Hi Pemberley,
When she is happy and comfortable in her own skin things are going well. Not many parents can say that their child is THAT happy. I guess all the rest is gravy - right?
For me, it's happy in own skin PLUS growing in the direction where I can foresee success, noticeably adding the right skills over time. In DS's case, this is primarily "how are the social skills and self-control coming along?"
But I also realize that I have to be the one on guard - looking for the warning signs and advocating, advocating, advocating. People who see only her reading or writing skills do not believe she has such high level comprehension and can discuss things like subtext, character development, etc in audio books. People who have these sorts of discussions with her absolutely cannot believe she is learning disabled. So far I have been able to protect her from hurtful comments but I know that they will be coming - and probably sooner rather than later. I have signed up for some advocate training sessions that will start this week. Hopefully that will help.
Yes, vigilance is something we tend to. However, I would warn you against going overboard with vigilance. You can make yourself crazy that way. I'm striving for a level of reasonable watchfulness...
If you haven't already, it's good to have conversations about LDs with her now, before she's a sensitive pre-teen. Make it part of the set of things she knows about herself: "things I'm naturally good at" vs. "things I have to work to be good at," while making it very clear that all people have things in both of those categories. That way, if she gets negative talk at school, she can shoot back "I'm working to get good at this" or "I just need more practice, I'm getting there" because she already knows how to think about this aspect of herself.
My mother says if a child knows he's lovable and capable, you're doing it right.
How do you look 5 years down the road though? At this point I don't even know if she'll be able to read independently by then. I know we will need to start working on keyboarding and maybe some text-to-voice technology but the special ed people want to focus first on trying to get her as much of the basics as possible and I guess I agree with that, as long as that concentration doesn't prevent us from doing the other stuff down the road.
Yes, right now basic reading is The Thing for her, I'd imagine. And the ancillary skills you mentioned can come in incidentally. (There are touch typing computer games; 5-10 min. a day, as play, gets a person there, but I'd think it's a subsidiary investment to the reading, which is core).
By 4th-5th grade they start to do more independent reading-to-learn (instead of learning-to-read, and the teachers are presuming comprehension even as they continue to fine-tune it. Having a goal of catching her up and keeping her caught up to average age-peers in comprehension and mechanics by 5th is a good one-- whether it's achievable, time will tell, but put everything in place as if it can be made to happen, and keep following through on that plan.
My gut also tells me that while the public school is all over her now providing special services through her IEP eventually she won't be that cute, sweet, precocious 1st grader - will they be as eager to help her? If we can't also get the enrichment that she needs (and I don't know where we will stand on her admission to the talented and gifted program if her ld's or anxiety interfere with her test performance) then I will again be looking at whether we need to do private school with additional support services.
IEP services are NOT based on cuteness, but on need. You will continue to help the school see the needs, and make sure she gets what she needs. This cannot be solved now-- you've got it under control now, so the future action will have to be done in the future. Trust yourself, you'll know when it needs to be taken; and there are annual IEP meetings that you will prep for as they come up (but not continuously, because you would go mad).
I do continuously keep shoving evidence in a binder-- completed work, both good and bad examples, correspondence from school that I find telling, notes on conversations with teachers. But I do not spend a lot of time poring over it until meeting prep time. I used to. Climbing out of my tree now.
When do they test for giftedness? I'd let that worry sit unattended for a while; addressing the LD is the best thing you can do to allow her to test well, and you're doing it, so it's not worth any further worry at this point. You can triage the worry if you want to, putting off some pieces of it.
I guess it's the looking ahead part that makes this all so tough - isn't it?
I find I am doing the worst when I get into the hand-wringing "WhatEVER will become of this CHILD" mode, which is about the long-term future, which is impossible to predict at this point. I do best for myself (as well as for DS) when I'm following through on concrete plans that seem likely to create long-term success. We are all happier that way.
Hang in there.
DeeDee
