Lots of helpful ideas and suggestions here, thanks.
The school has Chromebooks for each student, so if we find that typing is the answer it should be easy to get that in place for him... if only he could type. But I guess I could work on that with him on the weekends. It took me over 10 years to learn how to type well and I didn't get good at it until after college. Hopefully he picks it up faster than I did!
Regarding medication, we recently moved (just to be able to go to current school) and we have had to transfer medication management to the pediatrician temporarily. We are waiting on getting in with the local mental health service provider, but it's a 6 month wait and we have 3 months to go. Even if we wanted to drive all the way back to our old region for the script, the pharmacy won't fill it from an out of area doc on account of it being a controlled substance
He had been on 10mg twice a day, but recently he had a growth spurt and I don't know if that was the cause or not, but the 10mg dose was not working enough. I used our weekend supply to give him 15mg in the am (by breaking up 10's) and he continued with the 10mg in the pm (because school has to follow the script). The school reported good mornings, very difficult gap period, and poor afternoons. Even so the pedi would not prescribe the two 15s. She wouldn't even give us the the two 10's. She claimed potential for abuse is higher for short acting med and she doesn't like to prescribe it. She gave us extended release equivalent of 10 mg. I only agreed to a trial of it, so we tried a week. Needless to say it was a terrible week. I collected data from the school and went in fighting and got us 15mg twice a day starting this week. So much better. She still will not give the extended release equivalent of the 15's because she says it's the maximum dose for his age and she doesn't like to give the maximum dose. There's a good reason to let a kid fail at life. So, long answer that basically says, we are trying our best on the meds and being met with resistance. DS has severe ADHD. He cannot regulate himself at all without meds, in any sense. With medication he is like a completely different kid. In a good way! He is the kid he is meant to be but can't be because of his neurology. Sorry, it's very upsetting to me that I have to fight so hard for my 6 year old to get the (IMO life saving) medication that he needs because some 16 year old somewhere is abusing the same medication.
Back to the issues at hand. In the morning the kids have morning meeting and then they do morning work, which is a double sided worksheet with a maze or word search or other fun activity on one side and some questions to answer on the other. DS does the fun side and then never does the other side. The whole thing is optional. This is the time we discussed giving him his required writing work. If it is a medication issue we expect he will be able to do the work just fine at this point in the day. The daily schedule is pretty set at the school, they have a lot of specials and different teachers throughout the day. DS gets a math pull out each day as well to do pre-calculus with a special math teacher.
So, based on the responses here I'm thinking we should look for a good OT and get an evaluation there. We should look into dysgraphia and DCD. We don't really have any money right now and the more qualified people never take the insurance we have, so it's either bug the district for testing (might be tricky with us using private school), use whoever insurance covers (not likely to be a quality evaluation), or save up to pay out of pocket. We are currently looking at paying out of pocket for a 1:1 for a portion of each day, so I don't know when we will be able to afford any of this. We can barely afford the school as it is.
I should add that we love the school. It is well worth impoverishing ourselves for! He is in a class of 5 at an all gifted school that exists just to serve the most gifted students and especially those who have been unsuccessful in prior educational settings. Another boy in the class of 5 has a 1:1 as well. They teach social skills to all of the kids at the school. My son is learning calculus, coding, robotics, and mandarin. He is so happy to go each day. There are 25 kids at the whole school. From what I have seen many are 2E and by far most are difficult and sensitive kids who have a hard time fitting in. They made this school for the kids the school districts could not serve and they are serving them well. I know this school is my son's best chance in life. At public school they wouldn't even consider allowing DS in the gifted program due to behaviors. Now he's getting an all day gifted education and enjoying school for the first time ever. Looks like it's time to sell some stuff off, I think this is the end of the second car
