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So I had asked the teacher to assess where my my DD8's reading is at as she is really resistant to reading, which makes me nervous as my brother had dyslexia and the teacher says she makes a lot of careless mistakes. So the school calls me and say that they want to schedule an SST and they will tell me what the results were.

The Special Ed person (not sure what the title is), who I have spoken to before briefly about my DS, said, well she's reading at grade level, is this the only reason you called this meeting? And I said, well yes, I spoke to the teacher and she agreed to test her as she was making a lot of careless mistakes, so many that she was in tutoring for math, and in addition to being resistant to reading my DD is in the office complaining that she doesn't feel well and wants to go home often enough that it's obvious that she's not just sick.

She tells me that maybe I'm too focused on my kids and that maybe I should get a job so I wouldn't be thinking about this stuff and making myself crazy. I told her if I got a job that took my mind off of making sure my family's needs were getting met I probably would have really screwed up kids and a husband who wanted a divorce.

I thought she was someone who would understand- she had a child who is probably 2e, and here she is piling on the "you must be crazy your child is fine" crap. I said, all I wanted to know is if you think there is a problem with her reading - which there probably is as she hasn't grown in her comprehension and seems to have gone backwards a little, the Principal even pointed this out.

I really didn't expect to be suckerpunched like that in an SST meeting. I have never asked for services other than help with having her reading assessed. Even with my son, in all the time I have been at the school, volunteered and made myself useful, I never asked for services or even complained. I just tried to scaffold him from my side as best I could. Really really really disappointed right now.

Hi Portia - No, she wasn't really implying that. She was telling me to get a life.

Which is also a really horrible way of saying being a parent isn't the most important job there is.

Then again, maybe she is saying what you think she is saying too.

Well the joke is on her - I not only run a successful independent company, I spend hours volunteering at the school AND I have time to notice that my kid is resisting reading. So I already have a job, actually jobs, thank you very much.

But did they have any insights of her difficulties? Grade level is wrong for a girl of her abilities.

Nope. Cause I'm a crazy tiger mom who should get a job to cure me of my crazy tiger mom ways…

She has something going on, I just have no idea what. She can read words up to the 7th grade, but her comprehension is at grade level. The only feedback they gave me is she reads too fast and then doesn't understand what she's read. Since she's gone from above grade level (whatever that means, they couldn't tell me how high) to proficient - meaning at grade level- she is not progressing. They said maybe she just doesn't like reading. I have a hard time accepting this because no one in my family or my husband's family doesn't like reading. We are all readers (except my brother, who had to switch to audio books mainly because he has stealth dyslexia. He can read, but it takes a lot of his energy).

I can't remember what you've said about sustained attention...sometimes that's an issue for kids with good decoding, but poor comprehension.

Speculatively, she has probably gone from above grade level to grade level because she mastered decoding earlier than others did, but now they've caught up to her in decoding, and she hasn't progressed in comprehension.

She probably has some add - she's very creative. Likes to make books, crafts, fashion, creative writing. Very very social. No real interest in school unless art is involved. However I was very artistic and I was reading anything I could get my hands on at her age. Careless mistakes seem to be a marker for something… I had her do math on Khan Academy and she looked at an equation, read it incorrectly (missed a step) and got the wrong answer. It's a bit impulsive, answering before understanding- according to the teacher she rushes and that's when she makes careless mistakes.

How's her comprehension of personally-relevant, high interest text? Say biographies of artists, or how-to books on specific arts or crafts projects.

Impulsivity is the other half of ADHD. (The two prongs are dysregulation of attention, and poor inhibition.)

How very unprofessional of her to say anything like that, under any circumstance.

If even the Principal is noticing a bit of a backwards trend, you have reason to investigate it further.

On the math, our son has done similar things. I think he became so used to doing everything fast in math and that was almost his claim to fame. It's taken some time and is still a work in progress to get him to slow down on math. I'm guessing the reading reluctance/comprehension concerns are something different than the math impulsivity. But that's just a guess.