So the neuropsychologist report said...NORMAL????

[susiestar]

If it is dysgraphia, handwriting is possibly quite painful. Thinking back, did she ever complain about that? When given an assignment to write something, does she tend to put the fewest possible words down? yet if you offered to write or type it for her there would be a LOT more detail? This was one of the things that made me push to have thank you and Wiz evaluated for that. Esp as Jess has none of those problems.

The school CAN provide her with a type of laptop that is very ver durably, not much bigger than a keyboard on a laptop if that is an issue, She does NOT need an IEP to get this. thank you started to learn to use one last year and will likely have one full time for as long as he is in public school. Don't let them try to tell you she could have it IF she had an IEP. That is malarkey.

Be careful before sharing these results with the school.

Dysgraphia can be helped. A good step at this point would be to ask an for an assistive technology evaluation - to see what they have that might help her. Go ahead and google "alphasmart". It will let you find the current versions and how they work

 

[BusynMember]

I'm sorry. I always confuse dysgraphia with dyscalcula. Actually, Star, her handwriting is very pretty. It's MATH that she has so much trouble with! Argh. I hated math too. I can't help her! Nor can hub. This higher math...we never took it.

 

[InsaneCdn]

Dysgraphia can be helped.

There's two kinds of Dysgraphia... can be one, or the other, or both.

1) Difficulty with the mechanics of writing is a motor-skills issue, not techncially a learning disability. In these cases, technology is a HUGE help - takes most of the mechanics out of the equation. (see www.canchild.ca ) If technology solves most/all of the problem, then the next statement does not apply.

2) Difficulty with producing written output - with or without technology - is a learning disability. Technology might be PART of the solution, but other accommodations are also needed... like oral exams and other non-written results for assignments.

3) Both 1) and 2) can exist at the same time, making it hard to tell which problem to try to solve first.

4) Spending too many years trying to deal with 1) can cause 2)... If you don't learn the progressive layers of composition etc. because you can't make your pencil work, then you don't learn the skill of generating written output... in this case, it's an acquired disability, and can be overcome but takes huge efforts (plus technology) to learn the missing skills.

 

[BusynMember]

Thank you, IC. Actually though her motor skills in all areas, including fine, are quite good. It is math that is her biggest problem...and remembering what she is taught. We are already taking strides to help her with these issues.

I did have to use special aaccomodations for dysgraphia for my son, Sonic, who is on the autism spectrum. To this day, he is eighteen and prints beautifully, but he can't write. He uses the computer for homework most of the time.

 

[april1974]

Susie, good post. This was the first neuropsychologist report I ever questioned. Having said that, the school has been telling us for years that she tests in the normal range. An earlier neuropsychologist evaluation, when Jumper was about twelve, indicated just a reading and spelling Learning Disability (LD)...nothing specific. The school psychologist and pediatrician gave her the TOVA test, and both said she flunked. However, this neuro also gave her the TOVA and I guess she passed.

I do like neuropsychs and I always will. They test and nobody else does. The trend here, which is what we are going to follow, is that Jumper is not Learning Disability (LD). She tests t he same in reading as math as langage...etc. We do believe she is ADD. We do think her memory is poor, but maybe not as poor as we thought. We do believe she is slacking off some, partly due to lack of confidence, and will do all we can to work on this area. We do think that she has test anxiety as her grades are all good except for the tests.

Rather than test her again or even have somebody else look at her scores, we are going to go ahead with our plans to tutor her and to ride her a bit harder as far as getting the help that is available to her. I'm done testing her.

It DID feel good to hear that she was very mentally stable and "delightful." We think so too. The learning bit...that we are less certain was interpreted correctly. Oh, and yes she was tested for Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD) and all processing problems.

She has had her hearing and eyes tested within the last three months.

she will keep her 504 plan. No way is that going anywhere.

I think it's important to highlight the positives and hold onto those. Soudns like she is doing very well and only having difficulty in Math(that I can totally relate to) I know of people who did horrible in school but are very intelligant, my hubby is one of them...school was torture for him.....BUT.....he is one of the smartest people I know! I try to remember this with my own boys, school might be tough for them but it isn't a sign of intelligence....living life....adjusting...compensating for....that is intelligence. G/L to you and your girl.

 

[InsaneCdn]

If she's not testing well - she may have "unreliable memory recall"... one accommodation available is to change exam formats - no free-form, essay type questions on recall info (essay OK on creative writing, for example - no recall there!) - multiple choice, and short answer, are two options beyond oral exams. So is scribed-&-assisted exams... testing outside of classroom, scribe can prompt if info is incomplete (no clues, but... "does that sound right?" or "are you sure"). Some of these kids KNOW their stuff, but can't get the answers out...

Haven't had to deal with dyscalcula... so no direct suggestions there!

 

[DammitJanet]

Billy had both dysgraphia and dyscalcia but its been so many years ago that I havent a clue what we did to help with it. I know he struggled with writing anything even in college and even now you dont want to attempt to read anything he writes by hand. However, now, he is really good in math. Somewhere over the years he learned how to overcome the math issues. I think he had a teacher in HS that worked with him and showed him patterns and that made sense to him.

