Are there School Services I Can Access?

[sste]

So, DS is entering kindy in the fall! His development continues to be uneven but I suspect he would test above average in academic/cognitive areas fairly uniformly and I think (?) that means he won't qualify for school services. We have had many, many experienced eyes on him and he is not on the spectrum at all, what I thought might be dyslexia seems to be anxiety, and if he is adhd it is the dreamy type and it doesn't hinder him from hyper-focusing on natural history for hours!

His areas of difficulty are: 1) what seems to us to be mild to moderate (but increasing each year) childhood anxiety/perfectionism; 2) terrible handwriting and fine motor issues -- the worst handwriter in prek despite being one of the older kids and he can't even settle on one hand to write with; 3) his social skills improved greatly this year but he is still borderline having problems in this area.

We have identified private resources, OT, etc for all of these. But in addition to the expense this is going to leave DS in school from 9-3 and then doing supplementary therapies most days of the week! We would like to do something in school. Also it would be nice, if possible, to have the school look more carefully at our teacher requests--DS's anxious tendencies seem well-controlled with a nurturing, organized teacher, not so much in a less warm or disorganized environment.

Can someone explain to me if any of these - - anxiety or OT issues - -might qualify for a 504 or some other means to services? And if it is inappropriate to pursue that path, let me know too!

[egoldber]

Well, FWIW, our preschool did NO handwriting to speak of. They worked a little bit on letter formation, but that's it. Younger DD is just finishing K in our affluent district and form my perspective the focus of the K curriculum is handwriting (including basic letter formation) and basic phonics and early reading. I doubt he needs or qualifies for services entering K.

As for anxiety, does your school to summer playdates for incoming K kids? Ours often do, but they are parent and/or PTA organized. I would ask the school if this is happening or if you could set these up. For us, they happened on the school playground on 2 different Saturdays in the month before school started.

You could also call/e-mail the school counselor and ask about any lunch bunches or groups he/she may have for new kids/anxious kids/kids with social skills issues. These are good opportunities for him to meet and interact with other kids in a facilitated environment.

But honestly, I think it is unlikely that he will get services for these issues unless he is VERY below grade level (and in K there is almost no standard) in handwriting. And there is no real services for anxiety in the school setting.

A 504 does not get services, only accommodations. For example, if he struggles with writing, his accommodation might be to have a scribe for tests or homework. But this is typically done in a much older grade, not in K.

Older DD has a 504 for anxiety, but only after they were able to observe the impact of the anxiety in the classroom. Her 504 is a list of accommodations for her to help her manage her anxiety in the school setting, there are no services provided.

And yes, managing therapy for kids in all day school is a real issue. We have to pick and choose which things we work on and when. You can't work on everything all at once. The other Catch 22 is that with anxiety kids, focusing too much on therapy can actually increase their anxiety and make things worse.

If it were me, based on what you describe, I would try to find some low key ways to help him with the anxiety (the lunch bunches, summer playdates) and that's it. For the writing, I would just see how things work out in the fall. Maybe try to include some fine motor play and hand strengthening play (play-doh, Legos, perler beads, etc.)

[sste]

Thanks for the great advice! I am going to do all of those things and fortunately a large cohort from his preschool are going to this elementary.

Our preschool rec'd to us that we get an OT evaluation for the handwriting and we are on a waitlist for that. He still can't write his name and he is 5.5. My DH works with him every morning for 10 minutes writing animal and dino names and it is very.slow.going. I am almost positive he is going to test very low on the OT eval but it seems that if your child can pencil in the bubble for the standardized test, the schools here are not motivated to help with fine motor and handwriting.

I wish there was an option for kids having difficulty to pay for services within the school. In other words, we have health insurance to cover most of this stuff and the school has OTs, social workers, therapists, etc. What I don't have working full time is the capacity to run him around to these therapies. And he is still napping and won't be in a good place to do therapy work at 3 or 4pm. Sigh, sigh, sigh. Focusing on one thing at a time is a great suggestion too.

[brittone2]

sste-
If you go with an OT eval, ask them about his overall muscle tone. In order to have good fine motor control, you need good proximal stability. Sometimes handwriting issues originate from having a weaker core or low muscle tone. Kids really need good back, ab, shoulder girdle, etc. strength and muscle tone in order to give a nice stable base for handwriting. I know you have joked that athleticism as a whole probably isn't his thing. I can't recall if he received PT services back in the day when he was in EI, but did they ever diagnose low muscle tone as a contributing factor?

