Schoolwork battles

JJJ

Active Member
So frustrated right now. Piglet started out fine in her high school classes, getting all As on those first assignments which are mostly simple review and getting to know you stuff. Now that the real work has started, she is drowning. I am having to reteach her math lessons at least twice. She gets it the first time I reteach it but then gets all confused when they do the next section so I have to reteach that section plus the earlier ones too. On a good note, she did take the extra time the teacher offered and finished her math test in study hall instead of just giving up on what she hadn't finished at the bell. She did end up with a B on this last quiz so the hours of extra work paid off.

The problem is that she is also drowning in English class and I am struggling to help her in that subject. Her thinking is at such a basic, simplistic level that she does not even see what the problem is. She can answer most factual questions but any question that requires an answer that she cannot copy straight from the story is nearly impossible. Even with something as simple as vocabulary, she misses all the nuances of the words. She simply uses the words most basic synonym as its meaning and that is not cutting it at this level. Her spelling remains atrocious, even with spell check as she rarely can figure out which suggested spelling is the word she means.

There are not enough hours in the day to help her as much as she needs. We're letting her finish the last two weeks on her fall sport but then she is done with major after school activities so she can study more. Very frustrated that all my concerns in junior high were pushed aside with assurances that she was doing great and did not need a re-evaluation to go back to Special Education.
 
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Liahona

Guest
Yeah, I big "I told you so" to the school isn't going to fix the heart ache of Piglet failing. But it might get her back into sp. ed. I hate it when schools don't listen to the parents. I'm dealing with much the same thing with difficult child 1's school. Blew me off at the end of last school year and had to get an aide really fast to keep everyone safe the day before school starts. Most teachers/admins don't realize what it takes to parent these kids so they think they know everything. Sorry, this is my soap box for the moment.
 
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TeDo

Guest
Yeah, I would start the request process. If it's that bad already, it will only get worse. Both of mine are having problems with their high school classes so far. difficult child 1 is especially struggling with the reading stuff and all the tectbooks are written at high school level which is WAY above his reading comprehension level. He's a basic, simplistic thinker too. NOT going to be a fun year ...... for any of us in our house.
 

JJJ

Active Member
I've sent emails to her Algebra and English teachers and hope to meet with them this week. Unless she rocks the Biology test, I will meet with that teacher next week. Once I have their input, then I will go to the sped director and start the process. I hope they will test her for a reading disorder and not just give her resource support. I'd love to know what is really wrong in that brain of hers.
 

Anxworrier

New Member
My difficult child son is 7th grade and so is new to middle school. Montessori is much different changing from sixth to seventh. He had all the time in the world prev yrs and no grades really. But in 7,8 grade they get them ready for high school expectations. My kid is floundering. Sometimes I feel like he is just lazy and video game obsessed and he has no qualms about lying about his workload. Bare minimum effort and when i gently try to check his work I am viewed with hostility. Is it a terrible thing to just pray that he can just skate by without failing from now till end of high school? How do I convey to teachers that this is gonna be a bumpy ride?and just because he has ****** quality of work that I'm still a caring, educated, loving mom whose heart breaks that he has it so hard? I'm so sensitive that I worry he is just a reflexion of me, so if he is unworthy then so am I. But my personality as a student was quiet, shy, too scared to participate but was a perfectionist and wanted to please my parents and my teachers so I studied hard and had high grades. And never spoke a word out of turn in my life. Yes this is one of my repetitive laments..it isn't fair for me to get a child so diff from me!

Anyway, you are two yrs ahead of me in this experience. I will def not be able to put my kid in any honors classes, as I have done with my easy child daughter 16. I hope you get the support you need!
 

InsaneCdn

Well-Known Member
JMO... but I'd be getting her tested for all the things that are frequently co-morbid with ADD... LDs are part of that. Add to it... half the kids with ADD also have Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) (whether or not you can get the formal diagnosis, getting an Occupational Therapist (OT) evaluation is useful). And then, 70% of the kids with ADD and a Learning Disability (LD), also have some form of Auditory Processing Disorders (APD) (there's a good recent thread on what some of the APDs are)

It could be some combo of all of the above. We found that Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) and Auditory Processing Disorders (APD) without the right accommodations and interventions (no medications for either) resulted in a brain so tired that "learning" became difficult... get good accommodations and interventions, and a whole new world opens up.
 

JJJ

Active Member
Insane, we had her tested for Auditory Processing Disorders (APD) and she does not have it (the full long test with the audiologist). Looking at the symptoms of Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD), she does not sound like it, she has very good fine and gross motor skills when on Ritalin. Eeyore is my one that is likely Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD).

We hired the reading specialist to work with her last summer and she told us there was something "off" about her reading but without testing, she could not pinpoint it. The school gave her two screening assessments and she did fine, so we were unable to get full testing. New school this year, so I will try again.
 

greenrene

Member
I shudder to think of my difficult child in high school... Technically, she's supposed to be a sophomore (she turns 15 next week, ack!), but she repeated 1st grade way back when, and this year she's repeating the 8th grade. School has ALWAYS been a huge struggle, and she has issues with math and English that sound similar to Piglet's - it just doesn't register with her.

I definitely feel your frustration!
 

InsaneCdn

Well-Known Member
JJJ - do you have the report from the audiologist? If so, go look at it. If it specifically mentions "auditory figure ground", then she has had the full range of testing. If not... she might need a different tester who knows about these other APDs. We got caught with that... when originally screened, difficult child did not show up as having Auditory Processing Disorders (APD) - but they were only testing for hearing, and for language processing. And of course, difficult child's problem is... noise processing (auditory figure ground). Three years later, it was more common to screen for these - and we got the diagnosis we needed.
 

JJJ

Active Member
Yep, it tested for that. Kanga has Auditory Processing Disorders (APD) and Piglet has a small hearing loss so they tested everything.
 

JJJ

Active Member
Her working memory is slightly weak but her history teacher last year helped her come up with some things to compensate. The problem is just the huge work load in high school vs jr high. I'm still hoping that she can adjust, especially because her fall sport will be over before the end of the month. And I think she is seeing that what she is doing is not enough, although she is furious at me because she has to do her homework in front of me until she is consistently getting it. I'm tired of her doing the full assignment wrong and then having to redo it.
 

InsaneCdn

Well-Known Member
Her thinking is at such a basic, simplistic level that she does not even see what the problem is. She can answer most factual questions but any question that requires an answer that she cannot copy straight from the story is nearly impossible

Read more: http://www.conductdisorders.com/forum/f6/schoolwork-battles-50309/#ixzz26H2jHVnZ
There are accommodations for this. difficult child gets a list of potential answers for these kinds of questions. For example, if there are 10 questions, there will be 20 answers. He needs to find the "best answer" to the question. After a couple of years of this, he's starting to move beyond needing it all the time - now, there are some he can answer directly, and the "hard ones" he uses the list.
 

JJJ

Active Member
On the questions that she struggles with, it would be very difficult to give her a list of choices. It would defeat the purpose of the question, which is to see if she can take various stated and inferred material from the selection and synthesize a response.

On Bloom's Taxonomy, she is pretty strong on knowledge, comprehension and application of directly taught material. She has a great deal of difficulty analyzing, synthesizing and evaluating. For example, she can tell you what a "theme" is in literature. She can read a story, at grade level, and tell you what happened in the story. She can infer some basic things (eg. the child was crying cause they were sad; the lantern tipping over in the hay is what cause the fire). But she cannot grasp the overall theme of the story, she often just states the plot.
 
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