DS5 is on the wait list for the Neurolearning Clinic (gifted/dyslexia specialists) and has OT for sensory processing and retained reflexes. His giftedness was confirmed with an IQ test earlier this year. I understand that high ability/IQ score doesn't equal high achievement/good grades. I get it. It is just hard to see it in your own kid.

I sat in on his class today for his Christmas Party. At the beginning in circle the teacher went through each kid and did either sight words or letter sounds. Most kids are doing sight words but a few are still on sounds. When it was my son's turn the teacher (not his usual one) asked which sight words he was on (they are numbered by groups). He said he did not know. A bright teacher pleasing girl spoke up and said "He doesn't do words. He still does sounds". He went through the sounds very quickly with only one reversal that he quickly corrected.

Later they played a combined class game of musical chairs. So it was forty something kids shuffling around a small classroom with loud music. AKA sensory kid's nightmare. He is of course one of the first ones out, gets frustrated, and cries. He quickly recovers to cheer on friends and it was fine. Not ideal but I was glad he recovered quickly.

His teacher mentioned at the party that he needs to work on remembering his classmates' names. That for some reason he can't seem to remember them and I should work with him on that. I wanted to say "Sorry, we are too busy. He has OT exercises, plus OT HWT, plus the BOB books, song sheets, sign language sheets, and sight word sheets you send home". She is nice and I would never be that rude it is just...ugh. I get that it is weird that his fingers don't seem to work right when it comes to sign language and sight words seem new every time and the BOB books we patiently read with him every night are for four year olds. We are working on all of it.

I don't mean to make it sound like he was bad or it was a bad party. The kids had fun. I liked seeing him with friends. Seeing other little boys save him a seat and goof around was cute. He seemed like a normal little kindergartener. He was not the only one to cry over trivial things. Overall, he was gracious, kind, helpful and well behaved.

The whole experience made me see that what ever giftedness he has, it isn't going to shine in the classroom for a long long time. He isn't going to be a strong reader compared to his peers. He can't consistently write numbers 1-10 so arithmetic is a struggle. Writing is improving but he still avoids it if he can.

I am not really sure there is a solution. It is just sad. It seems like one E is in bold 20 pt. font and the other is a tiny e in 10 pt. font.

Sounds like it's been a rough go as a misfit for your DS.

In our house, we sometimes call it exceptionality whack-a-mole. Something pops up as crucial to address, we throw our energy into it, make progress, and then something else pops up. It's exhausting.

Do you have a class picture at home? Practicing the names of the kids in the class is important. Most teachers will assume that all kids know all other kids by name within the first week. When you reach December, and your kid doesn't know then names, this places him in a difficult spot both socially and academically. If you have a class picture, it can almost just be a casual dinnertime thing. "Hey, who is this kid? What's he like?" and have a discussion about each child. Point out physical features of each kid to make them easier to identify if remembering the face seems to be the struggle, or discuss the name if remembering the name is what's difficult.

My dyslexic son took ages to learn the names of his classmates, and it is still a problem for him as a teenager. The picture idea is a good one.

He took longer than his classmates to learn to read, and needed intensive phonics instruction to associate sounds and letters. He can read well now, and writing for him is a real strength as long as he has a computer to do the spellchecks for him. The phonics is still a weakness, but the ability to analyze and integrate ideas is his strength.

Your son may well surprise you with his gifts after he finishes with the foundation learning he needs to do.

Thank you for sharing this. I know exactly how you feel... exactly.

Early elementary has certainly been THAT kind of experience for us. Big E, tiny e, with the disabilities always in the way. But with time and enormous attention to remediating problems, for DS10 in 5th grade, the E's are pretty close to equal, with the gifted E coming out on top more and more of the time.

It will not always be as it is today. Children learn and grow.

BTW: This app can be customized to make flash cards for identifying pictures of friends: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/word-slapps-vocabulary/id413888079?mt=8

DeeDee

The name thing is kind of odd. It isn't from lack of interaction with the other kids. He remembers details about them. Santa came to the classroom during the party and the kids went up to tell him what they wanted. While they were waiting the girl next to my son leaned over and said "I can't remember what I want. I don't know what to say". He said "You want a kitten. One with long white fur. That is what you said when we talked about this in class."

