We've been going through a really rough time with DD6 (almost 7) and we're now at a point where I feel like my head is just spinning. Reaching out here in the hopes I can get some advice or direction or affirmation or anything at this point, really.

DD is in 1st grade, public school, GT pullout program twice a week. She has always really struggled with transitions, but the start of this school year was especially tough for her. She started showing OCD sort of behaviors and extreme germaphobia and was just anxious about everything, it seemed. I started taking her to a psych, who is great, and I can see how she will be a great support going forward. This psych did end up referring us to the practice's multidisciplinary ASD team, due to DD's sensory and anxiety issues.

While waiting for the initial ASD screen interview appointment, DD's classroom teacher called to update me on some reading assessments and to just check in and say DD had settled in a bit and she felt the anxiety was much improved. We have seen great improvement at home in the last 2 weeks as well. Teacher ends up saying she has been teaching for 20 years and has never had a student as bright as DD. She said that in order to appropriately teach her, she would have to work with her individually all day. Obviously that will never be possible, but hearing such an admission from a public school teacher was shocking and remarkable. She said she was telling me so that I would understand that she and the gifted ed teacher are in talks with the principal regarding accelerating DD. She mentioned "at least in math" but did not go into much detail.

A few days later, gifted ed teacher called to say she had met with the principal and that the plan was to test DD with the 2nd grade end of year math assessment, and then another test I can't remember the name of, unfortunately. She asked that I share the results of the ASD screen and offered to add a 504 to the GIEP with any accommodations recommended by the psych we are seeing. I am grateful and still surprised that the school is seeming to be so supportive and proactive in meeting DD's needs.

Finally, the head spinner- we had the initial ASD screen interview this afternoon. I could tell right away that DD was going to dislike the guy. (I wasn't that impressed myself.) He is referring her on for the full screening (wisc v and ados, etc.) which was not surprising. He seemed to indicate that she's probably just "that gifted" and quirky, but borderline enough that they want to look further. At some point he was talking about how he had worked as school psychologist at our district, blah blah, then casually mentions that he is strongly opposed to acceleration. DD just generally disliked this guy's manner to the point that she basically just growled when he tried to talk to her. See how we got here? Part of me wished I could have growled a few times. ha!

My concern at this point is that the results of further screening will be skewed by the poor rapport she had with this guy. I don't know if we should just run the other direction, agree that it's worth testing further and try to find a different screener, or just sit tight and just hope this guy is better than he seems.

Trust your intuition, your instinct, and your guts. A visceral response that this is not a good fit is probably accurate. It seems that he does not bring out the best in your child. A parent can request a choice of other individuals to work with to achieve a strong rapport or good fit, and a professional ought not to find this personally insulting.

That being said, personally, I would be curious to know his reasons for being strongly opposed to acceleration.

I would be very careful with who you choose for an ASD screen. I took DS to a major university and the neuropsych said that a lot of quirky but neurotypical kids are misdiagnosed ASD based on superficial characteristics. DS had those characteristics--flapping hands when excited, strange voice prosody, minimal eye contact with strangers, the stereotypical abnormal math calculation ability (he could multiply and divide in K), etc. If the guy has this blanket view of acceleration being bad, how competent can he really be? The school also tried to give me a referral to a psychologist for assessment (they refused to do their own eval, but told me to get my own), and when I talked to the pediatrician about the psychology clinics on the list, she refused to give a referral, claiming they are quacks and "diagnose everyone with ASD." I would probably run the other direction. A reputable hospital clinic or University clinic would probably be a better choice.

Run the other way. THE thing that I liked about the tester for my children was the excellent rapport that was established with both of my children, who have very different personalities. You probably are not going to trust what he says at this point, anyway.

Thank you for the feedback. I, too, wish that I had gotten more information from him regarding his position on acceleration.

This is the big, hospital affiliated, local practice. I know the clinical supervisor, so maybe I will call him and see if he can make any changes without too much drama. We also see DD's psych this afternoon, so I will mention the poor rapport to her and see if she has any suggestions.

