Thanks so much everyone
To AEH:
I don't really know a whole lot about dysgraphia, but DS has always done quite well on fine motor tests, generally scoring a few years above age on some of the items. The only area of weakness has been upper arm related and seems to be much better since starting swimming lessons. Using fine motor toys like K'nex and lego is not a problem and he was able to use toys designed for 3 year olds or even older at 18 months, such as jigsaw puzzles and various toys designed to be disassembled and reassembled. His pencil grip is also textbook... no thanks to me, I wouldn't even begin to know how to tell someone to hold a pencil!
He has had some gross motor delays, but only in certain areas. He sat, stood, and walked early, crawled at I think a pretty typical 8 months, etc. But despite being an excellent runner and very motivated climber, he was not jumping at 2 as expected. When he was still not jumping at 3 we started PT. We did PT for about 2 years, focused first on learning to jump and later hopping on one foot, throwing, catching, and pedaling. We quit PT shortly after 5, so about a year ago. Right after we quit he started jumping on one foot and developed interest in throwing and catching and has made good progress over the year. He still has a lot of trouble pedaling, but as we got rid of his old tricycle and replaced it with a scoot bike he no longer gets much practice. He is totally awesome on the scoot bike though, fast and fearless!
I will look into going back to review phonics some more. Honestly we never really did a lot of phonics instruction, mostly because he resisted it more than other subjects and it never seemed all that important as he was reading so well already. I can see how that might have been a mistake. I know that when I was a kid phonics was introduced in 3rd grade (it was a new subject at the time, at least at my school), so I already knew how to read at that point. Oddly I was terrible at it. I was the top reader in the class and terrible at phonics and spelling (at least that's how I remember it... I was probably more like average, at least if test scores and report cards are anything to go by, but I felt like I was really terrible at those areas.)
I will say that DS does not seem to focus at all on inhibiting tics. I'm not 100% sure he even knows he is doing them most of the time. He has rarely mentioned them, other than to complain that putting his chin on his chest was hurting his neck for instance. He's a sensitive kid and I try to ask him sometimes if there is anything that he feels like he has to do that bothers him and vague questions like that and he just says no every time. But I don't think he has developed any ability to stop ticcing for any period of time. When the tics are bad they can interfere a lot with what he is doing, which is why we decided to try medication, DS was harming himself and tic frequency was almost constant. Luckily without the Tenex he is ticcing a little more, but not too bad. Just sniffing and throat clearing lately and surface slapping every once in awhile. Very manageable.
I can't wait to go to our appointment next week and hopefully get started on the process of figuring out exactly what is going on with DS. Or, at least as exact as this science gets. I'd love to get one of these full neuropsych reviews everyone here talks about, but they are so expensive and I can't find anyplace that does them and accepts our insurance. We paid out of pocket for the IQ test and are going to a developmental psych for the mental health stuff, which is covered by insurance. The gifted school will be giving a placement test, I assume over the summer. Now that DS is 6 is there any testing related to reading/related skills that I could get the district to do? I'm already saving them a ton by homeschooling DS, so hopefully they will be a little extra willing to help out.
I did look into eye docs and the ones who check for the convergence stuff are all pricey and don't accept our insurance. I did take DS to our eye doc in December and he said all looked good, that he is a bit far-sighted, but that is totally normal for his age. DS does read a lot better if he uses his finger to read, but for whatever reason, he seems to be completely against doing so. Sometimes he will allow me to use my finger and I find that the faster I move my finger along, the more smoothly he reads! So then I feel like he really can read faster, but maybe he isn't trying hard enough or something?
Ultramarina:
Thanks you so much for the kids words. If you ever figure out the up and down thing please share the secret! I feel like I have 2 different kids sometimes. One of them so wonderful and the other, well, sometimes I fantasize about packing my bags and disappearing. Today was a great day though and DS even managed to swim about a foot without a flotation device, after jumping in! Great day for us!
LAF:
I watched video 1 of 4. I will watch the rest tomorrow. It was very interesting. It showed me some different ways to think about some of the behaviors, especially the touching things when walking past. I really wish I could find someone willing to treat DS with cognitive-behavioral therapy, but so far no one will try it. They all claim he is too young and play based therapy is age appropriate. He's been getting play based therapies for years and they just haven't helped at all. He has benefitted much more from discussions with me and reading the great series of books that we have on social skills. In play therapy he just runs around and acts goofy. What I have seen of the video so far has motivated me to call everyone again and bug them to please try cognitive therapy with DS, he is super smart and there is a good chance he will benefit!
OK, and finally, some examples from our work today:
First a word problem in his math book, starting with what he read and then as actually written in the book. I corrected him as he read. He was able to figure out that he needed to multiply, so I know he is understanding what he is reading.
DS: The Jones farm has 24 crows each produce 52 quarts a day. How much quarters are produced each day?
Book: The Jones farm has 24 cows that each produce 52 quarts of milk a day. How many quarts are produced each day altogether?
And in his reading workbook there are 2 columns, one to write what he already knows about a subject and one to fill in what he learned in the text. Here are yesterday's and today's pages:
Topic: Spiders (He told me the sentence he wanted to write, I helped him remember it as he went and spelled most of the words for him, I reminded him to use punctuation)
What do I already know?
Spiders make an equiangular spiral.
They make lines across the spiral.
They dont fly.
Spidrs dont have tals.
They dont move fast.
Spidrs have all different numbrs of eyes.
What did I learn?
Spiders are not insects, they are arachnids.
Arachnids can have more than 8 legs.
Spidrs are carnivores.
Tarantulas can have 12-inch legs.
And today's page he did all on his own as I was "busy" (I sometimes come up with excuses not to help him to see what he is able to do on his own. The books has limited space to write in narrow columns, so I copied this pretty much as close as I could to how he wrote it. Too bad I can't reverse the letters he reversed, but there were quite a few of them. I did help him spell most of the words in the what do I already know section, many words he finds on the page and copies the spelling.)
Topic: Fairies
What do I already know?
They
reFill Your
liFe
FaiRies Fly
FaiRies Are
not reAl
FAiRies Fly
high AnD
loW in Zel
DA FiRies
Are Red
in ZelDA there Are FAiRies
What did I learn?
There Are lots or FA-
mous FAir-
ies in Fic
tion. hum
Ans though-
t BAD FAiries
would hum-
An BABies
rePlAce the
m with FAiry babies
I can tell that DS is understanding what he is reading quite well, but his spelling, handwriting, and ability to remember what he is writing as he is writing it appear to be limiting him. This may be totally age appropriate, I have no idea. I guess that since he has been able to read and write letters for so long I just expect that he would have progressed a bit more. And I definitely thought he would read much faster by now. Oh, and he is clearly into Zelda right now, but he can't actually play video games with controllers. He can use a mouse and touch controls, but he can't seem to wrap his head around directional controls and buttons. He likes to watch his dad play old 80's Nintendo games, which his dad has introduced as his subject of choice: history of video games. So I guess that's DS's favorite subject right now
