Anyone Have Thoughts/Experience re 2E Kids?

[sste]

Thank you for the insights, I am not at my most rational right now.

She did give us an order of priority and it was:

1. reading tutoring-dev. window starts to close and with the 25 mins per day for the past month he is making progress but not enough to close the gap, hence the 12th percentile testing so he needs more than what he is getting. Also suggested a summer program run by a dyslexia school.

2. vision therapy-egoldberg, I agree I have heard nothing but ill about this but apparently?? in the morass of stuff they do that is questionable evidence-wise there is a specific type of convergence disorder/issue and our enormously well-respected neuropsych has personally experienced a lot of success sending kids to this particular provider when they have DS's particular profile. I have a sick feeling I am on the frontiers of science and paying OOP but what can I do, he really cannot process angled lines, that is actually what qualified him for school OT initially was his visual perception problems not his actual motor.

3. Speech articulation--she thinks it is important for the reading and SLP and reading teachers must share info as the mis-articulated sounds are likely to be the harder ones for him to acquire in reading.

4. Motor tone and dysgraphia: she thinks the handwriting practice will reinforce the reading and help overcome the visual perception issues. Also it is so very, very slow that he cannot finish his classroom work and it is an ongoing source of frustration and upset. With enough time his letter formation is decent but oh the time it takes!!

5. Speech expressive--his speech is disorganized and there is a particular system EET or something like that the slps use and we can use at home. She thinks this is lower down, may come in for him developmentally but still important to address esp as his written communication is impaired. She is checking next week for ADHD, hopefully to rule it out because I would really, really like to not have another item on the list.

6. Gifted psychologist-she thinks we should establish care and will be much to our benefit to have him at the IEP meeting. She is seeing less of the anxiety -- I will say our CBT therapist sort of carpet bombed it and it was IMO mild to begin with. She thinks the anxiety symptoms we have recently been seeing were due to a very bad classroom teacher situation (we have now switched, this witch actually left him alone in first grade in the classroom to make him finish handwriting worksheets while the class went to specials) and also anxiety caused by disconnect between his intellectual processes and what he can do in the classroom.

7. Winter social skills class --lower priority

8. ENT?? to rule out congestion as having an additional negative effect on his speech articulation

Oh I forgot dev. pedi we need to establish care, she wants him tracked a little more carefully than the average kiddo and if that person has some suggestions for the nighttime bedwetting WE ARE THERE!!!

Somewhere it would be ideal to work in the gifted programming too though she ultimately thinks the reading must happen now, gifted enrichment can happen anytime across his development.


Thank you all for helping me to sort this out mentally. I do get that it is a lot of intervention. But I also hate to have him skip intervention to sit in school where let's face it we all know that under the best of circumstances, with a normal learner, there is a lot of wasted and dead time.

[Kindra178]

I am still reeling that your district doesn't have full time reading specialists and a full time gifted teacher. I am shocked.

[StantonHyde]

1. reading tutoring-dev. window starts to close and with the 25 mins per day for the past month he is making progress but not enough to close the gap, hence the 12th percentile testing so he needs more than what he is getting. Also suggested a summer program run by a dyslexia school. A month is too soon IMO to close the gap. We had DS tutored for 4 hours a week in the summer after K and he just got his letters and sounds down plus some easy reading. In first grade, he had tutoring 2-4 times a week for 30 mins or so. Within 6 months, he had advanced 1.5 years in his reading. By second grade, he was up to grade level. Also--is the dyslexia school a Full time school or is it something that just runs in the summer. Any chance it would help your DS could go there? In our state, there is actually a scholarship fund that pays private school tuition for kids with special needs. (because our legistlature won't fund adequately for reading specialists etc in the public school but they will pay for a kid to go to private school if you know about that scholarship and can jump through the testing hoops. grrrrr)

4. Motor tone and dysgraphia: she thinks the handwriting practice will reinforce the reading and help overcome the visual perception issues. Also it is so very, very slow that he cannot finish his classroom work and it is an ongoing source of frustration and upset. With enough time his letter formation is decent but oh the time it takes!! I would figure out an accommodation here to push this down the list. Could he dictate to somebody and have them write it?

