Thank you so much, Polarbear! I love hearing all about your kids and you are a great wealth of information and experience. Thank you!

I have not had DS evaluated by a neuropsychologist yet. We had a consultation with one specifically because I wanted to explore learning diabilities - particularly dyslexia/dysgraphia. We liked her and she came up with a battery of tests for testing dyslexia/dysghraphia. However, a week or so later we got the results of the developmental vision eval and the neuropsych and I both agreed it would be best to wait on doing the testing until after he has had a good amount of vision therapy and his vision problem remediated before testing for the learning disorders. I liked the neuro as did my DS - and allegedly my insurance would cover most of the testing by her. We were planning on going to her this spring and get him also tested on the WISC IV again (in addition to testing for the learning disorders) to see if there are any changes in his GAI/FSIQ as a result of getting the visson stuff treated.

However, last night I contacted the Sarah Barton website for info and she/it informed me that if my child attends a public school, I need to hire a "Certified Dyslexia Testing Specialist" to get a diagnose that the school will acknowledge... and I am not sure my neuropsych has that qualification so may have to just get him tested specifically for dyslexia by a Certified Dyslexia Testing Specialist.

I watched the Sarah Barton videos http://www.dys-add.com/videos/dyslexiaSymptomsSolutions_Part01.html and my DS just has SO many of the signs. Except that as a small child he not only never had a speech delay or any kind of pronunciation problem but he excelled in that area. He was speaking in correct grammer and full sentences well before two... He never did much "baby talk" he was always very articulate ---- people always commented (and still do) that he sounds like a a 40 year old in a child's body. I don't remember him having trouble with rhyming and he never had an ear infection.

However, he has most of the other signs:

1. great difficulty with left from right
2. can't tie shoes
3. had great difficulting memorizing address, phone number, days of week and months (he still can't do phone numbers. Still. He just recently seems to have mastered his address but he does seem to get the order of the numbers wrong). He does now know all of the months and days of the week but I definitely think he was 'slow' on those.
4. He has all of the dysgraphia writing symptoms. All of them. Every one. But he also has hypotonia so that's often to what we attribute the writing problems; hwoever, he does things like starts writing letter from the bottom up that probably do not have to do with hypotonia. And the reversals - reverses pretty much constantly.
5.Reading symptoms: skips small words (like the prepositions, etc), ignores suffixes (I have noticed he has great trouble with suffixes and will often ignore them - had no idea this was common with dyslexia), guesses at words, reads "was" as "saw" and "on" as "no." Last night he read the word "spot" as "stop" and then went back and corrected himself when he realzed "stop" must be wrong b/c it didn't make sense in the sentence. He also read "also" as "laso," reads slowly, reads through punctuation (but this has been improving). regarding spelling, I have no idea how bad Ben's is ... on the WAIS he cored very hiigh on reading and math but the spelling portion was "average." However, the dyslexia screenign tester noted that on their test DS had great difficulty on the encoding section - buit it didn;t say his score or even whether he did poorly or not.

The only other big monkeywrench is that DS actually reads and is on "grade level and above." It seems like when certain people see that the decide right then and there he must not have dyslexia - he can read! This is common with highly motivated and/or highly intelligent/gifted kids, though, right? They can still have dyslexia even though they are not below grade level but even above, right? He also excels at math - he does very well at math and dyslexics apparently often have trouble with math.

Oh and now that I have been educating myself about dyslexia... I am convicnced my husband is at least mildly dyslexic. As I went through all of the symptoms with him, he kept saying "Oh come on I had that trouble - it's normal - especially for us boys!" I was like "uh no." And he has many of the symptoms of an adult with dyslexia. He was in remedial reading in grade school for a few years - it's well known that in the early years of school, my husband couldn't write, read or spell (his spelling was atrocious no matter how hard he studied). Spell check and computers saved him in middle school and he excelled. He still avoids "reading"... he listens to books on CD all of the time but I have actually begged him to read different books on parenting and he will hand them to me and ask me to read it to him. He CAN read but he finds it so uncomfortable and fatiguing he avoids it a lot ... a lot more than he realizes and a lot more than he realizes is "normal".

So, I am not sure what the school will do. I am not angry at them - I can see their point. I contacted them about the screening results and they were all "your DS is completely on grade level - he reads quite well he is above average in many of his studies...etc.." They did say if they get me copies of the screening test and the doc's opinions/interpretations they will discuss with me what they can do. I figure that's nice - So we'll see.

It's just ironic to me - last year they (the school) was all like "there is something wrong with Ben!" - and it felt (to me) like they wanted him to be adhd/add/or maybe even ASD... So I get him evaluated and I start seeing that he seems to have some learnimng differences and this year I am like "I think there is something wrong too! But I think it's learning problem!" and they are all suddenly very much of the opinion "Ben is doing great! He's doing so well! He has no problems!" ESPECIALLY when I keep saying I think he has a learning disorder. They seem so anxious to keep assuring me he's doing so well he couldn't possibly - he's no "different than his peers." Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the positivity... I love that people are saying good things about him for a change - instead of "we need to talk to you about DS." And it trickles down to DS who is much happier at school this year. But I have to admit it makes me wonder... Do some schools 'like'(or find it easier MAYBE?) to deal with adhd/add or spectrum disorders rather than physical disabilities or learning disorders like dyslexia? I really think that if I were like "please test my kid for ADHD or ASD they'd be more willing" They seem to love "behavioral experts and plans" and social skills classes and such... It just seems that way to me. But mention a learning difference and they get kind-of cagey weird.

Anyway, if they won't test him (or test him properly), I will get him tested myself. But the tutoring is expensive - I'd love to be able to get them to do that. However, I see their point that they wouldn't want to spend money tutoring a kid who is not only not behind but ahead. Nevertheless, as his mother that can not be enough for me.