So he remembers faces and details about them. "The boy that swallowed his tooth" "The boy that gets to watch scarey movies" "The girl that is allergic to milk"
I found this interesting
http://www.beatingdyslexia.com/memory-management-techniques.html

We will figure out something.

I know we need to focus on strengths and not just weaknesses. I know he will get through elementary and be fine. It is just sad that what constitutes "school" for young 2E kids is mostly focused on weaknesses.

FWIW, our educational system is very hung up these days on early reading instruction when in fact a lot of kids aren't ready. There is plenty of research that shows that actively teaching young children (under 8) to read doesn't confer a long term advantage and can even hurt by turning reading into a painful chore. (I am not talking here about kids who spontaneously read without instruction.) it sounds like they have your little guy working so hard!

BTW, my 10 yo dd with WISC VCI 166 didn't read until 7. She had minimal instruction because we unschool. She now reads at a high school level. She has no LDs, but just had her own unique time table for picking this up. I realize not everyone can or wants to homeschool, but it does seem like our schools are a lot about fitting square pegs of all dimensions into some pretty narrow round holes.

Me too.

I've abandoned the hope of in-school performance being in any way reflective of DS's cognition... I've just kind of let it go.

(the silver lining is that in spite of his inability to function in class, his teacher still says she can see the wheels in his head turning )

My now 16 year old son seemed the opposite of gifted until he was 11 or 12 years old (he has dyslexia and ADHD). Even now, he has major problems with much of the academic work of high school. But with the things he is good at, he is very very good, and that's what keeps me believing that it will be ok in the end.

Actually, I should qualify the "major problems" thing. He has difficulty doing as well in school as he feels he should. He is currently in an IB program that seems to focus exclusively on his weaknesses, so doing well (his definition of doing well is all As) is elusive. I'm pretty sure that when he gets to college and is able to focus on science, math, and engineering, he will do very well.

So my point is, that for some kids it takes a really long time to see the giftedness. You tend to hear about the 2e kids where the second exceptionality is hidden by the giftedness, but there are some kids where it is the other way around for a very long time.

I have another son whose level of intelligence is pretty much the same as the older one's, but he doesn't have the dyslexia part. Everything is really easy for him--he is 10 years old, in 6th grade (one year skip) and in Algebra I. We are probably going to be going for a second whole grade skip soon as he is not challenged at all (except in math, and even there he's not overly challenged). I'm mentioning this because I continually find it amazing how different the world is for my two sons just because of the dyslexia.

I'm glad you will be seeing the Eides. They are amazing.

I did feel like the disability e overshadowed the ability e in terms of time invested in working during the early years of elementary - there's no way around it, when a child has an LD like dyslexia they are going to need to work much harder than kids (gifted or not) who don't share the LD. I've been frustrated for my ds over it, and wish like heck he didn't have an LD, but I've never really felt sad about it - it is what it is. What I did that helped me feel better early on (and also helped my ds once he was a little older than your ds, and after he had a definite diagnosis, was to read stories about successful adults who'd struggled with dyslexia etc - you can find *tons* of those stories online, about people who are very familiar to most of us as extremely successful adults (the founder of Jet Blue, Charles Schwab, Patricia Polacco (sp?) (author), the actor who plays Harry Potter is dysgraphic, etc). Most of these adults had a tough time in school, some didn't have their disabilities recognized until they were adults. The key theme though is that their LDs didn't define them as adults. I've tried my best to take what I can learn from reading their stories to help my ds get through school as best as possible. I've been up front with him from late elementary on that it's simply going to take more work than it takes his non-LD peers. That isn't the way anyone would want it, but that's the way it is. Gradually over time I see some of the brighter side of having to push through an LD to get to the other side, of having to put in all that extra work. DS is at the point where he's making progress, progress that *he* can really see and own, and that's helping tremendously with his ability to see that he can shine in spite of it all. Middle school made a huge difference too, because now the world of classes has opened up and he's got a chance to take accelerated classes with teachers who are teaching subjects they are trained in, not just general education all bunched into one class/one teacher. That's helped put ds in situations where teachers get to know him and start really appreciating his intellect and not seeing just the struggles.

