My DS5 is 2e and was was bored out of his mind in his local Montessori preschool/K class...so we decided to homeschool him for Kindergarten this year since no one seemed to know what to do with him and they don't really offer any gifted services for K children...he is flying through Singapore Math and I tested him on all the Dolch reading words up to 3rd grade and he knows every single one of them...and we are having a ball with homeschooling. Last week he researched all of the world's bullet trains and he compared/contrasted the speeds of all of them and made a spread sheet with the highs and lows....anyways, homeschooling is a hit but he still has an IEP with the school system and he gets Speech and OT.
He is great with his OT and has never had any issues with her at all..she seemed to understand him from the start. Today we went in to his "home based" public school for his Speech therapy with a new speech teacher and he was immediately uncomfortable with her and the setting. She never even really spoke to him at all, she was very cold - she spoke mostly to me and when she did speak to my son, it was like he was a dumb 5 year old kid that doesn't understand anything...so he quickly figured out that she wasn't very interested in him.She read a preschool story to him and then asked him some really dumb questions about the story and he pretty much tuned her out because it was completely boring. When my little guy is uncomfortable with a person he either shuts down and doesn't say boo or he acts silly. So of course, he went the acting silly route....he knew all the questions she asked of him but to him they were so dumb, he didn't feel the need to answer them. Not the best in behavior I agree but that is just the way he is. I told her to explain what she was trying to do...she wanted to hear him pronounce different sounds to hear his speech issues....so I explained to him what she was doing and he did exactly what he was asked. Geez...talk to him like he's a human and he'll act like one :-) So the session went on like that - she treated him like a dingbat and he felt no need to respond to her....add in that she was literally right in his space and has a really loud voice (not a great combination to use on a Sensory Disorder Child) and you end up with a useless Speech session. As we were finishing up she looked at me and out loud in front of DS5 said in a not so nice tone..."you really have your work cut out for you don't you". She then went on to say that he "obviously" doesn't have the ability to sit for his required sessions (he is supposed to get two 30 minute sessions each week) and that she was only going to do one time a week with him for 30 minutes because he "obviously can't focus". His past Speech teacher he has had for years, has never had any issues with him. So here is this lady, who spent less than 15 minutes with him and who thinks all 5 year olds must be stupid and she has already written my child off as a behavior problem who can't focus when in reality she has an extremely bright child on her hands who would prefer that she read some form of non-fiction or at least a book on his level and ask him questions that were on his level and actually talk to him like he had a brain. So I have no idea where we are going from here with her but I was fuming when she made her really rude comment pretty much insuiating that my son was a problem when every one else has shared with me how much of a really neat child he is to work with. It just gets frustrating that with really smart kids people either seem to "get them" or completely write them off as a problem
