I had to do that because most places will give the teacher's form way more weight than the parents. When the two forms conflict, they consider the parents unreliable (the basc manuals and their training actually instruct this). I needed concrete evidence the teacher's form was unreliable. I submitted all of the forms with the recording. I also submitted all of the in-class observations.
I just have to reassure you that this is not actually true.
aeh, first I want you to know how much I've really valued and appreciated your insight here - thank you so much for taking the time to share your knowledge with us - I can't tell you how much it's been helpful for those of us dealing with 2e as well as simply gifted children!
With that said, I hope you won't think I'm trying to argue a point you've made - I'm not, just wanted to shed some light on what parents of 2e kids sometimes experience, particularly at school. While there are safeguards in place, things like a misdiagnosis of ADHD based on a teacher's negative ratings can happen, even with trustworthy professionals. Our ds was evaluated by a neuropsych who we highly respect, but he did come away from his 2nd grade neuropsych eval with an ADHD diagnosis based solely on his teacher's BASC rating (she's the teacher I mentioned above). We (parents) anticipated going into his eval that she would be biased based on the communications we'd had with her all year up to that point, so we purposely requested a form also be filled out by that year's 2nd grade student teacher, who'd been in the classroom all year and had ample time to observe our ds in an educational setting. We personally handed forms to both teacher and student teacher, and when the completed "forms" were turned back over to us in sealed envelope (per directions from our neuropsych) the teacher informed us that she told the student teacher not to fill out her form because she didn't have enough experience to be able to fill it out correctly - so we off the top lost a second look at our ds' classroom functioning. The neuropsych showed us the primary teacher's responses and they were all very very "negative" - not really the term I'm looking for, but not descriptive of our ds and indicating he was having horrible difficulties functioning at school. And to be fair, he was having challenges - but not to the degree or of the types listed by the teacher on the BASC. His actual and correct diagnosis is Developmental Coordination Disorder, and he has very severe dysgraphia due to the DCD, plus he moves slowly and clumsily and has other fall-outs from the DCD, plus an expressive language challenge thrown in the mix. So he has some symptoms that look like ADHD, but it's not ADHD.
Having that diagnosis of ADHD on his documentation followed him like wildfire at school too - it was the diagnosis that teachers understood because they see a lot of it, and it was something we had to get past every time we were trying to advocate for his true needs based on his true challenges.
I know that sometimes we probably come across as perhaps paranoid or not trusting (as 2e parents) but some of us have been through some very tough battles advocating at school, and I think we're basically battle-scarred. Perhaps even a bit PTSD
(speaking for myself here, not Irena!).
Thanks again for you're helpful insight - it's much appreciated!
polarbear