I think another tough part of early elementary is that it's a time when *many* parents (not just parents of 2e or LD kids) compare milestones, and also when many parents are convinced their children are amazingly gifted because their children started sounding out words before they got to kindy. And parents like to talk about how amazing their kids are when they are starting out in school (and in preschool). This part of parenting (the part where you're immersed in all of that) is going to fade into the background relatively quickly once the kids hit 2nd grade and beyond. Early reading doesn't necessarily predict amazing intelligence - there is a wide variety of ages at which kids are developmentally ready to start reading - even EG/PG kids. In your case, I really do suspect that there's something to your ds' struggles based on what you've written, but I think it's important to keep this in mind so that it's not so painful comparing what's up with your ds to other kids in the classroom. Chances are he's not the only one who might still be working on sounding out letters or early site words, and chances are there could be other high IQ kids in amongst the kids who are not great readers yet.

I don't know if this bothered anyone else, but the idea of the whole class sitting together (and with parents in the room) and reviewing where they are at in reading seems potentially embarassing for some of the kids - I know it would have bothered 2 out of 3 of my kids. When my kids were in K/1, reading was done in small groups so that similar-paced kids were together.

Anyway, I apologize - I had to post this in a hurry and I'm not sure it makes sense.... please know it's not always going to feel like E/e - the LD is *not* going to take away from the amazing person and the amazing thoughts and ideas that your ds holds inside, it's just going to make it tough for awhile to fit into the square peg of elementary school.

Hang in there,

polarbear

eta - just wanted to add that I think, for me, the most frustrating thing over the years is seeing how the LD e has impacted my ds' socially. He fits in really well socially at school and has friends now, but he felt very alone and different in early elementary, and it felt to me like the people you'd think would go out of their way to care about having kids like ds feel included (teachers and school staff) instead treated him as if there really was something "different" about him (rooted in personality, not LD). Getting him out of the school he was in helped tremendously with that, but even now, when he has a great school environment and has friends and is popular at school and things are rosy... he is still spending so much time on homework at night that he doesn't have the free time other kids have. He purposely chooses not to join many after-school group activities because his first thought is always "I won't have enough time to get my homework done"... so that's not exactly what I'd hoped and dreamed of for school and outside of school to look like for my kids. And that honestly still gets to me at times.

Re not remembering names - my ds never could remember names of his classmates. He finally remembers them now, in middle school, but otoh he's in a very small school and he's in the same classes with mostly the same kids all day. I think part of it is his LD, and part of it is what he's interested in. Even though he remembers their names now, I still see big differences in the types of things he notices at school vs what his sisters notice - they are much more socially aware, and that part of it (for my ds) I think is simply that what the other kids are doing just doesn't interest him as much, kwim? In any event, there were things in K/1 that I just didn't worry about as important for my kids and let it slide - I think that in this case, memorizing his classmates names might be one of them.

I think that ANY parent of a special-needs child feels this frustration particularly keenly during PreK through about grade 3, and then again during middle adolescence.

It's the transitions, and figuring out a new way to navigate in a world that isn't made for those differences.

It's so hard to want to address items M, N, and P (which other parents GET to address as their top priorities)... and feel cornered into instead needing to address items A, B, and C since those are such big problems. I've wanted to cry sometimes from the bitter realization that I'm pretty much never going to get to have a "fun" conference with a teacher... it's always about what isn't working or is violating my child's 504 plan. Good times. Well-- you know.

{hugs}

Just keep swimming, right?

Anyway-- like polarbear, I just wanted to let you know that it's really about the "figuring this out" of any new(ish) set of demands. It does get better with time and familiarity, though as you're probably gathering, it also gets bad again when the set of external demands changes again.

The good news is that you gradually become more nimble in your approach to solving these problems, and so does your child. That really is hope, I think. I don't spend nearly as much time battling things as I did in elementary school-- because I recognize brick walls and don't waste time on them now (I immediately look for an alternate route instead).

Yes this bothered me ... I thought to myself 'I really do not like the sound of this.' In my son's school reading in broken down into small groups also and a teacher/paraprofessional works with the children and they are with similarly-skilled peers. The children do their sight works individually and are assessed individually, etc. not with the entire class observing... The kids do compare somehwat because the 'levels' are different colors and they have all figured out the levels and know who is where although this is discoraged by the educators. The type of arrangement you described your son has to go through would have been problematic for my kiddo, I am pretty sure.

