Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school putting a gifted child into Special Ed preschool?

polarbear, thank you!

the sleep issue is a very strange one. I don't think though that it's digestion related. The strange thing about it is that he has LESS issues with less sleep. He's moody, irritable, super sensitive, etc. when he gets full 10-11hrs of sleep at night ... yet he's fully alert, easy going, fewer tantrums when he only gets 5-6hrs of sleep (but at that point I'm ready to hang myself! ... not really but you get my point! lol). He seems to thrive with less sleep but it's very taxing on everyone around him. I wouldn't mind having him awake at night (he still has a gate up in his room so can only stay there) but he's VERY loud when he's awake .... playing or calling me. He actually sleeps on the floor in his room because that's the only place where he can stay asleep for more than two or three hours. I was considering a sleep study but it wouldn't really work right now because he won't fall asleep anywhere but at home (or in the car) not to mention he wouldn't tolerate any of the sensors. So we'll have to wait with that till sometime in the future.

I will ask about the Developmental Pediatrician next time we see the Psych. I am a part of local SPD parent support group and some of the parents have been to a Developmental Pedi but she has a huge waiting list as well and doesn't take our insurance. But since we're already seen by the Psychiatry dept. we might be able to get seen by others without having to be on the long waiting lists!

I think I mentioned in my original post that I believe DS4 does have some sort of learning disability ... I can already tell he's getting his letters mixed up and while he's great with math, when it's math on paper (or when he sees numbers) he sometimes transposes digits and such. This is a completely uncharted territory for me and hopefully the special ed teacher would be able to pick up on it?

I think I am somewhat biased against the special ed because our friends' daughter goes there and soon their son will too. They are great friends but I already limit our play dates to about twice a month because I don't want our boys learn from the friends' kids habits. There is a huge chance all three of them would be in the same class (and possibly next March when DS2 ages out of EI he'll be in there as well) and I am just not happy about that. I hope that doesn't make me a bad friend ... but that is the truth . And it's not that I would want to keep my kids away from other kids with other diagnosis ... I don't mean to say that my kids are better than other kids ... it's that I don't agree with some of their parenting choices and don't want my kids to do what the friends' kids are allowed to do.

IMHO, those transpositions and reversals sound age-appropriate - even the ones where he swaps syllables of spoken words.

It's true that all of this is age-appropriate and that's why it's often really tough to recognize LDs in kids who are this age. I can remember everyone under the sun telling us that when our ds reversed letters, switched #s etc it was all age-appropriate... and I can even remember several teachers telling us the reason he resisted writing was "he's a boy". Since our ds wasn't evaluated for LDs until he was in 2nd grade, I really don't know what a neuropsych for instance could determine at 4 re whether or not there is a disability... but I do think a mom's instinct when she has a gut feeling that something is up is worth investigating.

polarbear

Mk13, the sleep situation sounds terribly frustrating!! FWIW, our ds never slept more than 5 hours per night until he was in first grade and school finally started tiring him out. I have so many memories of him staying up until almost midnight then pouncing on dh and I at 5 in the morning letting us know "It's time to get up! It's time to get up!". He also didn't sleep in his bed - he usually crawled out of his bedroom and played in the hall until he fell asleep. The difference with him was he wasn't noisy - he has always been a kid who listens and observes rather than an active jumping up and down running all over kid. One thing ds was doing while he was wide awake late at night was listening to our tv downstairs - he could hear it up in his room. We had no idea he could hear it at first, until one week when dh had been away on business and I replayed an episode of one of our favorite tv shows for ds when he returned.... as a commercial came on dh mused "I wonder what happens next?" and from upstairs ds called out and told him exactly what was going to happen next (because he'd been listening when I watched it the previous week!).