I guess I was still kind of on the fence about even doing any ASD screening, so this guy kind of tipped me over towards the "just run away now" side. I have been debating internally for over a month about whether or not she may be on the spectrum. If she's borderline, and we get a label, would it really help? Does being labeled harm the child's view of themselves? It all just feels so heavy. And then I remind myself that it would be nice to at least get the WISC done, as her school only used the RIAS, and I am pretty positive that there are some struggles that will present themselves in the scores. I think this is the reason that her teachers are eager for me to share the screening results with them. There's a 2nd e of some kind in there, causing the anxiety. We just don't know all the details yet.

I would ask if there is a different tester available.

Flee!

The WISC V can only be taken once every 2 years. The stakes are too high here to mess around with a potentially biased tester.

I would defiantly try and find a different tester. You don't need to have the screen done again but don't have the full tests done with someone she isn't comfortable. Unless you live in a very remote area you can probably find someone else to do this testing.

My DS16 has been seen by a few psychologists and been fully tested by one a bit over a year ago. He is also borderline ASD but more "that gifted" and quirky. His official diagnoses talks about 'sharing some characteristics with ASD'. My son still to this day will simply NOT TALK to adults he isn't comfortable with. (It's gotten a lot better over the past year.) And if your child isn't comfortable with a tester and she doesn't comply her testing is going to come out very skewed. I also found out that many testers are really looking and trying to pin a label on your child for ASD, ADHD and have little experience with gifted kids. Most people don't bring "normal" kids in for testing and therefore assume there must be something there they can pin a label on.

Isn't it nice to have a school district that at least is trying to work with you. My DS's school was very accommodating when I gave them DS's formal report that also included anxiety disorder and wrote us up a 504 as soon as they were able. (Wish I had done it before H.S.) When I talked about his being 2E to my surprise I received understanding and not confusion.

Best of Luck I hope you find a psychologist that both of you like to test her.

I understand your worries - we've been on both sides of the fence re evaluations where we were concerned about the evaluator, and it's worked out in different ways. In two evals, our concerns about the evaluator (which really were just gut feelings based on initial conversations) proved to be prophetic... to a certain extent. In one case (our 2e ds), the evaluation was to test for giftedness to meet the bar to get into a specific program. It became obvious in an initial conversation with the psych that she was not a fan of putting children into the program, and when she showed us the results of ds' IQ test she focused completely on the processing speed section where he scores low due to his 2nd e. She didn't diagnose or do any further testing, just focused the conversation in such a way she made it clear she didn't think he should be in the program. In my naive parenting moment (at that time I had no idea had a 2nd e and also had never looked at IQ subtests or had a clue about how IQ tests were scored)... I believed that what she was really saying was ds didn't qualify. It wasn't until I looked at this same scores again when applying for high school programs that I realized, yes, he had qualified. So - in that instance, you could say that there was bias on the part of the tester. *However* - that bias didn't impact *how* she scored his test, just impacted how she relayed the results to us, and honestly, in hindsight, she was probably right. Without understanding the issues that were impacting processing speed, ds may very well have cratered in that program in early elementary. But the point is - without having good knowledge yourself, as a parent, it can be difficult to make sense in a meaningful way of reports and conversations with evaluators.

Our second experience was with school testing - we had to have our ds tested through the school district in order to get an IEP. I did *not* like the school psych at all in our initial meeting - he came across not only as pompous but as if he was sure that his testing would disprove the previous private IQ testing our ds had and also made some comments at the meeting that showed he clearly did not understand or have any experience with ds' 2nd e. He also did not tell us when ds would be tested, and I took ds ice skating the day before testing and ds fell and hurt his head so badly that he had a major migraine going into school the next morning. He was called out to test that morning, from a one-time elective class he'd been looking forward to for weeks and would not have the chance to take again. Prior to that day ds had been pulled out by the psych to take the TOWL (which he couldn't produce any written words for due to his disability.. and was basically badgered like crazy by the psych during a 2nd go-round with that testing because the psych was convinced ds was just being obstinate). To say that all the stars were aligned against anything possibly correct coming out of this test is as major an understatement as anyone can possibly make. Yet... ds' IQ came out right exactly where it's come out every other time he's been tested.

