Pemberley :
I did not know what NLD was. I googled it and find very interesting new sources of information. This seems to perfectly fit with DS challenges… As far as social aspects are concerned, my son has very few friends and they are mostly girls. He used to be invited to many birthday parties, but not any more since 2 or 3 years. But, he is socially-able and can speak to anyone right in the eyes on any subjects … Well, indeed we did not search for NLD-ish. Twice-exceptionnality is just almost not known in France, so NLD is probably a too new concept here … I’ll have to get deeper in this. Thanx
Your answer definitely strokes a cord with me. I also asked for the negative sides. Because, without any doubt, it will be hard … But it is just a matter of balance between pros and cons. When you tell “Neither DH nor I feel that we could possibly meet her needs in terms of the reading, writing or math. We do a ton of enrichment and feed her comprehension strengths but just don't feel we could possibly do what the trained spec ed teachers do for her.”, my feelings are quite different since we succeeded just on extra-time to get him back on the track to reading, whereas the speech therapist and school fail. As long as the speech therapist is concerned, it is a matter of the time spent with her : one hour per week .. Definitely not enough for a kid who need to practice to get into it …For the school, I guess they just do not really care of his real reading skill. A good question from masterofnone is “Do you see your son's disabilities as interfering with his ability to learn or do you see them as something that can be worked through and around?”. This question is at the core of my interrogations … A dyslexia cannot be cured and most of his challenges either. Methylphenidate is just a help, a kind of wheelchair for ADHD…. And I do not know if we can work through all his challenges. But, the fact is that we succeed in getting him to be a better reader by a one-on-one hard working way (we also try to be as encouraging and gentle as possible). I mean school just do not really care of what he will be in 10 years. And my guess is that if we let school do, in 3 years, he will be at a 3grade reading skill with everybody in the educational institution being satisfied with all the progresses he did and asking us for approval. … So, motherofnone, I have no answer to your question and I am afraid of being wrong with believing that we can “fight” against his challenges. But if we do not do anything, nobody will. Our aim is definitely to bring him up not to wait and see … Maybe, we are too optimistic with that. An opposite example is making him learn the multiplication facts … It just drives us nervous (need a lot lot of patience to work that). You can have him repeating several times 6x8 = 48 in a row, and on the tenth time he will still tell 38 although we tried several ways to make him learn (understanding, counting, flashcards, …) I am not sure that we can work that around. But at least, with us, we try to make him learn instead of saying he just cannot do it as a postulate. It does not mean that we refuse him as having challenges … For instance, as his handwriting is just very poor, we started to make him learn to use a computer keyboard. Anyway, we are presently thinking as HowlerKarma and jaylivg.
Pemberley, I am thanking you for your concern about DW distress … Well, this is also quite a problem for me. As I said before she is just willing to homeschool our kids. But I told her several times that it is possible that it might not work and that she should possibly accept that. Moreover, the psychologist in charge of DS told her that she is afraid that this homeschooling can destroy her relationship to DS. Man, I do not know what to think of that. If it had to happen things will just get worse and worse. And I give it a 40 %. Anyway, right now, DW is just into the homeschool stuff, I do not think that she’ll change her mind.
To answer masterofnone about part-time working, we tried to see what can legally be done on a half-time working, but in France, it is not that easy. If your kid is in a school, he can only get out during school hours to go to a therapist (speech therapist, OT, shrink, …). Moreover, hiring a tutor is just too expensive if DW got to a half-time work. Besides, in case of homeschool, hiring a babysitter, having fun (movies, theater, …) will just get impossible money-wise …
For happylymom, my DS has visual issues too not on vision efficiency but more on how his view focuses on things, tracking drawings with closed lines but with not opened ones .. I do not know the exact English for his troubles, sorry ... But once again, with the work he do under our help, he got better in identifying syllables in words (a kind of eye-tracking thing), whereas he did not make a lot of progress with a vision therapist..
