Still thinking about all of this. It seriously keeps me up at night.
I am seriously thinking about shelving the entire evaluation. Perhaps next year, DS will have a teacher that understands giftedness, creativity, and the need for challenge and be able to give a more accurate BASC-2 assessment. I just feel like this teacher really doesn't understand DS well enough to have such big input in this assessment. As it stands now, I have no trouble with him at home (and never really have). I have no trouble with him being babysat, no trouble with him at camps, at mathnasium, at chess club, etc. He gets darn good grades and his reading and math skills are grade levels above. Since he gets strong accommodations for writing now, things have been very smooth this year on that front with him seeming happy and less stressed. I can only imagine that as he continues to get better and better at keyboarding, he will continue to improve in this area. I am not getting phone calls home or any reports that he is "in trouble" all of the time. He reports that he is relatively happy at school - he likes the advanced math class, he likes ATP, I give him books to read at 100 book challenge (yes we "always disobey" and "break the rules" together
but it is a rule I am kind of proud he disobeys). And ever since I have been giving magnesium baths his little tic even went away. The only "problem" presently is that the teachers are concerned that he pays "no attention" at all in class. But he must be paying SOME attention because he gets 100% on his tests.
He also seems to be developing his EF skills (granted they are probably weak for his age but they defintiely seem to be improving) - he seems to have no trouble with his home routines, etc. Despite that, he says he loves checklists (as do I, LOL) so he made one up for himself for morning routine (this was prompted by him not being able to rely on DH who takes him in the morning b/c often DH is struggling with his own routine and our 4 year old and because they have them in school) and at the bottom of the list he wrte "what can I do to help us all get out?" So cute.
So why do we need this diagnosis right now? The waiting list for the actual eval is about months anyway. I think it can wait...Much of what he seems to be struggling with seem due to Dyspraxia/DCD and those will improve with time (as they do seem to be doing).
Of course, I am still struggling so tomorrow I may decide to go ahead with the eval. I just don't know. I do know that the teachers 'think' we are going ahead with an ADHD eval, they also know it will takes months and I am pretty sure that'll keep them happy and off my back for awhile.
Thoughts/insights/critisms?