Soooo... on the one hand, I tend to believe that no matter what, most psychologists/evaluators are in fact, professionals, and no matter what bias or gut feelings we have that lead us to worry about their view, they are going to (most often) be professional and give an honest eval. As parents, it's on us to be armed with enough knowledge to see through any bias in how the results are communicated.

On the other hand, I've had one disastrous neuropsych eval with my 2e dd (who has a memory challenge impacting her ability to read). Everything seemed fine until the morning of testing, which was also the first meeting I had with the neuropsych (other than phone conversations). I had emailed him copies of her previous testing, which included detailed testing by a reading specialist. That morning, he tossed a copy of the reading eval at me and told me it didn't make sense and that it was useless. My gut feeling told me I should turn around and leave the office that minute and never look back, but I let him proceed with testing. DD's IQ testing came back in the general ballpark of what it's been when tested previously, but she had a lot of discrepancies on achievement testing, none of which the tester found signficant in any way other than he felt dd wasn't trying. I think the test results would have been the same with another evaluator, but with a different evaluator I would have (hopefully) gotten some type of analysis of *why* there was so much scatter in her scores.


I don't think that a professional is going to let bias against acceleration influence how he scores when testing. I *do* think, that if what you want is support for pursuing education, you're better off getting testing through a psych who will put recommendations for it in writing in a report, and it's quite possible that this psych won't do that. On the other hand, I doubt he would write "child's parent is pushing for acceleration and I disagree" in a report.


I would be concerned about rapport too, and I think that's important with any evaluation. I would start by talking to your ped - who does he recommend for evaluations? Does he have patients who have experience with this evaluator, and what has their experience been?

It's also ok to tell your current psych that you'd rather go with a different group for this testing. I would not, however, just run in the other direction and not test. It sounds like you need clarity on what's really going on with your dd. It sounds like your school is willing to help, which is a great thing. Providing them with any data you can get will also help them to help in a way that will have the best chance of making a difference for your dd. While she may be doing better in school at this point, it's also possible that part of the reason she's doing better is the teacher has figured out how to make school a less stressful place, at the moment, for your dd. This doesn't mean the challenges have disappeared, just means that she's being informally accommodated to a certain extent. I'd definitely want a professional look (updated from when she was younger), to see if there are challenges leading into the anxiety, difficulty with transitions etc.

Best wishes,

polarbear

DD's school testing was completely biased and they screwed up the testing of the WIAT, inflating one of her scores by a lot (I had it re-scored). I think that some tests are more likely to be affected by bias than others. Basically, they were determined to do what they could to make DD ineligible for special ed. They looked at ONE classroom work sample, which was two sentences long, and at the lower end of the range compared to the other kids they looked at, and then they declared that the work sample was excellent. They retested her processing speed on the WISC IV and in 12 months it went up 21 points? Really? She still had very impaired fluency in other areas. I am now fighting to get that stuff out of her school records, but it has been impossible and now all I can do is write my own dissent for the school record. Of course, this makes me look like a crazy parent, but the new school refuses to take the biased and wrong testing out of their own evaluation report, claiming that legally, they can't.

So, my point is to get the testing that you need but be careful who you choose as a tester. I had no choice in terms of the school eval, but you have a choice, and you will want a report that you can trust and that you can give to the school if needed.

Lots of good comments above. I'll just add:

1.Clarifying: the WISC-V can be taken once every two years.
2.Rapport is very important.
3.Any competent psychologist can obtain a good set of scores. It's the interpretation and recommendations that depend on an expert clinician.
4.You and your child both need to feel comfortable with the evaluator; you need to be able to trust the outcomes.

Thank you all, again, for your input. It really helped me to calm down, trust my instincts, and regroup.

We have made some good progress. I told DD's psychologist that we were not willing to go forward with the screening with the ASD specialist at that practice because the rapport was so bad. She said that she would talk to the team there to see if we could be switched to one of the other ASD specialists. While we were waiting to hear back from her, DD's principal emailed me and asked me to come in for a chat. I met with the principal a few days later, and she basically just sat me down and said "What do you want?" Which was overwhelming, really. I don't know what I want, I don't know what we need, because I don't even know what we're facing yet. It sounds like she was mostly pushing in the direction of specifics for 504 accommodations, at least for the anxiety. Knowing where and when to accommodate and intervene with a child's anxiety is difficult, because there's a line somewhere between where special care should be taken, yet exposure is important for moving forward. I am obviously way too new to this to be deciding where that line is.

