not only academic, but also life-skills deficits. I wouldn't let them drop this, unless you are planning to really push this with private OT and you want him out of school OT for reasons of your own. They owe him the service, IMHO. Not being able to tie your shoes and do other functional tasks can be stigmatizing in middle school.

For the IQ testing, I think you need to know the district's and state's rules for identifying gifted kids in great detail to fight this one. Would they accept the Raven, or other alternative IQ testing, as identification for gifted placement? Is there reason to think if you had him tested privately he'd do differently? Where we live, the state sets the standard for IQ and achievement scores that identify a child as gifted and the district a slightly higher one for children who are "served"; there is no getting around those numbers. But your state and district may have different rules.

IQ test scores do tend to increase and become more coherent when you address LDs, so the 20 point increase looks very much in the right direction. I agree that it would be very frustrating to have to wait another few years until his dexterity catches up with his capacity otherwise. It does sound as though it will catch up.

We have found it useful to hire an educational advocate to help us wade through rules when we hit our own limit; sometimes we find the advocate can negotiate things for you with the school or the district that you can't on your own.

Good luck,
DeeDee

Thank you so much for your post, Dee Dee. I've mentioned to the school numerous times about his shoes and buttons, and the answer is always that the school will only focus on those skills needed to perform academically. It is good to be armed with the law that says the school needs to address the others as well.

The state allows wiggle room for IQ standards if there is a diagnosed disability. That is why I am struggling between battling now or just asking for a re-eval in 3 years.

Thanks again -

ABQmom, if you want to get them to follow the law you may need either a crash course in reading the law (I did this one year, it wasn't fun but very edifying)-- or an educational advocate. Or both.

If you choose to read: the book From Emotions to Advocacy is good, and the same people run the website wrightslaw.com. The site is poorly laid out and has lots of ads for their stuff, but full of good information. I also recommend looking up the actual IDEA statute and the updates to it, and reading the relevant parts of them. Wrightslaw often provides guidance about what bits to focus on: if you search "functional" on their site, they will give you pointers to the precise places in the law where this is spelled out. (Maybe this direct link will work: http://www.wrightslaw.com/howey/iep.functional.perf.htm ). Note that you don't have to buy the text of IDEA from them, you can google it and the text is online.

Advocates: we have at various times had both a free one from the state Legal Rights Service (which helps people with disabilities access things they are entitled to)-- and a paid one. They were both very good, but we got more mileage from the one we paid, only because the state had limits on what their person could do for us in our particular situation. We have sent the paid one to negotiate things on our behalf that they would never have given us if we had asked ourselves. It made a difference and sure took some pressure off me.

On the IQ wiggle room: is it spelled out how much room, and for what disabilities, or is the identification at the school's discretion? You will need to be super-strategic about this, on two fronts at once. I sympathize.

HTH,
DeeDee

I came across this today via Aimee Yermish's blog and was wondering if you considered including your son at his IEP meeting? You have my sympathies too.
http://www.ncld.org/at-school/your-...why-my-son-attended-his-own-iep-meetings
P.S. I read the rest of Aimee's blog entry on this subject and wanted to give you the link:
http://davincilearning.wordpress.com/2010/08/24/meetings-the-final-frontier/

inky, thanks!

It may not be worth fighting for training in how to button his pants and tie his shoes. My guess is that they're going to say that these are easily accommodated with velcro, slip-ons, and elastic -- you and I might think that those are crucial life skills that a school should teach, but I am not sure the school is really legally on the hook for those. They're not going to be deal-breakers for a kid to be able to live independently in adulthood. Spend the money you'd have spent on advocates and lawyers (who would probably spend years and then lose that fight) on private OT, or get stuff from www.theraproducts.com (the owners, two OTs, are really nice people and can probably help you figure out how to intervene at home) and roll your own.

What I think might be more worth looking at is how much wiggle room there may be in the GT qualifications, and what additional information might help them understand the nature of the 2E. If they'd be open to information from an outside evaluation, that may be expensive, and it's crucial that you have it done by someone who knows 2E issues well -- I have an article on my site talking about the general problem here: http://www.davincilearning.org/sketchbook/multiple_exceptionality.html -- but if you can swing it, it might be more helpful than waiting three years of middle school with no GT services, until the kid is about to enter high school where classes are tracked (yay!) but he didn't have access to the curriculum that the other honors-class-bound kids did for the past three years.