The big circle reading thing isn't a regular part of his day. He usually arrives in the afternoon and this was something the morning class aide was doing to keep the kids busy while the party was set up. They usually work in small groups but the kids know who is in what group.

I still don't lke it personally... It would have totally rubbed me the wrong way - they couldn't have done something a little less obvious to 'keep busy'? I dunno I'm a little sensitive I guess

My DS8 didn't remember the names of the kids in his class until he moved to a school where the same kids have been in his class for 2 years. He still gets a couple of the girls with similar names mixed up. He knows them all, just not their names. I don't think this is necessarily related to LDs (my kiddo has none). It takes me forever to get people's names down when I first meet them.

Found this interesting: http://www.spring.org.uk/2011/12/why-peoples-names-are-so-hard-to-remember.php

I think the thing I find frustrating is how the the 2E combination affects finding the right school fit and working with educators.

We met with my son's teacher over the summer with scores in hand. I tried explaining that even though he has a high IQ we suspect he might have LD's that run in the family and that he might not appear to be a top .01% kid like the report suggests. He still seems like "that kid" when you talk to him but I don't think discussions are encouraged in class.

I feel like I may have lost credibility. While it hasn't been said, I fear the feeling from the school is that he is a normal bright but immature spoiled boy (not particulaly gifted or dyslexic) and we are weirdos for having him tested in the first place and for following up with more. That the reason he doesn't dig in and finish his work in a reasonable amount of time is because he used to getting his way. That the reason his work is full of errors is because he doesn't try hard.

I know this isn't true.
The books he reads at school with his teacher are ones we have been over and over and over at home. He has them memorized. He likes being ahead and works on reading at home without any hassel. We are super proud of him for this. We know it is hard and he works on it every night anyway.

When he tries a new BOB book at home it is kind of crazy how rough it is. There are the normal things like reading bed as deb, inverting the u's to make a "n" sound, etc. but now there are things like reading "off" when the word is "on" or reading "jump" when the word is "hop". This is without picture prompts.

Anyway, I know we are doing the right thing by getting more testing.

I think it is just that as we figure out what school will be like for him and we learn more about him, the years ahead look like a struggle for everyone. For him as he tries to get through a system that isn't set up for him and for us as we try to figure out how to educate him.

Sorry eema, I just don't want to be in your shoes in ten years.

Yep, this is very frustrating - but it is what it is. The frustration most likely isn't going to go away for a few years, because you're in the thick of it at the moment in early elementary school. The best advice I have is to give it your all, but also not let it consume you. You *will* see your ds through this and you'll get him what he needs. It's not going to be easy, but it's definitely worth the battle.


I think it's helpful to realize you're not the only parent that your ds' teacher has most likely heard from, especially going into K/1 and even on into 2/3 grades. And the teacher has 20+ kids (usually) to educate. And teachers (rightfully so) will see themselves as trained educators who know something about how to educate children - so they may see themselves as more of an expert over a parent re academics. I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't meet with the teacher or that the teacher should ignore you, but just suggesting that it can be helpful to think of things from the teacher's point of view. So... you're the teacher, and you have a parent who's convinced her child is intellectually gifted and also challenged with an academic ability. You've got (as the teacher) more than one parent who's thought their child was gifted or who thought their child is challenged. It's highly likely that over the years, as a teacher, you would have seen lots of these parents' claims turn out to be over-estimating of either talents or challenges. SO... *you* as the *parent* are truly the expert who knows your child the best, and you know your child is gifted and challenged - so how do you get the teacher to take you seriously? Think of what would convince the teacher: data - reports from credible respected experts - could be inside the school system or private professionals, work samples that illustrate strengths and challenges. Those are the things that, combined with a little bit of patience, have worked the best for us over the years.


You've got to not over think this or worry about it. You'll gain nothing if you never speak up! And the situation with most of our schools throws parents into this role initially. *Maybe* you don't have credibility with the school at the moment (although I suspect it feels like more of a worry than it truly is in reality).. but no matter what credible level you're starting at in the school's eyes, the way to restore and continue to build credibility and to advocate successfully is the same - know your son, know what's behind his challenges, seek out the advice of professionals, get the reports, understand what they say, keep work samples etc. Keep talking with the school, keep making requests, keep advocating - as long as our requests and concerns are based in reality and backed up with the "data" - you *are* credible.