The principal mentioned things about this "pandora's box of testing", and what, really, is the point in labeling a child. I understand her concerns and can see where she is coming from, but I also maintain a wariness of that sort of thinking. There's a large poster in the school office, one of the first things you see as you enter to pick up your child or check in for a meeting, that says "What difference does the difference make?" Again, I can understand the sentiment and some of its value, but each time I see the stupid thing I want to yell "Really? Where should I start?!" I'm sure some of you can understand.

Anyway, the best thing to come out of the meeting with the principal was that she ended up giving me the name of a psychologist she had worked with a lot in the past. She said that he is mostly-retired, but that I should try to contact him to see if he would be willing to take us on. It is a self-pay situation, but it seemed worth looking into. I contacted him, and as soon as we began talking it felt like I had found an old friend. His methods are different than the hospital practice's ASD screening, but it sounds like a very good difference. He prefers to observe the child in the classroom and at recess before ever having met with the child (both so that the child doesn't know that they're being watched, and so that he can get a very real picture of what issues may be there.) It sounds ideal. He does not plan to do a WISC, which I am fine with.

I have since heard so many glowing reviews of this dr. DD's psych ended up offering us an appointment with a dr at their practice that would be a better fit, who I have also heard good things about, but when she and I discussed the pros and cons of going this private route, vs using their system, she even ended up saying that if it were her own child and she could afford it, she would definitely go this private route. So I am hopeful that we are finally able to get some good answers. I am aware that regardless of the diagnosis, I am really only getting started on whatever the journey will be. But it's at least a step forward, I guess.

Sounds like you are making some headway, so that is good news. Post an update when you get some news.

As far as the poster, that says "What difference does the difference make?" I would be tempted to take a sharpie and write some sort of snide comment on it while no one is looking. See how long it takes them to notice the "difference".

A poster like that would drive me crazy. I hope it goes well.

I'd be tempted to ask, very nicely, about the poster. Something like "I've never seen that poster before, what are you hoping people get from reading it?" If they say, "people are all the same," then you have some important information about their likely inability to work with differences that matter. If they say, "that there are differences between people, but not all differences matter (ex. skin color, height), so we treat everyone with respect," you know you are dealing with a more positive intent.

That's just my personality, though.

I'd also ask - or ignore. There's a chance that the poster was put up by someone else and no one in the admin or school is even paying any attention to it or thinks anything of it. It stands out to you because you're in the midst of advocating and also acutely aware of your child's differences.

I used to cringe in middle school when one of ds' main teachers (who was a *wonderful* teacher) used to bring this up every time we'd have a discussion about ds' challenges/accommodations/etc - she would always say, at some point, "pbDS, everybody has *something*" (meaning everyone has their own challenge that's tough to get through). I hated that because it felt like she was comparing the significant challenges that ds was facing with classroom work due to things he couldn't control (dyspraxia in his case), to someone like me who had a tougher time in English than in math. I thought it was coming from a place of not understanding. However.... while it was grating for me to hear... ds heard it repeatedly, understood where the teacher was coming from, and he took it to heart... and now that he's moved on from middle school and is on the threshold of adulthood, he still holds it in his heart... his teacher recognized that his dyspraxia didn't define him, and that everyone has their own "something", and his dyspraxia is just that - his "something". Not something that defines him.

Sorry to ramble off course - good luck as you move forward with advocating!

polarbear

Update--

We had DD's evaluation with the private psych this morning. He was amazing. There was no growling involved at all. I won't know any details until we sit down with him for the final report later this month, but he told me that it's definitely not ASD. So that's a relief, I suppose. He did mention OCD, but that's not really any earth-shattering news at this point.

I think he did some WIAT-III testing and some other things I was not familiar with. I suppose we'll find out more about that when we get the final report. He said he can do a WISC-V on her at some point down the road, but he doesn't feel like this is a good time. When we briefly discussed how the school had tested her with the RIAS he said that that test is junk, and "just a screener." So, there's that.