Finally Getting Some Help

Finally Getting Some Help (Maybe?)

To the teacher's credit, she called me as soon as she read the form I filled out. She said that his score on the benchmark assessment was only 18 words correct per minute and that his accuracy was 50%.

I'd like you to take that in for a minute. We won't even go into the fact that she had already said that the scores didn't matter. He's just entered the 3rd grade. A student in the 10th percentile (that's the bottom 10th of all students that age) would score 47 words correct per minute in the Fall. A student who would be considered at benchmark, (we'll call that the 50th percentile) would score 87 words per minute. None of that even takes into account that he only read 50% of the words correctly.

Think about this page. Imagine removing every other word. Would you understand anything I've written? Here's another kicker for you...my son was still really struggling with understanding that words need to be read from left to right and that if you write something down, all of the letters have to go in order for someone else to understand it. He was IN. THE. THIRD. GRADE. And yet, to this point, my husband and I are really the only ones who were incredibly concerned about this.

Sidebar: dyslexia is NOT reading words backward. It is not curable. It is a brain difference. It affects speech, knowing left from right, and being able to understand directions. Here's an infographic that gives you some of the markers for dyslexia: Understanding Dyslexia

At this point, I think that we are on the cusp of a breakthrough. He's already been evaluated. I have a document from a neuropsychologist that says he has a specific learning disability in reading. So, we meet with the School Psychologist and she will not accept the summary of the doctor's findings. But, I don't want to give her the entire evaluation because there is a significant amount of family history and information regarding the ADHD evaluation and anxiety diagnosis that I don't think is the school's business. I know that we cannot move forward with the SLD designation unless I give her the whole thing, so I redact the information that she doesn't need. She decides that she has to do her own evaluation (now, it is completely possible that they are required to do an internal evaluation, I don't really know. But the fact that my kid had already been through an 8-hour evaluation and she was going to remove him from class to perform ANOTHER evaluation causing another 4-6 weeks of waiting to get our son the additional instruction that he needed, I was NOT happy.). I accepted this, unhappily. But I was annoyed and expressed my annoyance to my brother who happens to be a therapist and often attends IEP evaluation meetings as an advocate. He offers to come to the meeting where we are determining whether or not our son is going to receive services and I gratefully accepted.

At the meeting, the School Psych tells us all about how her evaluation was so much different than the CDRC evaluation (it was not), and everyone agreed that he required services for reading and writing. The SLP basically says that she's cured him of his speech difficulties (which he didn't have) and so he no longer requires speech services. So, everyone at the table agrees with that. The whole team says yes, he needs extra services for reading and writing. And then the School Psych asks if we think maybe we should evaluate him for Autism. We have had several meetings. We have had email discussions. NO ONE has said anything about Autism. READ: he doesn't have Autism. So, thankfully my brother, there as an advocate, explains all of the reasons that our son doesn't qualify for ASD (he's kind of a specialist), and she drops the subject.

So, I swallow my tongue when I have to agree that my son needs help and that it has nothing to do with the instruction he has received. Because you have to say that to get the IEP.

Sidebar: Our son would have struggled no matter what. His dyslexia is pretty profound and reading and writing would have always been difficult for him. But getting evidence-based, systematic, direct instruction in the earliest grades would have made his struggles much less difficult.

And so, I am relieved. He's got an IEP! I think this is it, he's going to get the extra instruction that he needs and we are going to be okay! I don't know if you can tell from all the exclamation points that my rose-colored glasses were firmly in place.

Until next time.

Read the next installment: It's Fine, Everything's Fine, We're All Fine Here.