Note - the school might not *treat* you like you're credible - that's a whole other issue!


This is a very real hurdle that many of us who are parenting 2e kids face - so it's good to recognize this may be happening. And the only way I've found around it is to just keep repeating yourself over and over again every time it happens, keep restating the challenges your ds has, keep showing the reports and work samples etc.



I think what you are saying here is his teacher thinks he can read more fluently than he really can because he's memorized books that you've read with him at home (if that's not what you mean, ignore what I have to say :)). I think it's really important to put this in writing down, somewhere. Are you keeping a notebook to use when you advocate at school? This is a piece of info about your ds' developmental history so just make a note of it now, no matter how obvious it is to you now or how much you think you don't need to write it down, as well as writing down as much as you can remember of his language and reading development up to this point. Also find a way to get this into writing re school - the easiest way is to put it in a email to his teacher. Save a copy of the email.


This sounds so much like my 2e dd - she's not dyslexic but has a different type of challenge that impacts reading.


You *are* doing the right thing. Don't let your impressions of what the school staff think, or what they say, change your direction.


It's hard looking forward knowing how much work is likely ahead, and knowing that there most likely isn't going to be a perfect fit. OTOH, that doesn't mean there aren't going to be lots of happy childhood moments along the way, and it doesn't mean that it's always going to feel like a struggle. The next few years will probably be tough - but you'll get through them, and you will be giving your ds an amazing gift - in more than one way. You'll be giving him the framework within which to learn and succeed with his challenges, and you'll also be setting an example that will teach him how to advocate for himself as he gets older.

Hang in there,

polarbear

This is off topic from my OP but MON, how do you get from the teachers saying you bought the diagnosis to trusting them to educate your kid? I would be afraid they would be vindictive.

Our babysitter had a 504 plan and in high school her math teacher brought up her accommodations in class. She was really embarrassed and stressed to be singled out that way as she has an anxiety disorder but was afraid to get her parents even more involved.

Plus there is that other thread going right now about some educator disliking the gifted lable.

Ugh...I kind of feel like if every year it is going to be hit or miss with the teachers not liking me, my son or both, maybe we should start thinking about homeschooling.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply polarbear, it wasn't up when I responded to MoN.

Enough fretting. Off to the beach with DS and his new metal detector. He is convinced he will be rich within the hour.

We are just back from a 2 week vacation - one of those "bucket list" trips many people hope to make before they die. For the most part I was able to escape thinking about all of this but had a couple of experiences (once dining with a special ed teacher and another time with an assistant superintendent from a large school district) where we discussed DD's situation. The looks on the faces of these people with many decades of experience who had never heard of anything like what we are experiencing really brought home just how much she is dealing with. Even on vacation I felt a bit overwhelmed at times. It came as such a relief to get back and find this thread - it reminds me that others understand what we are experiencing and are dealing with the same thing.

Yes we too were told that DD was "indulged" and "padded" (nicer I guess than "spoiled" which is what they clearly wanted to say) and had both her giftedness and disabilities denied at first. I think when you are dealing with people who are less than ideally qualified they can't understand that a child can be gifted but unable to perform at grade level because of another exceptionality. They can't understand it so we the parents *must* be delusional, or worse. DD was penalized for her disabilities - losing playground privileges in kindergarten when she couldn't write out sentences, having her anxiety response publicly punished as bad behavior in first grade and just 2 weeks ago having a substitute para - who was assigned to scribe for her - insist that she do all her own writing because she was just being "lazy" and trying to avoid doing her schoolwork. So yes that "e" most definitely is overshadowed by the "E". And we still have a classroom teacher and principal that just don't get it.

The psych working with DD attended an IEP meeting last fall and told me afterwards that her "heart was breaking" for me. I was surprised because by the time she became involved we had gotten things back on track and the meeting she attended was actually a good, productive one. (I wish she had been at the one where the principal insisted that DD's disabilities "are her problem, not ours. She just needs to get over it.") She explained that she knew what we HAD to go through to get to the point we are now. She said that the parents, especially the mother, HAS to be seen as crazy at first. It is always that way. The parents just have to dig in our heels and hold on while we battle to get our kids what they need. I don't know why it has to be that way but from what she was saying, and what I have read on here, it certainly seems that way.

