Hi Guys,
I haven't checked in for awhile because I've had some fires to fight. The last one week has been rough
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I'm expanding on the post that I wrote hurriedly last week - DS had a math achievement test and didn't do well in it. The tester said he zoned out and was playing with the eraser, with anything really. I was stunned because he's such a mathy kid and loves algebra. What's true is that we don't drill, but his concepts are very strong, and so is his logic, unless I'm totally deluded.
He has very good recall for multiplication tables.
Because of the feedback ("he doesn't know what area means"), I signed him up yesterday for Aleks at Level 3 (lowest level possible) to see if he needed help. Um, surprise! He did pretty well on the computer evaluation, considering that he probably had a lot of errors just trying to man the keyboard. I just looked through Level 4 - he should breeze through that too, but at least there'll be something there for him to learn. What is going on?? DS refuses to talk about the test, saying that the tester was impatient. But this is a definite signal that his attention issues are worse than I realized.
There have been suggestions when he was younger that he has CAPD. He has an extreme aversion to loud, sudden sounds and used to cry at the nursery when they sang the goodbye song. He doesn't like music. His teacher recently told me that at a recent school celebration, he just froze up and was completely zoned out because of the huge amount of sounds around him. To me, he seems to have a really loud "internal" voice, because he ignores me when I try to teach him anything (I've always thought that he was a good learner but a difficult student). He seems to not hear me when he's engrossed and has to work things through by himself to learn. But because it's always panned out, I never gave a second thought to it. Happens too, when he's building Lego or reading when I call him for dinner. He also seems to have a very short memory for instructions, sometimes. I'm wondering if the achievement test was partly read out to him by the tester, because in total silence in front of the computer yesterday, it was fine.
The big stumbling block to the CAPD self-diagnosis is that he spoke early (at 6 mths) and has great verbal abilities. Other than that, the little that I have frantically speed read from yesterday seems to fit. I made an appointment with an audiologist for next week. Aside from this, does anyone have any theories as to what is going on?
I brought him to a cognitive screen earlier this week for ADD/ADHD but don't have the results yet. What's positive is that he's recovering from his disappointment, particularly after yesterday's session with Aleks when he felt "plugged in".
