Hi @millersb02 and @aeh,
Thank you so much for your replies. They are both informative and comforting. I failed to mention that we are in a third world country and a system is somewhat different (but the more I read here, the more similarities I find, especially with the education problems).
I likely mistranslated the term OT. I am still not sure what is the correct term, but - here at least- they are experts at diagnosing learning disabilities, so it’s fairly safe to state that we ruled out dysgraphia, dyslexia, dyspraxia etc. The facility also did check ups on hearing, gross motor skills, attention tests, neurological exam and a few more. We are currently down to vision issues, adhd and maybe something neurological - the doctor just said that something might be slightly off and we are waiting for MR exam (compared to US, they do keep patients in dark and there isn’t much I can do about that). This might all come down to a same issue, as visual issues can cause adhd symptoms, and are certain to affect our main problem area (handwriting).
However, it’s safe to say that handwriting is fair enough, both language expert and neurologist agree it’s not a concern. The improvement is highly noticeable as we took their advice to keep it chill, reassure him that he writes fine and encourage practice. Currently, his handwriting at home is such that teacher doubts that he does it, and at school it’s hit and miss, and we still can’t quite figure out what’s going on. But, again lazy eye and everything else vision related can cause this, and paired with unsupportive adults, it’s likely culprit.
We are about to talk with the school this week. They are the ones trying to impose IEP on us based on the handwriting (again, deemed ok by the experts), and the fact that as a bilingual kid his English is superior to his officially native language (by the way, he took WISC in non dominant, native language, and still scored around 115 on verbal when high and low subtests are averaged, and language experts noted that English is dominant, but vocabulary in native is ok, and there’s nothing pathological about that).
Personally, I wouldn’t mind IEP if I knew exactly what is going on and if I was sure that it fits my son’s needs. At this point, I don’t, the medical field doesn’t know yet and it all mostly comes down to the opinion of one teacher.
The other, huge part of the problem is that I suspect that he suffered educational trauma, as he still sometimes stops writing and says “The teacher used to say she would kill me if I keep writing V’s like this” and many more similar things. But, there is nothing much I can legally do about that here. And there is a concern that the real reason school is insisting on the IEP and shortcomings is to protect the school from any possible legal actions. There were tones of malpractices and the more I learn the more I find.
Also, last year all the conversations felt highly malicious - for example, school official would say that my son is asocial, I would state that as a gifted child his social needs are tad lower compared to average kids, and he has plenty of friends outside of school that are also gifted kids he connects with better, and there at school the older kids adore him. And she looks straight in my eyes and says “See, he’s asocial” and likely writes that down in his record. And a lot of similar examples, but this one is a perfect illustration (I think that you can imagine my frustration now).
Another issue is that they aren’t proposing anything in the gifted area and last time I mentioned it, they literally lied to my face that he needs better grades to qualify for gifted education. I checked, the law and the guidelines specifically state that the grades aren’t required and he fits the rest of the criteria. Since he started primary music school as of this grade, now he is “officially” gifted at least in that area, but I doubt it will have any impact on the treatment he receives in the school.
The good news is that he is taking school more seriously this year, homework is not much of a fuss anymore and he picked up on maths and started getting 100% scores and we are slowly starting to enrich at home, at least by entertaining his curiosity. The progress is great since we realized earlier this year that something is horribly off at school and figured out how actually unhappy he is there and we started working with him. And there are glimpses of independent work, even with native language that is apparently the issue.
I hope I’ll have more news soon - both in terms of diagnosis and advocacy. And I hope you won’t mind me sharing as this is likely the only place where I feel heard - and understood.
Sadly, we don’t have much of a support here. The only organization I found that used to help parents with this type of issues doesn’t work anymore.
At this point, we aren’t considering changing school as elsewhere it might be even worse or he might encounter bullying etc. For now, we also can’t afford English speaking school or moving out of this country.
Thank you so much for the support and excellent advice and insight.