I started out trying very hard to maintain a good relationship with everyone at school. I was so very appreciative for all they were doing for DD. Then things turned a corner and the principal started going out of her way to make DD's situation even harder than it needed to be. I was clearly labeled "crazy" and was seen as exaggerating DD's situation. Her disabilities were becoming more obvious and the spec ed teacher was confirming them. The giftedness, though, had to be my imagination. We then got a third set of test results that showed the same split - 44 points between verbal comprehension and visual perception. The neuropsych used terms like "gifted" and "truly exceptional" in his report. Her scores ranged from above the 99th percentile to below the first percentile. No one can deny it anymore. No one treats me like I am crazy anymore. And they know that I will hold them fully accountable - they used up all opportunities for benefit of the doubt by allowing the principal to behave the way she did. Everyone understands now but it doesn't mean that what we went through goes away.

More and more people at DD's school understand her situation and the district is providing every conceivable service to her. It helps to not be seen as crazy anymore but DD's situation still remains very, very difficult. I can only hope that with continued spec ed support, assistive technology and the passage of time DD's "e" can be more important than her "E". For now, though, it seems like the disabilities are the primary focus. If we can't get them remediated it will be even harder for the giftedness to shine through.

Oh, we also have no memory for names. Unless a kid is in the "BFF" category or DD has known them at least half her life they tend to be "the new girl", "that boy with the missing tooth" or "I don't remember her name".

A couple of weeks have gone by since my original posts and I have given it all more thought.

First, I think the concept of a 2e kid challenges a lot of what I thought coming into parenthood.

The idea that a kid can be smart, try hard and have supportive parents but still do poorly in school wasn't really on my radar until the last year or so. It is kind of throwing me for a loop.

Here is an example: spelling tests

When I was a kid if I had a spelling test my mom would have me practice at the table while she cooked dinner. She'd call out the word and I would write it down. We might do this twice. She would also make me a deal that if I got an A on the test, I could get milkshake after school.

With my son, he writes them on paper, with chalk on slate, on a whiteboard, with dough, in the sand, in the tub, on the computer, on the iPad, etc. He really does study for these little tests. If I make him the same deal with the milkshake, what do I do when he comes home and failed because cot was "kot", dot was "bot" and pot was "Pot"?
He certainly studied much harder than I ever did. Was he anxious or distracted? Did he try hard or did he decide he didn't want a milkshake? What if he is upset? What if he isn't?

I know I will feel better about all this once we have the Eides' assessment. Right now the dyslexia is just a good guess based on family history and the challenges we are seeing. Honestly at this point I would not be surprised if he had all four - dyscalculia, dyslexia, dysgraphia and dyspraxia.

We have conferences with the teachers coming up in a few weeks. I am curious what their take on all this will be.

Take heart KJP. I don't think many of us are prepared for these 2e kids. I certainly wasn't with my eg/pg. And he, too, has flipped the way I learned and what I knew about education too.

Unfortunately, I found that since most teachers and schools were either unprepared or not equipped to deal with the eg/pg part, we were at a double loss with the E part and why we ended up homeschooling this year. It became a least worst situation and at the this point the only way that we could deal with the 2e.

Someone once said to me that I need to create my own map and to start with a blank slate on what do with DS and his education. Though this was quite terrifying and scary advice at the time, she was correct - that I had to disregard what how other kids learn, go to school, and don't have the same issues/struggles that DS has.

It can be very hard to make heads or tails out of things with 2e kids and what they need or how they brain processes information differently than the norm. Some teachers/parents may be knowledgeable about ADHD but then not the gifted part. Or not really understand when you've got multiple things like you have going on with your DS or I've had with my DS.

From what your saying about your DS, it could be a processing situation, test anxiety, or something else like dyslexia you've said. Hard to say. You need more information. Hopefully it can be resolved and the teachers will work with you. But like I said, unfortunately not all teachers, schools, or even gifted schools are created equal in dealing with 2e kids. I really wish they were though.

For ages, dd has had the habit of randomly renaming a classmate or two each year. No idea why, whether it's that she doesn't remember that the short kid with glasses is Erin or that she just thinks Erin makes a better Charlotte. (For the most part Erin/Charlotte just answers to whatever it is she's being called, which strikes me as even odder than the renaming.)