How are his other fine motor skills besides writing?

[sste]

Yes he was in pt in ei and they said low tone. We put him in weekly gymnastics and twice per week swim this year plus daily gym in pre k to try to work on the gross motor. He is aghast when we suggest soccer or tball (he won't be perfect at them in his words).

He is holding the pen correctly but he has incredible fatigue when writing. I am sure you are right and core and tone are coming into play.

Other skills are ok. Frankly dd at 2.5 seems more dexterous but she sort of a powerhouse child so I don't know if I can compare. He does ok with lacing and he likes to do a lot of science at home and he handles the supplies decently. Still eats with his hands as much as he can get away with.

[mskitty]

I would call the school and ask for an evaluation for an IEP. Ours does not perform them in June, July and August but you want to be one of the first ones scheduled for the new school year. Ours generally only does one "new" evaluation a day so they tend to get booked 2-3 months in advance.

Our experience:
We asked for one in September specifically for speech. Based on the initial evaluation, our son received one speech therapy visit a week at his private Montessori daycare from the school district because of his IEP. His therapist suggested to us that she thought something else was in play and that we schedule a full work up for May. 4 separate evaluations were done by the preschool teacher, OT, speech therapist, and school psychologist. Our son tested above average on almost everything. However, he struggles with handwriting & some fine motor tasks as well as speech. For the fall, he will receive twice a week speech therapy and once a week OT. It is working really well for us as the school district therapists come to the Montessori preschool aka no cost and no transport for us.

Hopefully you can qualify and receive services during the school day as well.

mskitty

[crl]

Depending on how accommodating your principal is, you may be able to get some input on teacher assignment even without a formal dx or IEP or 504. Ds had an IEP, then nothing, then a 504, but through all that I have managed to have considerable input on his teacher assignments, even at a school that officially didn't consider parent requests.

I might ask his current preschool teacher to write a short letter describing what kind of teacher would be a good fit (nurturing and organized) and why (anxious). Then I might call and ask to talk with the principal and explain that your son is an incoming kindergartner who has needed some therapy and extra support and you would like to drop off his preschool teacher's recommendation about what kind of teacher would be a good fit for him.

Catherine

[egoldber]

I agree about writing the letter for teacher placement and including if possible a letter from the preschool teacher. (That way you don't just seem like "that" mom.) I would copy the counselor on this e-mail/letter as well.

Our school solicits input from parents on teacher placement anyway. I always describe a type and not a particular teacher. This year they ignored me for younger DD, but they won't ignore me next year. :p


I wish there was an option for kids having difficulty to pay for services within the school.

You could ask to see if you could have someone private come in to work with him during the school day. But truly, I would wait on this and see how things go in the fall. Also, it is disruptive to kids to be pulled out for services. It disrupts the rhythm of their day and some kids find it very disconcerting and feel self conscious.

[sste]

Thank you! We are set for kindy on the teachers. I spent hours and hours sitting in on the kindy classroom teachers. There are four. They are all amazing. I have interviewed no less than 10 parents all of whom have said all the kindy teachers are all amazing, warm, creative, engaging, no need to request. First and second grade however there is the situation of one "bad" disengaged, abrupt teacher per grade that it would be nice to avoid.

I was thinking further with these posts and DS also has some borderline speech issues. His vocabulary is better than the median adult frankly but his articulation is awful and he can be very hard to understand. His pre-k teacher mentioned that as well. I think we are still early for that too though -- what I read was six is the latest point where you should be hearing "th" instead of "fs" and other similar errors.

I am calling the school counselor today. Thanks again for all of the help everyone!

[AnnieW625]

I agree with what Beth said about the handwriting. DD1's pre school did some Handwriting Without Tears, but the handwriting the first two months of kindergarten was still crazy, I dubbed it handwriting boot camp and was so glad by the time they were done in mid November. There are a few kids with older 2005 birthdays in DD1's class and their parents complained about how difficult the hand writing was for their kids too and a few of them were 6 and a couple of months once they started kindergarten.

I am not much help for the anxiety, but I was a tad nervous about things as a kid and talking about it a lot helped me out and I remember we'd take afternoon walks by the school and some days just look at it and my mom would tell me where my class would be and she'd point to the office window if I needed any thing or to call home if I was sick. We kind of did the same thing with DD1 when we were at church since her school is connected to our church. It really did help out a bit.

Good luck!