6. Gifted psychologist-she thinks we should establish care and will be much to our benefit to have him at the IEP meeting. She is seeing less of the anxiety -- I will say our CBT therapist sort of carpet bombed it and it was IMO mild to begin with. She thinks the anxiety symptoms we have recently been seeing were due to a very bad classroom teacher situation (we have now switched, this witch actually left him alone in first grade in the classroom to make him finish handwriting worksheets while the class went to specials) and also anxiety caused by disconnect between his intellectual processes and what he can do in the classroom. We initially chalked up the anxiety to the classroom situation and the fact that DS is very bright and very aware that he should be able to do everything his peers can but he can't and that is frustrating and upsetting for him. We figured if we could get the reading taken care of, that would decrease the anxiety. And it did for a while but then other stuff caught up. So--stand your ground on limiting the amount of therapy/interventions your child gets at one time but also understand that what might not have been a primary problem before can be come one later.

7. Winter social skills class --lower priority Wouldn't even consider for a few years.

8. ENT?? to rule out congestion as having an additional negative effect on his speech articulation Can't hurt

Oh I forgot dev. pedi we need to establish care, she wants him tracked a little more carefully than the average kiddo and if that person has some suggestions for the nighttime bedwetting WE ARE THERE!!! We had DS evaluated by a dev pedi who said the same as everybody else--the kid is fine but he definitely has a learning disability :-) But it was good data to have and to know.

Somewhere it would be ideal to work in the gifted programming too though she ultimately thinks the reading must happen now, gifted enrichment can happen anytime across his development. I agree. You can provide enrichment in social studies and science. One important thing it to continue reading higher level books to your child. That keeps their vocabulary developing properly and it opens up all the cool science stuff curious kids love. DH reads to DS every night even now!


Thank you all for helping me to sort this out mentally. I do get that it is a lot of intervention. But I also hate to have him skip intervention to sit in school where let's face it we all know that under the best of circumstances, with a normal learner, there is a lot of wasted and dead time. But it is also some rest time as long as it doesn't make your DS too anxious. You have to remember that your DS is working really hard just to read and write. My DS needs a lot more downtime than my DD. And he plays lots of mine craft or watches science documentaries-it soothes his mind and its fun for him. An hours worth of homework for him is equivalent to double that for other kids.

I don't know how to multi quote-so I just put my responses in bold-not for shouting emphasis but just to differentiate what you typed from what I typed.

[sste]

Thanks Stanton for your level-headedness, much needed right now! Will run this all by DH and come up with a plan.

Kindra, we do have full-time reading specialists but many of them use Reading Recovery and Guided Reading which are outdated and only appropriate (if appropriate at all) for students who fall into a slow learner non-dyslexic or under-enriched category. The reading specialists at my school use both of these cr*ppy programs and that is why we were so insistent that the district find something else for us, and they did find a reading specialist at another school who had the OT certification and is very good. But we do need to drive him about 10 minutes each way to this nearby school afterschool! On gifted programming they say it is racist and it probably is but I suspect the real reason is that it costs more money.

[hillview]

hugs mama. DS2 saw an ENT and did have fluid which was impacting his ability to hear and pronounce sounds properly. It did help once he had adenoids out and tonsils out but he still sees an SLP to work on the "r" sound

[Gena]

It sounds like you have gotten some good guidance and are well on your way to developing a solid plan. Good job!

Developmental Peds are notorious for having long wait times for a first appointment, some are several months and others are close to a year. If you think you may want to go this route, you should see about getting a referral and getting on the waiting list soon.

Kindra, we do have full-time reading specialists but many of them use Reading Recovery and Guided Reading which are outdated and only appropriate (if appropriate at all) for students who fall into a slow learner non-dyslexic or under-enriched category. The reading specialists at my school use both of these cr*ppy programs and that is why we were so insistent that the district find something else for us, and they did find a reading specialist at another school who had the OT certification and is very good. But we do need to drive him about 10 minutes each way to this nearby school afterschool! On gifted programming they say it is racist and it probably is but I suspect the real reason is that it costs more money.