KJP, it sounds like you are pursuing all avenues and doing a really, really great job. And it is a full time job.

Last year my now dd7 was skipped from 1/2 day K to 1st in March. The principal has a rep for being very anti-skipping, so it was a big deal (that pissed some other parents off in our neighborhood school that uses the W&M gifted curriculum across the board, but no gifted services beyond that.)

My daughter has Asperger's, sensory, and vision/convergence issues. The school viewed her as MG (since tested as DYS eligable) requiring no IEP/504, etc. "She's not even on the radar. We have kids here with real problems." I was really cautious about not being "that parent" so I gave things months when they should have been addressed that day. Regarding getting appropriate math via worksheets, I was told "That would be too much work for the teacher. She does have 24 other kids, you know. Besides, what would your dd do next year." I finally requested a formal, in writing "full evaluation per IDEA" and suddenly dd was on their radar. Once a psychologist asked if she was in the right grade, they offered an immediate grade skip. Unfortunately, other things weren't addressed and we took a "wait and see" approach due to the skip. This pushed the actual IEP meeting to a couple days before the end of school and I was completely pressured to accept what they offered. Which was a list of things my daughter was supposed to work on, with basically no help and documented via observation that was supposed to spontaneously happen. Things that she was actually already doing, but that took place during things like lunch and recess (major challenges for Aspies) when her main teacher wasn't present.

Ugh, sorry for the novella . . . but . . .
I didn't find out how hard things were for dd until the day before the IEP meeting (not for lack of trying, on my part.) One heartbreaking day I asked dd about her day and she slumped down in the dining room chair while picking at her snack and said "I don't want to talk right now. I had a really rough day." She was only 6, sigh. When asked what that meant she said she had cried twice that day and she usually only cried once.

I had planned to homeschool the following January after I finished an MFA program, but realized that I just couldn't send her back. The things that the school saw as "problems to be solved" were that dd, very creatively, tried to alter assignments to play to her strengths while still meeting the requirements. Such as writing about her actual experiences with frogs rather than copying facts straight from the book. Basically, we could get her to fit in, at the expense of the creativity that is prized later in life, when it can't really be taught.

Ultimately, the thought of her spending over half of her waking hours with people who might see her as a burden with a psycho mother rather than the fascinating, insightful, if challenging, delight that she can be was not something that I could stomach.

I was pretty terrified of homeschooling her, given her intensity, curiosity, and energy. But I hadn't realized that, since she spent every bit of her coping allotment holding herself together at school and letting loose at home where is was "safe," it really wasn't harder being with her all day. And, since she was so much more relaxed, her amazingly fun and delightful side got tons of room to shine.

At this point, I couldn't possibly send her back to school, and am completely at peace with my decision to put my final semester on hold. There are still many, many challenges. But I think a number of them are related to my wanting things to be easier for her and trying to protect her, rather than fully accepting how things are. Full disclosure, we have been able to find amazing homeschool groups full of 2e kids and that has been wonderful, if exhausting given all of the group activity options.

And this isn't even addressing the issue that she is now actually learning tons at her pace. We are pretty much unschooling, with whatever bits of curriculum that strike our fancy. I am pretty waffly as to whether I should push certain things like rote math, so that the she can enjoy her gifts of conceptual math that are far above her mechanics. Or just wait until she realizes the benefits of putting in the effort to make that happen. I hope that makes sense.

Short version: If you can possibly homeschool, try it.

Best of luck to you!!!

PS: She and I both struggle with names and faces. It is a major liability in life. I don't know whether to introduce myself to people or address them with a hearty "Great to see you again!" Thus, I constantly have a deer in headlights look in social situations. Once it registers who they are, I can remember to ask about their knee surgery or dog's hernia. Oddly, dd and I tend to remember clothing and jewelry. (superficial much?)

We are definitely giving homeschooling some thought.
The school he attends is a small private Montessori school. There are about 100 kids in the whole school. The tentative plan is for him to continue there part time and get tutoring/remediation/therapies (what ever is recommended) outside of school.
Right now this is school in the afternoon M-F and OT one morning a week. If the Eides make additional recommendations, we will try to fit those in on other mornings.
The problem I foresee is that we'll just be shuffling him around a lot and it might get tiresome for him (and me).

The good news is that his first week back from holiday break was great. He got a 100% on his spelling test!