I'll take a look at the scores you posted and see if I have any other ideas...

Hm... no, no words of wisdom. They probably only did the WISC VC and PR because either (1) they think the GAI is a better measure of what they're looking for (2) they knew that dysgraphia would trash PS and that low WM is quite common in the dyslexic population (since from your descriptions, it sounds like he has needs in both areas). The dysgraphia frankly probably wouldn't even have affected Block Design unless it were severe (and they could check with BDN (no time bonus) to get a better read on that). Picture Concepts and Matrix Reasoning are not likely to be hit by dysgraphia or dyslexia (they are completely visual and oral, and the visuals are designed to be easy to see, even for kids with imperfect visual processing), might get hit with a low working memory but a gifted kid with strong fluid reasoning, even with LDs, would generally do better on those two subtests.

Yes, if those are 94th percentiles (I was hoping they were T scores or NCEs), they aren't all that much different from the rest of the scores -- z+1 (one standard deviation above the mean), not the z+2 they are asking for.

The tricky thing is that it may be that he's a 2E kid, or it may be that he's a smart-but-not-gifted-and-also-LD kid. We have to be fair to all of the possible hypotheses. This testing is not sufficient to really elucidate the problems in processing and academics and such such that it's clear which hypothesis has more support. School-based evaluations generally can't do this, and even most evaluators have no training on the topic -- that's why people come to seriously-geeky people like the Eides or myself for evaluations.

Wow.

Thank you for so much feedback and so much to consider.

Aimee - you hit the nail on the head with this "This testing is not sufficient to really elucidate the problems in processing and academics and such such that it's clear which hypothesis has more support."

I agree that it is reasonable to entertain all the options, because in the end what I want is the best course of action for my son - not a label. After one gifted kid, there is no ego involved in the label. I greatly appreciate your insight about the strategies about the testing.

I've searched the NM area and can't find someone who is an expert in 2e testing. We do have one school in the district where a teacher works specifically with 2e kids, but I can't find a private diagnostician who is experienced in this area. That doesn't mean they're not out there - just that I haven't be able to identify someone.

Inky - I've long be up front with my kids and included them with decisions that affected them, and whenever possible I made them a part of the decision. So thank you for this link - it was a very good read.

I hadn't considered bringing my son to the IEP, but I've already talked to him about all of the results and about the decisions we are going to make at the meeting so that I could get his feedback about what he wanted. He said that he is comfortable with the work in class, is getting better every day with his reading and writing, and so he is happy with the decision to not be pulled out for special ed for those subjects anymore. He said that if OT might help him learn to remember how to tie (we practice it every stinkin' day, but he can never remember the sequencing of which loop goes where), he'd like to continue. Otherwise, he is ready to move on and practice his areas of need at home. He pointed out that two years ago, we wasted money on swimming lessons because he couldn't understand how to do the strokes and then this summer the lessons went much better - he turned into an excellent swimming who can lap the pool several times from someone who couldn't even dog paddle. So his thinking is that the part of his brain that is needed for riding a bike or tying his shoes may kick in with a little more time the way swimming did. I like his logic, whether he's right or not.

Dee Dee - it seems to be rather arbitrary, because the diagnostician told me prior to testing that she would assign the gifted diagnosis if his IQ was anywhere in the 120's. It was 119, although his last IQ test was 123. Now she is saying it just wasn't high enough - that if it was higher in the 120's she would, since his other scores now showed no signs of a learning disability.

It is the logic of that explanation that's been giving me fits, because I do feel it is all so arbitrary and that I am left without really knowing the best way to advocate for my kid.

It sounds like your son has a really good attitude, and I'm really proud of your whole family for that. In the long run, I think that's a key indicator of success in life.

I wish I had so insight in how to get him the gifted services that he needs, but if the school won't provide, then it's up to the family to find a way apply that same work ethic to afterschooling. Are there programs like First Lego League or Odyssey of the Mind in your area?