My DS has autism and hyperlexia (the nuerological opposite of dyslexia). His teacher uses Guided Reading as one approach to work on his difficulties with comprehension. It's helped him a lot. There are lots of different types of reading problems and no one program works for all of them. The fact that a program is not appropriate for your child does not make it a crappy program. I understand your frustration, but you don't need to insult other students' interventions.

[mikeys_mom]

DS is 2E. I don't know his scores off-hand but he tests in the high average and superior intelligence range on many of the subtests which labels him as intellectually gifted. He also has Aspergers and a non-verbal learning disability which result in social deficits, behavioral issues and lots of trouble with executive functioning. Handwriting is often difficult for him, particularly when he is thinking while he is writing. We spent one summer working on typing skills in the hopes that it would help but his thoughts still race way faster than he can type so in the end it didn't help much. We worked with dictation software a bit as well as just scribing for him. We were told by the psychologist not to bother with OT for handwriting because it will just be a constant source of frustration and there is no need for it with all the technologies available today.

He was in a private religious school and they didn't have the resources to help him. His behaviour was terribly disruptive and resulted in anxiety and low self-esteem. We brought in private therapists which helped but in the end was just a band-aid solution. The teachers could see how bright he was and would consistently get frustrated by his behaviour or inability to function and perform in the classroom. It was almost like his intellect was another stumbling block because the teachers (whether consciously or not) would hold him to a higher standard because they knew that he *could* do so much better academically. We feel very strongly about religious education and that's why we pushed so hard and felt we needed to try every single option before switching to somewhere else. After nearly two and a half years of ups and downs, we made a major move. We moved overseas where we found an amazing program that meets his religious needs and is perfectly tailored to his learning style. It is amazing to see what a difference the right academic environment does. He is a different kid. He no longer dreads school and doesn't come home upset and angry. His teachers and therapists understand his learning style and are working on all the necessary skills with him one step at a time.

All that to say that I agree with PP's that the initial diagnosis and recommended interventions can be completely overwhelming. I remember being in your shoes several years ago feeling like once we finally had answers about what was going on with DS we needed to tackle it all at once. I still remember getting great advice here that I needed to slow down and look at it as a marathon and not a sprint. If I would have done every single thing the specialists recommended, the poor kid would have spent all his waking hours in therapy and not had a chance to just enjoy life. Also, his needs change as different therapies start to work.

One other thing we do is encourage DS to pursue various interests and youth groups outside of school in areas that he enjoys and excels. This really helps boosts his self-esteem because he sees that outside of a typical classroom he can really shine in some areas. I have found this to be much more helpful to his social skills development than the social skills groups we did. He is who he is. He will always be a quirky kid. As he matures, it is easier to explain to him about some behaviors not being socially acceptable even if it doesn't make logical sense to him. When he's around peers with similar interests, he does much better socially.

Hugs. It is overwhelming and emotionally draining to try and get it all figured out but once a few small pieces start to fall into place, it becomes easier to see the light at the end of the tunnel and to celebrate every small step forward.

[inmypjs]

My son has done most of the services you are mentioning - reading remediation, vision therapy and OT. It is really hard to choose what to start with. There is such a thing as a pyramid model of remediation. What this means is that you start at the bottom of the pyramid, with most fundamental of skills, and work on those first, because they affect higher order things like academics, which are at the tip of the pyramid. So things like vision therapy and OT, in this model, come first. Any kind of sensory service is going to be on the bottom of that pyramid, because working on academics like reading and writing are drastically affected by those things. It's going to be hard for him to get the maximum benefit from OG instruction if he has big convergence issues. I hope that makes sense.