I tried thinking about the sleep stuff a little bit, and one thing about our ds - he did start sleeping longer at night once he was in elementary school, but he was still a very light sleeper and he always wakes up in the middle of the night (our younger dd does too). Both ds and our younger dd are kids who worry a lot - that's there way of dealing with stress. Hindsight is all I have to guess with but I wonder in retrospect if perhaps part of the early childhood lack of sleep was related to anxiety also. Not sure! And at the time I was *way* too tired to have figured it out if it was

I understand about the preschool and the kids you know - I wonder though if they act the same way or the issues would be the same when they are in a school with close supervision and different expectations than at home.

polarbear - he's now a lot better once he's asleep than he used to be. His room is on the second floor the furthest away from the stairs and any noise and I still have a cd player in the hallway playing the same CD every night (classical lullabies we've played him since he was a baby and always wants them on) ... and we still had to till just recently tiptoe around the house anytime he was asleep ... even had to install an extra set of french doors down on the first floors in the hallway to block off enough noise so we could at least use the microwave when he was asleep! We couldn't even flush the toilet in the house without him waking up! lol ... the CD player blocks a lot of it out for him these days but those times were really trying!

as for the possible LD ... you're right ... I am going by my mother's instinct ... so far I have always been right. It actually seems to be getting worse as he's getting older. While he had no problems recognizing the alphabet and numbers way before he turned 3 ... now at age 4 he confuses W and M, or 6 and 9, etc. ... he has days when he can easily read sight words that he's learned from tv yet the next day he can hardly tell me the letters in that word in the right order. Same with math ... he can do a better job with a math problem in his head than if it's in front of him on the paper. It's just that feeling you have when he's looking at something that he's not seeing it right (and I am trying really hard NOT to compare him to DS2 whose first letter at 18 months was W and he has never once confused any letters or numbers ... as I know he's not the standard)

The allergy testing this morning showed DS4 still has a very strong egg allergy ... no improvements what so ever. I guess I will have to talk to the school about what exactly their plan of action will be should he have a reaction while in pre-school before we make any decisions.

On the positive note ... DS2 had another OT meeting with the coordinator from Early Intervention today and they said they will get us a diagnosis through Early Intervention rather than having to be on the 6 months waiting list for Pediatric Psychiatrist. Sounds good to me! I'd much rather confirm or rule out issues as early as possible than later!

Hi Mk13,

Any public school should be required to make a food allergy action plan-- not only "what if he has a reaction" with medications on site and teacher training about how to use them, but also prevention. Your kid shouldn't be the first egg-allergic they've had-- it's uncommon, but not *that* uncommon among kids this age. Legally, they have to keep him safe.

I'm glad you will be able to work through the second eval via EI. You sure do have a lot of balls in the air.

DeeDee

The worst part is, I'll be dealing with the same gifted in special ed preschool dilemma in March when DS2 ages out of Early Intervention! ... at least he doesn't have the egg allergy. Just a moderate corn allergy. But might end up with both of them in the same special ed class for couple months! lol

DeeDee - I emailed the Special Ed director to find out what is the official school allergy plan. Will see what she says.

More correctly, they have to keep him BOTH safe and INCLUDED. He's considered disabled if he has an epinephrine injector and anaphylaxis history.

In other words, it's not okay to send him to the office so that the class can do "green eggs and ham" for Dr. Suess day, or to have the child "watch" his or her classmates do science activities with eggshells, or color Easter eggs. (Ugh-- yes, really. That is perfectly okay under a health-care plan, though-- because it meets the goal of "safety" just fine. It just doesn't let the child participate to the same degree as his/her classmates, and socially, this has very definite consequences.)

This is why I mentioned Section 504. If the major reasons for the placement are social/emotional to begin with, then inclusion is really critical.

HowlerKarma - thank you for the info! We've never had to use the epi-pen (thankfully!) but that unfortunately doesn't mean we won't have to in the future. His allergy has been building up over the years rather than disappearing so we have no idea how bad it would be if he digested or got into direct contact with eggs if not closely supervised. Today just before they did the skin test, just a tiny bit of the testing solution from the little skin pricking thingy got on his finger as he kept fighting us and when he touched his forehead with that finger you could see immediately hives popping up. And that was a very VERY watered down egg protein. He wasn't allergic till after he turned one. Then one day he had eggs and his face got all swollen, couldn't see his eyes, spent about an hour throwing up nothing but clear fluid ... it was a mess. We were very lucky that as bad as it got, he did not end up having breathing problems that day but it was very scary even without that. And since then he's been testing more allergic than he did before. So the 504 plan definitely sounds like something we will need! I had no idea allergies could qualify under that!