I began this blog back in 2008, when I received Will's interim report for the second quarter of 3rd grade and realized he was really struggling. He had no issues in 2nd grade, that we had been made aware of, so it came as a surprise.
Of course, in retrospect, it shouldn't have come as a surprise. I have always thought and even said that Will learns "differently". Even back in preschool I had that sense. Certainly in Kindergarten he struggled a little with handwriting and sequencing. First grade had a few focusing issues brought to our attention. But none of this seemed that out of the ordinary. He is our first child, after all. We had nothing to compare it to and the teachers were not making a big deal out of any of it. To us it was all normal.
So, in third grade when he started to struggle immensely with careless mistakes and forgetting to recheck his work and missing pages of tests and failing reading assessments and science tests, we really began to worry. First we met with his teachers, they made some small accommodations for him. It helped. For a while. We had another meeting late in the year with the teachers, school psychologist, school counselor, and principal. In their opinion, Will was normal. He didn't stand out as needing to be tested for anything. His standardized test scores were average. He got through the end of the school year.
Summer came and went. I contemplated doing testing on my own, but decided not to.
4th grade arrived, fall of 2009. He started the year off with a bang. But, slowly things went downhill again. Careless mistakes, particularly in math. Comprehension issues in reading. Again, nothing that really rang the alarm bells for his teachers. He was allowed to bring tests and papers home and redo them for better grades. That helped a lot, again, especially with Math. But, we never really addressed the problem. Why was he having so much trouble to begin with? Finally a reading specialist suggested, during the 4th quarter, that maybe Will should be evaluated by the speech and language teacher at the school. I was all for it and grateful that someone was finally taking this a step further. Someone besides me! So, the evaluation he was given (CELF-4) showed nothing. He scored a 22 and an 18 is typical for his age range. However, he scored poorly on two parts of that test. But, it didn't matter, his overall score was where it should be so the school's hands were tied.
Summer came, 2010. It was busy. I finally decided I was going to get testing done on my own. We took him to a doctor that specializes in education testing and he went through 3 hours of psychoeducational testing over 2 days. Chris and I met with the doctor a week and a half later to find out what the testing revealed. FINALLY, some answers!
He was found to be ADHD- inattentive type, particularly struggling with working memory issues. She suspected possible visual processing disorders and suggested we seek an evaluation by a developmental optometrist. She also suggested we seek a thorough evaluation by a speech and language pathologist. She suspected receptive and expressive language issues. WOW! We were overwhelmed to say the least.
We scheduled an appointment with the school, he is now in 5th grade. We scheduled an appointment with the developmental optometrist, who is 2 hours away! There he was diagnosed with both convergence insufficiency and accommodative insufficiency. Both are treatable, but both explain much of the problems Will has been experiencing. We really believe that quite possibly, if we fix his vision issues, we might have a completely different child academically.
The school meeting went wonderfully. His teachers are on the same page as us and want to do everything they can to help him succeed. The school speech and language pathologist is going to observe him and give suggestions on how we can help him.
I believe this is a long road we are on. It has taken years to just get to the point we are at today and in a way I feel like we are just at the beginning!