As far as the shoes - I think daily practice is a great thing, but I wonder if you could 'add yeast' to the reaction by also giving him a book of 'knot tying' so he can work his way up from the easiest to the harder ones. My son got interested in knot tying, and I sure enjoyed seeing the thick white rope with the cute black tips of duct tape. I liked the contrast of color too. My son learned to tie his shoes 'rather late' and then, after he learned, he kept his shoes tied and slipped in and out of them. Which I disliked. Later in Middle School, he just left them untied and hanging about 18 inches long. It made me long for the previous version. After about a year he went back to tying his shoes. He really wondered what part of 'Of course I'm not going to trip - I'm very coordinated' I didn't understand. I got to find out that there were some parts of his life that were beyond my control.

I tried offering Cowboy boots or loafers, but DS wasn't nibbling.

Shrugs,
Grinity

Grinity - I looked into the Lego League, but our state only has the robotics contest for older students. Bummer - he would've loved that.

I have decided that I am not going to rock the boat. Not because I am afraid to (I've tipped the boat over before for my oldest and have no regrets), but because I'm not sure what it would accomplish at this point. He has made enough strides in accommodations and remediation for the learning disability to function on grade level in the class. He is thriving in his class this year, and I think another year or two will really show whether he is indeed gifted as he makes even more strides with his disability or whether he is a very bright child who is not gifted. If in another year or two I see that he needs more creative or challenging work, then I can invest in some private testing and do whatever it takes to battle the school to get him what he needs.

I'm not sure I'm making the right decision, but it is the most expedient since there are no pressing needs that make it imperative that I go to war over this now.

Sigh. It would be lovely if the right parental choices where highlighted in bright yellow marker so we wouldn't have to worry so much, wouldn't it?

ABQmom, since he's thriving, then I think that's a fine answer. You will surely continue to work on the things that need work, and see where he goes from here.

I think the enormous time and energy cost of advocacy should be spent judiciously, where it's really needed-- in those cases where the child is not thriving or an urgent need is seen. You have to pick your battles...

DeeDee

You're right, Dee Dee, and that's what finally tipped me in that direction. I was trying to prevent the same disasters we experienced in mid-school with our older gifted son when he was in regular ed, but I may be trying to prevent something that never happens anyway.

Agreed.

And the truth is that there is plenty to cheer about. He's received excellent services at the school when it comes to remediation, compensation skills and occupational therapy - more than I'd hoped for in the beginning. When he was 7, I doubted he would ever be able to communicate through writing or do a simple math problem on paper. This morning he typed his campaign platform for student council and was elected by his class after they chose his ideas as the best of all that were submitted. I have tears of joy as I write this post, because I can see doors opening up for him because of his own tenacity and the support he's already received.

Believe me, I will make sure his teachers and support staff know how much I appreciate them and what they've done.

Thanks for the advice.

ABQmom, that is just awesome. He will go far.

DeeDee

Ugh. Meeting was moved to tomorrow. One more day to second-guess myself.

They take up too much brain space, don't they.

DeeDee

ABQMom, I researched private diagnosticians here. If I can find my stuff on it, I'll PM it to you. They are available, but very expensive.

KD - if you find the info, I'd love it. Thank you!

The IEP went well, and I think it's a good fit for now. He has a teacher this year who has over 30 years' experience and is still highly invested in the kids. He has already offered some solutions which have made an excellent improvement (finger spelling on sand paper for one - my son got a 100 on a spelling test for the first time ever). So I'm ok not fighting the not-gifted label at this time, since getting it would mean not having this teacher this year.

The diagnostician recommended in the IEP that my son be re-evaluated for gifted within the next three years, so it's actually part of his IEP. She said she thinks that as he continues to gain new ground, he will perform better in testing. And I am good with that. The IEP in place allows him some of the accommodations he would have had in gifted - more creative based projects instead of worksheets, etc. They also added in the entire rainbow of accommodations for the dysgraphia just in case we need to use any of them, but his current teacher says that my son is keeping up and thriving with the same written work that the other kids have (minus the poor spelling on written assignments).

So thank you - all of you - for helping me sort through the issues with the right resources and information. It was such a help!

ABQmom, good for you. The tough calls you made in this round of negotiations make sense to me. I hope it all works out well!

DeeDee

I PM'd you...

I'm glad that the IEP went well. Sounds like they're willing to work to you.