 

[AnnieO]

Tracking issues grabbed me - I have this problem. HOWEVER - it came back as making me horribly awfully terrible at sports. I read A LOT. So it's different for different people.

Oddly, I wouldn't be surprised if the oral testing works better simply because she does well socially.

I also discovered the dysgraphia issue with Jett purely by accident. Someone taught him to hold a pencil in his fist - which when I try it, it hurts. Now, I don't hold my pencil exactly right, and have a deformed finger & nail because of that. However, once I showed him how to do it right - the handwriting really improved! Problem is, I cannot follow him around all the time, so it doesn't get corrected much. He says it doesn't hurt to hold it the way I show him, but he can't remember to do it.

As for handwriting - mine is very pretty. WHEN I bother. Otherwise, I should be a doctor. I type mostly, so it's not a big deal. Jett has in his IEP that they won't even bother with cursive...

 

[BusynMember]

Thanks again. Without an IEP they won't allow her to not take written tests.

She actually writes very well. She needs to remember the details. And perhaps that will require more and harder studying. We shall see as we also look at other issues.

 

[DammitJanet]

Do you have any of those national school programs around you like Huntington or Sylvan? It might be interesting just to have her go for a month or so and see what they say.

 

[BusynMember]

Janet, we got a lucky break.
Sonic's Special Education teacher, who has done wonders for Sonic and likes our family, is going to tutor her twice a week. It will cost a lot less than Sylvan and no contracts. I feel that if anyone can help her, this teacher can. She is awesome. We priced Sylvan and cringed!

 

[seriously]

Didn't read all the many responses you've gotten so forgive me if I'm saying it again.

neuropsychologist's are great - in general. Specific ones can be not so great of course. Telling them apart can be a problem since the decisions they make about what assessments they do lead to the results they get and the interpretation of those results. The decisions about assessments should be individualized based on the child's responses to the first assessment or two plus the history or presenting problem. These choices are done as the child progresses through the assessment process. So it is very complicated and it will be very helpful for you to get the actual written report and see what was done or not done.

neuropsychologist's are not speech pathologists. Language processing is a very complicated thing and sometimes it's best to get those assessments (or supplemental assessments) done by a speech pathologist, with the exception of Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD) testing. Maybe you should ask the neuropsychologist about this. If she has had speech assessments done by the SD in the past to rule out language processing problems that may have been sufficient. But our local SD does very poor language processing assessments and their results/conclusions were VERY different from those obtained through a different SD in our area.

Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD) testing can be done by neuropsychs but is probably better done by a specially trained audiologist using specialized equipment. The results of Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD) testing can be interpreted in a variety of ways by the audiologist and/or neuropsychologist. Accurate Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD) testing relies on normal hearing in both ears and indirectly measures differences in perception and speed of processing of information between various parts of the brain in fractions of a second. This kind of testing is what I would recommend you get to rule out Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD). Perhaps you should ask the neuropsychologist about this.

Reading specialists do a lot of assessments that NO ONE else does (in my experience). My son didn't read until he was 10 and the SD and school psychiatric insisted there was no reason for the delay. The reading specialist who finally tested him that year found many huge discrepancies in his phonemic awareness and major problems with his ability to decode words that were masked due to his ability to do well on some parts of the testing and his very advanced oral skills and ability to draw meaning from context. He was spending a lot of time guessing at the meaning of words he couldn't read based on the context for those words.

Hope this is helpful info. Test anxiety can seriously interfere with test performance and she should definitely qualify for 504 and testing accommodations if this diagnosis is included in the neuropsychologist report. If she has a 504 for anxiety then she should be able to get accommodations that include extra time, small group or individual setting, and any other accommodations the neuropsychologist will recommend.

 

[BusynMember]

PJ, funny you wrote this post My daughter is being tested JUST FOR READING ISSUES quite soon.

Nobody can say we ever give up...lolol.

 

[InsaneCdn]

Without an IEP they won't allow her to not take written tests.

OK - so write then - but with allowances for "alternate format" (we got that one... and we don't get much). They SHOULD be able to restrict her tests to "formatted recall" rather than "free-format"... i.e. no long answers or open-ended questions. That leaves... true/false, multiple choice and short answer.
One of difficult child's teachers has been forced this year to either switch his exam format for ALL the students, or to write up two separate exams... to accommodate "formatted recall".

This is hard to get in ENGLISH... which is a "how to write" class, after all. But for Social, History, Science, and anything else... Worth at least asking. And if the won't put it in the 504 (did I get that US term right?), then at least talk to the teachers and see if they are open to the idea...

 

[BusynMember]

Oh, PJ, I will. It helps that this Special Education teacher will be her tutor. She'll have a lot of input for the Special Education director and I expect after teaching Jumper we'll have a meeting before school.

Hey, I forgot to put down some test scores (so spacy...ME!!!) and I just posted them in another thread. Could use some help. Have no clue what the test scores mean.

Thanks to everyone!