Re: vision therapy, I think the issue is that some people say it fixes dyslexia. It does not. It does help visual processing problems, which many kids with dyslexia have. My son did vision therapy for 6 months. It was drastically needed. He saw double about 6 inches away from his nose due to convergence problems. And how he does not. His reading improved a little, but it wasn't a fix. He still needed good reading instruction. I still hear a variety of views on vision therapy. I think many kids can get a bump up in their reading, if the cause of their reading problems was visual issues. If it is dyslexia, which as you know is a deficit in phonological processing, then more is going to be needed. But that doesn't mean it won't be valuable.

So the order that we did was to do vision therapy and OT and then gradually introduce reading. You could consider looking into the Davis method. It is controversial. It doesn't work for all kids. But it does for some. My son did it and so did my Dad and it made a huge difference. So we did vision therapy, OT, added Davis, and now 2-3 years later we do OG. Some may say why not just start with OG. You could. For me, my son was soooo defeated and was terrible at phonics. Davis gave him confidence, was taught the way he learned, and really gave his reading that boost he needed at that time. We don't regret it.

Re: Reading Recovery and Guided Reading, Gena I hope I have not insulted them in the past, but I may have. If I did, I apologize for doing so. I am not a fan of RR for anyone to be honest. Guided Reading I have heard of for comprehension only, and am glad it was helpful for your son. I think the issue is that reading specialists are using programs like Guided Reading (designed for comprehension) and Read Naturally (designed for fluency) to try to teach decoding. It's a huge problem. They are not using OG methodologies that address the 5 components of reading (phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, comprehension, and vocab). Those programs that teach one of those skills should be used only after a child can read well. I have tried to explain this to teachers and they don't seem to get it.

If you haven't already, I would recommend finding the Decoding Dyslexia chapter in your state. Ours maintains lists of resources, including tutors, and you can ask on their page who is good in your area with all of these issues.

One final thought - the reason we chose homeschooling is because these are a lot of things to work on at once. But if you homeschool, all of those appointments become part of your regular day, not something to fit in after school, and it isn't nearly as big of a deal to do them at once. So you do those things, and then read alouds/audio books plus whatever hands out things he wants to do. If you can make it work, it's a great way to remediate plus feed his intellect and interests. Much less stress than trying to make your school get it. Just my opinion.

[inmypjs]

I just went to a learning disabilities conference and heard a speaker from the FL Center for Reading Research. She reviewed all of the current studies on reading interventions. In elementary school, it takes 1-2 years of 1:1 intervention to close the gap, depending on a number of factors. In middle and high school, it is at least 3 years. That is what the current research is saying.

Also one other thing about dysgraphia. I do know some kids that are helped by OT and repeated practice. But I know just as many that are not. Just preparing you that sometimes practice doesn't equal improvement. Dysgraphia is also neurologically based and for some kids repeated writing is not enough to form those new neural pathways and make handwriting automatic.

[sste]

Gena, to clarify my biggest issue is with reading recovery (see other posts!) which I think has committed serious ethical violations in its data reporting and is widely disliked by all manner of learning experts. For guided reading, I meant that is is a cr*ppy stand-alone program for a child having decoding/reading difficulties--which is the frame I am operating in and what I am speaking about in this thread which I started about *my child's decoding issues.* And statistically it is the frame many struggling readers are operating in--though certainly not all. At least as guided reading works in my district it tends to be a big catch-all category more than a program. In my district it focuses on whole language and is eclectic which has the positive of customization and the negative of making your child's education an untested experiment. I do think guiding reading--meaning teacher feedback on oral reading-- is very important in addition to a structured phonics program for most struggling readers. But I don't think it is an effective or appropriate stand-alone program for a child struggling with decoding, sight words, etc. Further, I think it is VERY important that parents hear that viewpoint because their schools are telling them it is a wonderful, scientific program that will address every reading problem under the sun.

For comprehension alone, I have not looked into it at all and I would defer you as to what you think is a good program!

Thanks for the dev. pedi tip, we are fortunately fast-tracked through some connections and should be in within the next month or two, otherwise wait would be terrible.